Tech com funding proposal

[BenBurton]

A note about the printer and printing in general. Several people have mentioned they can get local printers to carry some of the burden or sell to us "at cost".
1. Figuring out "at cost" for something that depends on many variables, like the combination of colors used to produce another color, is a pain in the ass. Noone wants to do this. and I think people are underestimating howmuch we will print once we have that as an actual option, No offense to anyone but there is a large difference between "someone said they can help with this" and someone actually helping with "this" ("this" being anything)

2. And this is a bigger issue that no one has mentioned at all, 2 days after we moved in, someone accidentally, screwed up the signs of one of our neighbors, incidentally, a printer. It was smoothed over but the fact remains, its pretty easy to piss people off, what happens when they get sick of printing out 500 flyers at a time and we are suddenly without the ability to print fairly cheaply ? Everything just stops. Everyone gets pissed. There is no reason to wear out our welcome with our allies by being constant beggars, we need allies MUCH more then we need to save money on printing. And more to the point, there will still be tons of non-large format printing to do, notice there ISN'T a laser printer in this proposal, so people can feel free to run the gamut on asking for standard flyers to be printed from our allies to test the waters of what I said.

The printer suggestion was simply because we could pay someone else to do printing. It's an area of expertise someone else has that we don't necessarily have. That and maintaining the equipment isn't necessarily easy or cheap.

Since other people do printing for a living, there are other resources we could rely on. And even if it's more expensive over the long run, sometimes the smart business move is to spread a larger cost over a longer period of time.

The internet service is something we can't outsource so investing in that rather than printing might be the better ROI.

[marymcmahon@clear.net]

Todd, this is an amazing idea. It should be at the top of the list. This WiFi initiative, without knowing the business structure details, may exemplify the vision OC needs to start defining for the future.
Many independent service providers are left without decent options for expanding their services. And many of us are resistant to leaving the mom and pops that got us up and running avoiding AOL.
I have an used roof top.

[BenBurton]

First, typically a business identifies its needs and approaches tech for solutions. Tech then estimates the cost and the business then decides what it can afford. I'm not sure but it feels like this is reversed.

I am not sure If I am understanding you correctly, so let me put it how it sounds to me,
I am assuming the business in this case, is occupychicago, So the assumption here is that, occupychicago, which is mostly made up of non-technical people. Would present technical solutions to the tech committee to price out ? No offense but it seems like it would be difficult for people who don't know what a mesh network is, to ask tech to price it out.

Second, there are outstanding issues to be resolved by tech that they may or may not have the manpower to fix. If we introduce new technology that may be at the expense of clearing up past issues. The "new toys" will obviously be a distraction.

To the best of my knowledge there is no ticketing system in place to track unresolved issues.

I am not sure what issues the current combination of forums/email support are not resolving that ticketing system would, are there other tech issues that are still pending that I am not aware of ? I am not considering not having a ticketing system a tech issue. We can barely get people to use a forum.

[Todd]

Ok, That was weird, I do not know how it posted as ben but the above post was me.

Anyway the results of the tech com vote, basically what was approved by GA is:


$1500 per 6months for the webhosting.
Vivitek D537W Ultra Portable Widescreen DLP Projector Cost: $599.98 + shipping
120-Inch Portable Outdoor Movie Theater Screen Cost $170.49 + shipping
Fail-Safe Long Range Professional FM Transmitter CZH-15A $259.99 + 19.95 shipping
Ubiquiti SR71-15 carrier class radio module $89.00 + shipping
ARC-CJ1054S01 pigtail cable Qty:2 $16.00 + shipping
RD2458-5-SMA Omnidirectional antenna Qty:2 $23.90 + shipping
RB/411UAHR Mikrotik RouterBOARD $119.00 + shipping
50 watt high power switching power supply $39.00 + shipping

And drum-roll please!
Comcast business, $189mo + $50 installation.

No printing for you!

