Let’s use this space to introduce us to the collective, so we know who we are talking to and who we can find around!
You can find out more of your peers my looking at their profile descriptions. You can find here a list of all of the members.
1 Like
Hi all,
I am excited to join this platform as I am currently ruuning projects to also connect rural areas, should you know anyone in Mpumalanga interested in or currently operating a CN, please let me know because ISOC South Africa Gauteng Chapter is planning to implement a Provincial CN summit in October 2019 - sccredited training with a local training provider and site deployments. If anyone is interested in helping or supporting this initiaive, please let me know, thanks.
Thato Mfikwe
[email protected]
2 Likes
Welcome Thato!
I just moved your post to the Introductions thread to others can find it!
Thanks for sharing,
Welcome, Thato @thato . I look forward to hearing more about the work in Mpumalanga as it progresses as well as your current work with ISOC South Africa Gauteng Chapter. Also that is brilliant you are planning to host a South African provincial summit. Where are you getting the accredited training from? Is it accredited like a national SETA or accredited outside of South Africa? I look forward to hearing more!
1 Like
Hi Kathleen, welcome!
It would be great to hear from you too 
(mea culpa, also have to do my own introduction here!)
1 Like
Kia ora tātou, hola amigos, hello everyone,
I’m Ben, from the Cook Islands and New Zealand. Many thanks to those who set up this group and great to connect with such a cool community (also happy to be reconnected to some of you after the Dweb conference early this year). I’m new to community networks but am excited about the opportunities it can bring in making digital solutions and information more accessible and I am currently working on a P2P platform for tribal communities with @luandro. I am particularly interested in connecting with anyone who is currently/previously/interested in connecting Polynesia or the wider Pacific Islands. 
I look forward to learning from you all
4 Likes
Hello everyone!
My name is Magnus and I’ve been involved in different open source and free software projects (mainly delta chat and level modules in the node community). I’ve also been to a couple of BattleMesh, so maybe I’ve seen you there before.
I’m interested in networks in general and community networks in particular. I’d like to learn more about the whole shebang, everything from deploy of software, configuring hardware, climbing trees to set up antennas, general community work etc.
Cheers
4 Likes
Its good to meet you all, - some for the first time, some I know from other projects.
By way of introduction to me and the project …
I’m at the Internet Archive, focused on how to make their content more available in places where the internet is slow, expensive, or censored.
The project is about a year old now.
The main part of the technical development is an offline version of our server working as a cache/proxy/crawler on machines as small as an OrangePi.
Another part is integrating into the emerging stack of content delivery integrations - I shared a bit about that stack on the call, and can upload the images here if there is a suitable topic.
And a third part is working out how to integrate the Internet Archive’s content & APIs with other systems (e.g. to make our content appear through other people’s UIs).
In terms of my background, prior to the Archive I built “Lumeter” which was a leading provider of PAYG technology for off-grid solar (mostly across Africa); I still do a lot of work supporting and mentoring innovators working on sustainable solutions that involve technology (for example I’m working with a team doing low cost water filtration with an initial market in Bangladesh), and a long time ago I was a co-founder of APC.org and co-author/contributor/editor of some of the early internet standards.
Looking forward to working with everyone
3 Likes
Hello, My name is Noela Tenku from Cameroon. I am an intern at GIZ, and part of the team under the project: Developing digital services for telecenters in Cameroon. Pleased to be in this community and open to learn what everyone here has been using for their community and how it works.
2 Likes
Hi everybody,
This is Leonardo from Italy. I am a professor at the University of Venice, and I was a coordinator of the netCommons.eu research project on community networks.
I am also part of the ninux CN and friend of the nice people that every year I meet at the battlemesh. Thanks for setting up this space.
Cheers,
Leonardo.
2 Likes
Hola, I am Leandro, associate professor at UPC.edu in Barcelona, where we do research as part of the Barcelona mesh network, and also member of guifi. net (only two links per post 
) , that I have at home (through community fibre) as part of the http://exo.cat community in Barcelona.
I’ve been in community networks since 2010 approximately. I am also part of APC as co-founder of Pangea.org. Glad to be around. I can also communicate in two spanish languages: Catalan and Castilian.
See you around, Leandro.
2 Likes
Hi all! My name is Benny and I contribute to peoplesopen.net in Oakland, California. I like it when groups of people get together to build relationships and support and inspire each other, and this is why I like community-owned and community-empowering infrastructure. I’d love to see a world filled with positive human coordinations and collaborations. Currently, my day jobs are with the California Courts and with a mapping and data viz studio called Stamen. I also really like this scene from Meredith Monk’s Book of Days: meredith monk -Churchyard Entertainment - YouTube
Happy to be here!
2 Likes
Hi there! My name is Martin and I am working on a “Vermont Community Internet” project from Burlington, Vermont, USA. My goal has been direct support of network infrastructure projects of all kind that I am able to reach locally; I have been helping out https://newportmesh.org/. My speciality is in hardware acquisition and redistribution, specifically of low-end consumer-grade hardware which can accompany better hardware in order to distribute a link. My hope is to improve technical knowledge of our communities so they can focus on other problems that don’t already have good solutions. My day job is as a data conversion specialist for a pediatric care software company, working mostly with Linux.
2 Likes
(Additionally, I became involved here through @nicopace who is involved in Tomesh. I am a member of the hackerspace Laboratory B, based in Burlington, VT.)
1 Like
Hello my name is Benedict from Toronto Mesh. In the past two years I have been involved in some conference organizing work, mainly ournetworks.ca and dwebcamp.org, that brought me the opportunity to meet many of the great people on this forum, which I am especially thankful for.
I am interested in off-Internet community networks that offer secure communications and reliable applications, including how to build local capacity to steward the physical network and maintain reliable local services that are detached from centralized providers.
Thanks for organizing this space for exchanges and I look forward to being more involved on here!
1 Like
Thanks for the knowledge platform! I’m excited to join, being active with communities in 12 countries in Africa. We started in 2014 the Basic Internet Foundation, and have since then worked on three topics:
-
- Promoting the Freemium model for Digital Inclusion. - Free access to information, premium access to broadband
-
- Establishing connectivity in remote areas - solution is an InfoSpot reaching out to mobile networks as far as 20 km away
-
- Establishing Digital Health Promotion (DHP) as means for empowering every single human on health issues
-
- Connecting schools in remote areas, see School Connectivity Tanzania and School Connectivity Kenya on our BasicInternet Wiki
About myself: Josef Noll, professor at University of Oslo (UiO) and Secretary General of the Basic Internet Foundation
Our mission is to empower every single human through free access to information on the Internet.
And I guess that is a nice starting point for discussion
2 Likes