Mesh experiments in Brazil
During the first decade of October Mesh club participants attended activists' meeting on communication development in local societies all over the world. Brazil itself, palm trees, mountains, bananas and blazing sun turned out to be the attributes of an effective co-working.
Rio de Janeiro is the city which amazes not only with it's size and climate but also with active people experimenting on mesh networks in mountain areas and favelas, struggling for spectrum freedom, establishing radio and TV stations.
Falanster team got acquainted with the network implementation in the mountains: activists and locals developed a mesh network with several switches for local services (wiki, where photos and information are gathered) and internet access in a small village Fumaça.
Local boy Bruno from Rio launched his hacienda in the mountains to this network through the antenna which is placed on a tree at the mountain peak that is 2 km away from Fumaça. Hacienda and the antenna are connected by the wire – 300 m. in length which crosses swamps, streams and underbrush. Bruno with the help of machete made the way for mesh switch himself, but he isn't advocating such an extreme approach. He is an amateur of free technology communication and together with his São Paulo friends encourages local societies to use mesh systems.
Gui from Argentina with his Austrian friend Iza implement mesh net for Buenos Aires favelas and for regions as «Alter Mundi» community members. As passionate and warm hearted people, they were constantly releasing positive vibrations. Choleric Argentinian being a PS developer for ad-hoc «Libre Mesh» net and by the way a sincere hugger, showed us that programmers are not always phlegmatic people.
Members of «Rhizomatica» organization romantics Kino and Dave from Mexican Oaxaca City shared with us the experience of mesh and GSM network development in societies of small mountain villages. One village is within sight from another but it will take 7 hours to reach it by car. It's not only technical aspect that matters it's constant integration with locals, for whom boys provide knowledge on existing technology and explain why it should be supported and watched after.
Tania and Luis from Nicaragua develop local communication for their cooperative and also run regional radio broadcasting, they are focusing on the violence prevention against children and women.
Ryan and Andy from «Open Technology Institution»«Commotion» software, which we use for the Mesh club, help communities with social and technical issues.
This meeting of very different and in a way similar people inspires co-working, communication, further experimentation. In every region there are reasons for horizontal communication creation, but lots of problems and their solutions are similar, even though our countries are thousands kilometers away from each other! So - be mesh! And keep up with technologies!
P.S. We couldn't help being affected by magical Brazil and bringing back to life the saying: «Sharing is caring!» we shared not only knowledge but also our belongings with Rio citizens:) But we got much more – we grabbed the sun with us!
