R. Scott Belford wrote:
Matt Darnell wrote:
Jim,
Guess what? The HCC is *cheap*. They want a small percentage of
the gate for us. *C*H*E*A*P*, and its a nice venue to boot.
What about the WIFI situation would have made your blood boil? I'm
curious.
I thought I heard that they would sell an Internet connection for a
large
sum and would not let you NAT it (not that they could stop you) so
people
were trying to pick up WiFi from across the street.
We set up a brilliant station with Jim's gear from Netgate. Sorry you
missed it and instead are basing your WiFi impression simply on what
you "heard."
To be fair, we were "picking up signal" from somewhere across the
street, and repeating it inside the CC.
Both connections were using fiarly strong antennas.
It wasn't ideal, but it worked well enough for people to do things like
read mail and surf the web during the conf.
The WiFi 'vendor' at HCC has some issues, yes. With any luck, a small
portion of HOSEF will show the HCC a better way. I think a FSO link to
a near-by building with real bandwidth would solve the recurring line
charges problem. Then HCC would only be paying for bandwidth used.
MIchael knows where the building is, and I'm willing to build and donate
the FSO gear. (10Mbps, full duplex).
You missed a great discussion about DUNDi. (How will DUNDi change
your business, Matt? What if Kuokua, (also announced at the
conference) enabled a federated peer-to-peer VoIP system for Hawaii,
with a distributed set of cheap gateways into local POTS lines? How
would that change your business?
I am sure that is a rhetorical question, but in case it isn't, the
one time
I really looked and discussed DUNDi, it seemed to have the all the short
comings of RIP.
When was this "one time", Matt? Perhaps your customers and
marketplace need you to give it a second time.
Scott's comment aside, I'm wondering if you will expound on the
shortcomings of RIP to which you refer (I'm quite familiar, but I don't
want to guess at what you meant) and how DUNDi fails in similar ways.
Because the interesting things happen at the edges. The meetings in
the halls, the bizcard exchanges at the end, the lunches, the times
when someone in the audience asks the tough questions.
I agree, (I learned & networked more during our 1 hour lunch last
year than
at the conf) but like an nuclear reaction....critical mass needs to be
achieved.
We're looking at a couple themed "days" next year.
I think that will bring more people. I am sure most people that
didn't go
looked at the shedule and figured it was the same speakers, different
year -
a lot of the names looked familiar.
Most of the names were not even vaguely familiar. Aaron Seigo, Robin
Miller, and John Terpstra were my only repeat visitors.
Ah, well, perhaps we need to make a point that even if Aaron and John
show up again, that they aren't talking about the same stuff. (Aaron's
tallks this year were quite different than T* 05.) Terpstra just went
to work at AMD, so his experience base next year will be new.
All that said, I don't know if either will attend. I know I will.
Jim
