Mesh/MeshApps

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What sort of local apps would we like to integrate with the mesh? Such applications need to function on decentralized platforms, and ideally

Short List of Apps

Haha. Not sure who wrote this but after working with CouchDB a bunch I can tell you that it quickly becomes complicated to write multi-user app with CouchDB. Decent access control means that you need a database per user and likely a few extra databases. You then have to set all of these databases up to synchronize between each other which is further complicated by the limitations on what information is available by the limitations on how synchronization rules and filters can be written. There seem to be no good tools for managing/visualizing these complex relationships so you end up having to roll your own. That being said, there is a nice javascript version of CouchDB called PouchDB which means you can have a pure js web app with decentralized couch-style database.
  • Scuttlebutt - Decentralized database written in node.

Personas

  • Curator [ Individual who cares about data being right and available for the community ]
  • Analyzer [ Wants to visualize data in context, overlays of data, how data changes ]
  • Organizer/Activist [ wants to organize people around an issue, actionable outputs ]
  • Consumer [ gets info from the system, but doesn’t give back ]
  • Broadcaster/Reporter [ radio, streams, news, users/organizations who push into the system a lot ]

Use Cases

Leisure, Treasure Hunt, Animal Spotting, History / Science Plotting , Art/Design/Drawing, Mapping Secret/Weird stuff, Expression, Emotion

  • Jordan is a 36-year old scientist and queer activist. Occasionally, he travels north to a 'radical fairy' retreat center on over 80 acres of land. He's undertaking a project to map out the diverse and undocumented biology and wildlife in this sacred area. For this, he would like a tool that would enable him to automatically map the coordinates, attach a picture, and include a comment about what it is, as well as the ability to add to social media (Facebook & Twitter).

Bulletin Board / Local Information sharing (jobs, events, etc) (people to people)

  • Martin is a 35-year old Latino man who runs a website for displaying new job postings and opportunities for diverse, underserved populations in Oakland (eg; youth, veterans, and formerly incarcerated). Martin would like to easily transpose this data onto a searchable map that he could populate daily with new opportunities and programs.

Sensors: hardware-based [inputs & outputs]

  • Naomi is a Midweatern 30-year old environmental activist concerned about the impact of fracking on the quality of water in her county. She's organizing a campaign to encourage fellow concerned homeowners to monitor changes and contaminants in air and water quality, seismic activity, radiation, and other potential environmental impacts of fracking.

Evidence Based Citizenship (crowdsourced data/reporting for an institution to solve, neighborhood to be aware of) (people to institutions)

  • Alyssa is a 35-year old African-American woman working for the city government. Passionate about diversifying and expanding civic participation, she's been participating with Open Oakland to make civic data more accessible. She's working on an educational campaign for creating short videos explaining civic issues and how local government works.

Political Crisis Readiness (people to people, against institutions)

Contexts

Community Asset Mapping / Archiving

  • Kiara is a 34-year-old African-American community organizer and activist interested in mapping the various organizations addressing digital divide issues, as well as available resources such as public computers, free training and education, and free wifi spots.
  • Molly is a 26 year old community organizer working on Oakland Wiki, a website editable by anyone and dedicated to everything Oakland. She recently announced the launch of an oral history project, the end product of which would ideally be mapped onto specific areas and landmarks.

Community Hub (communications / sensors / input + output APIs )

  • Ali is a 28-year old Iraqi-American and works to catalyze community organizations in the Middle East. He is currently collecting stories from hackerspaces in the form of comics, as well as a 'Sister Spaces' project to partner hackerspaces for sharing insights and infrastructure challenges.
  • Luke is a 33-year-old Australian data and open government geek. Among the mappable projects he's working on with Open Oakland are storm drains (the Adopt-A-Drain project), crime data, vacant and blighted properties, and organizations and resources addressing the digital divide.

Organizing Tool (activists, security matters)

  • Mateo is a 32-year old Latino father living in the San Antonio neighborhood in Oakland, CA. He is interested in the capabilities of a mesh network for streaming Creative Commons-licensed content to his neighbors (possibly using an Asterisk server) and providing a means for connecting the community both digitally and physically through an online neighborhood bulletin board. He has a strong interest in reaching out to local businesses with an 'everybody wins' model of free wifi through a mesh, with a map-based splash page for communicating with others in the network.

Crisis Readiness

  • Jen is a 30-year-old Asian-American technologist and community organizer in East Oakland. Passionate about DIY education and grassroots community-building, she's interested in mapping DIY communities as well as available resources for crisis readiness (such as relief centers, tools, food, water and shelter).
  • Alexis is a 29-year old African-American technologist interested in the potential for mesh networking to expand internet access in underserved areas and creating a resilient communications network for crisis readiness. She is especially passionate about issues surrounding access to technology, and would like to see underserved communities participating in putting themselves on the map.

Play, games, fun uses

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