Hey'all, I'd like to share some personal thoughts and hopes regarding Arig activity during 2014. There are several converging vectors that I believe are pointing to a real need for the Arig network to begin bootstrapping itself, with a strong emphasis on actual physical connections.
Organizationally, there is lots of interest in Arig and the technology empowering mesh networks. I see this both at TAMI when discussing Arig/routers/networks, as well as in other contexts where people might have heard of similar projects worldwide and wonder as to why a local initiative hasn't taken place yet. Politically, in post-#J14 times, there is a growing movement towards opening cooperative and communal initiatives (e.g. Bar Kayma, 'Shelanu' cooperative, South TLV organic coop, software coop, Ofek social bank, etc.) and here again, some technically-inclined people have been sniffing around Arig (including tangential technologies such as tactical communication between android devices at mass-protests etc.) What I'm trying to point to is an actual demand from people to actively participate in such a network (with obvious varying levels of technical aptitude.) With that in mind, I can't help but feel we're slightly off-track with our current efforts. Most of the active Arig participants (myself included) come from a strong technical background, and thus making it natural to navigate our activity towards hard technical discussions and development. All the while, it feels (to me, at least) that we need to be putting more effort into deploying actual technology on the ground - even if it is out-of-the-box and rough around the edges - such that we are in touch with people who are interested in participating in the network, but lack the knowledge or motivation to enter the core technical discussions. It might be that case that in the end of day, we'll have more participation and more motivation to continue the development we want to see, but at a faster pace. Personally, I am gearing myself towards more on-the-ground activity in the south TLV area (Jaffa, Florentin, Shapira) where there is lots of interest in Arig and actual deployment of nodes with high probability of physical connections. I believe that this is what we should be focusing on in the near future, in order for Arig to successfully bootstrap. Please let me know if you feel the same or if I'm tx'ing on a completely different channel :) Cheers, - Yuval
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