I'm so glad to see Wyatt mention NDN. I've been waiting for someone to bring this up.

After I found Disaster Radio a few years ago I found Named Data Networks (NDN) which was very exciting. On and off for about 1 year after I wrote my own implementation of NDN. UCLA's sample code on NDN (in Java) is problematic for Disaster Radio which led me to C implementation. That code is dormant for the moment. 

However. I think there is a real opportunity for Disaster Radio to combine the best parts of NDN with APRS (http://www.aprs.org).  There are many human-years of work contributed in the APRS / Ham space that we can learn from. A great primer on APRS is found here (http://www.aprs.org/doc/APRS101.PDF) but go to Page 9 "The APRS Design Philosophy" to find a few ah-ha moments relative to Disaster Radio.

So. NDN + APRS (i.e. Net Cycle Time, Repeaters, Packet Timing, etc) makes for a potentially powerful protocol. 

Next. The user interface.

If we measure success through the lens of "adoption" (people using it, nodes being setup, etc). then consider making the interface look fairly idential to instant messaging. Meaning my older / female / neighbor would go to the Disaster Radio hotspot and the webpage there (not app) would "look" like a messaging app. (note: you may not measure success this way - that's cool)

Last: My neighbor is putting up her own node...

What if a Disaster Radio node was (also) available as a web enabled light bulb. In this case my senior neighbor could replace her porch light with a Disaster Radio lightbulb that she screws into the receptacle on her porch. The lightbulb has an esp8266 within (https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/hacking-this-smart-bulb-is-almost-too-easy/). Then later, .. she sees the Disaster Radio hotspot on her WIFI list and can click it to get access to the Webpage / Messaging interface. (Granted:  this implementation is not solar enabled).

So glad to see a rekindled energy here.

Brian