[Battlemesh] Battlemesh event description

[Simon Wunderlich]

Hey Federico,

> Hi everyone,
> 
> in order to promote the event to its maximum potential and in order to
> get the best possible outcome, I thought it would be cool to expand a
> little the description of the event.

I'm not so much the visionary, but let me share my thoughts ...

> 
> First of all, I would like to brainstorm about the battlemesh potential
> and what would be the best possible outcome to see if we have a similar
> vision.
> 
> *Potential*
> The Battlemesh community is on of the most beautiful, exciting and
> skilled community I came across in my short life.
> Most of the participants are *very* skilled in their own field,
> seriously. Dynamic routing protocol developers, OpenWRT developers,
> wireless community networkers, free and open source sofware developers
> and advocates, network engineers, web developers, ecc
> In this event we have the people who are driving the open source
> development in the field of open wireless networking.
> A coordinated effort by this group of people can have great impact, and
> infact is already having a significant impact.
> 
> *Goals and desired outcome
> *The battlemesh event description cites routing protocol testing and
> "competition", a positive competition with a social character. This was
> the original spirit and goal of the event.
> 
> In the following years, it became also a place where to discuss about
> community networks, software dedicated to ease the construction,
> deployment and management of a wireless network, research projects,
> innovative ideas and so on.
> 
> But the stated goal has remained the same, routing protocol testing to
> see which protocol perform best in certain situations.
> Is that the only outcome desired for this event?

Next to the "battle", and raw numbers at the end, the most interesting thing 
is to see what is new in other protocols, which direction do they take, 
checking out new features and think about adopting them, present and get 
feedback and suggestion on own work .... I think we had a lively exchange of 
ideas among protocols in the past few years (e.g. multi-radio or interface 
alternating techniques, just to name one).

It is also a great place to meet for protocol developers, as we usually don't 
live next to each other and don't have the chance to meet very often (I guess 
this is not only true for the BATMAN team).

> 
> Or do we also want to express our desire to make an event where people
> with a common dream, a dream of open communications for all, can meet
> and coordinate their efforts toward this common goal?
> 
> So another (additionally to routing protocol testing) possible outcome
> would be to foster the growth of communities, open hardware and software
> that work toward the creation of a new global communication
> infrastructure, the kind of infrastructure dreamed in the wireless
> common manifesto ( http://www.wirelesscommons.org/) which many of us are
> working hard to build.

Personally I'm not so much involved in wireless communities, but it is a nice 
thing to see how they use and build on stuff where we participated in 
development - so yes, that is interesting too. Personally I like the event to 
get to know the latest developments in open source mesh- and wireless 
networking - there are not so many conferences/meetings out there with this 
subject. :)

> 
> Adding this kind of explicit statement in the event description would be
> a recognition of what the event really is today, hence attracting more
> of the kind of people who are interested not only in routing protocol
> testing, but also in the people, hardware and software tools dedicated
> to open networks.
> 
> Some people for example, might be interested in talking about their new
> project, KORUZA, funkfeuer nodeDB, or the new developments of their
> existing projects.
> Some other people from new community networks might be interested in
> meeting people of existing and mature community networks to learn
> something from them.
> Some others might want to come because they have an idea for a possible
> research project or crowdfunding intiative, or whatever.

I think that those are interesting topics - I like to hear about firmware 
baking, bootloaders, flashing tools and management tools as well. It's not only 
about mesh networking and wireless drivers. :) It was also great to get new 
ideas and perspectives to the event, like the bufferbloat/cerowrt discussions. 
It's also very nice to get to know the wireless communities (guifi, awmn, ...).

So yes, I'd agree to keep the focus open and also announce that. The only 
concern I'd like to express is that I'd like to keep the event technology-
focused and keep political/social discussion to a minimum (or on the level we 
have now). I know that many communities are motivated by social/political 
reasons and that is fine to explain that, but I'm mostly interested in 
technical advances (the ccc congress discusses too many "social topics" for my 
taste nowadays, for example). 

> 
> All these things already happened in the previous years.
> It's a small detail which many of us feel obvious and natural, but it
> might have a certain impact on how newcomers perceive the Battlemesh.
> 
> ========================
> 
> Sorry for this long email and thank to those who read it all.
> I hope to have expressed my point clearly and hope to hear your opinions.

Thanks for bringing that up.
   Simon