To note, this totals to roughly $3,100

[BenBurton]

I am not sure If I am understanding you correctly, so let me put it how it sounds to me,
I am assuming the business in this case, is occupychicago, So the assumption here is that, occupychicago, which is mostly made up of non-technical people. Would present technical solutions to the tech committee to price out ? No offense but it seems like it would be difficult for people who don't know what a mesh network is, to ask tech to price it out.

Just to clarify, the non-technical people would say "we spend $1000 a week at the printer, what can we do to lower our costs?"

Then Todd says: "BUY MY PRINTER BITCHES!"

So, yeah.

[Todd]

No, it wen't
(about a month ago)
Random people: Hey tech, buy a large format printer it would be super usefull
Tech: ok

(The GA when we voted on tech proposal)
Tech : buy a large format printer it would be super usefull
tyranny by minority of the GA: no
random people: godamnit, i'm so sick of using markers (because we can't afford to outsource the printing)

You can't say "hey we spend $1000 mo on printing, lets buy a printer" when people are saying "we can't afford to outsource, that's why we are using markers"
Your argument is the same as the historical "let them eat cake!" when there was no bread.

[marymcmahon@clear.net]

It was no problem to spend $5000 a month on something you don't own... but impossible to spend $6000 that you will own.

$5000 to plop your fannies and not $6000 for the vital links that delivers our message, that facilitates EVERYTHING!

There is a definite idea that money is infinite... that speaks to the privilege and inexperience of too many of the decision makers.

[joshuaaron]

This is why the previous tech proposal was $6k, and why it was initially left out of this proposal. While I personally think it is retarded that we are penny pinching over hardware, none of which is useless and while we are currently in a donations lull, they are in fact, NOT finite, while not infinite either, it is dumb to just be sitting on the donation money when we can be using it to, as has been laid out here, further our cause by leaps and bounds, but whatever.

The chicago wifi project is relying primarily on donors to donate roof space, so the various relays will be more or less permanent. Why would anyone donate roof space ? free internet. Also, its roof space, are people really going up there that often ?
For some, who live in high rises, it would be donating window space and just having an eyesore in 1 window, IF they chose to be a relay, if its just a node then the antennas are small.

The coverage actually starts outside the space, at the datacenter that has donated the bandwith, they are also donating roof space for the origination of the signal, cermak would be receiving it and then relaying. cermack would also not be the first hop, which is why I said even if we left cermack, the wifi would still be around, just the cermack relay would be down, other relays would continue to operate. Multikulti (on the north side) is planning to be another relay as well.

But if this must be had at expense of the other items on the list, I would say no.
The other items are far more useful for us immidiatly then wifi covering chicago would be.

A note about the printer and printing in general. Several people have mentioned they can get local printers to carry some of the burden or sell to us "at cost".
1. Figuring out "at cost" for something that depends on many variables, like the combination of colors used to produce another color, is a pain in the ass. Noone wants to do this. and I think people are underestimating howmuch we will print once we have that as an actual option, No offense to anyone but there is a large difference between "someone said they can help with this" and someone actually helping with "this" ("this" being anything)

2. And this is a bigger issue that no one has mentioned at all, 2 days after we moved in, someone accidentally, screwed up the signs of one of our neighbors, incidentally, a printer. It was smoothed over but the fact remains, its pretty easy to piss people off, what happens when they get sick of printing out 500 flyers at a time and we are suddenly without the ability to print fairly cheaply ? Everything just stops. Everyone gets pissed. There is no reason to wear out our welcome with our allies by being constant beggars, we need allies MUCH more then we need to save money on printing. And more to the point, there will still be tons of non-large format printing to do, notice there ISN'T a laser printer in this proposal, so people can feel free to run the gamut on asking for standard flyers to be printed from our allies to test the waters of what I said.

got your whole point and totally agree on every one of it.. i see why there is no laser printer included in the proposal.. quite simple but i think it's a good choice to do that.. inkjet printer ink

[mejones]

bump past the spam