Try   HackMD

People's Open x Toronto Mesh Workshops

Meeting 1

Wants:

  • Modular insetad of continuous: Hank wants to split up Toronto Mesh workshop into modular instead of 6-week
  • Divide by skill level: Different for elementary school students vs. advanced linux user
  • Rework content:
    • Start with why this, mesh and community networks, is important
    • Video presentations (e.g. Hank's video)
    • Completely compartmentalize each module so each can be presented 100% indpenedently of others
      • Have a suggested series to present
      • Split up the technical learning portion & the social interaction portion. Only include the technical portion in the module & let presenters choose an applicable social one to fit their needs. Maybe suggest a module too.
  • Background, workshop at the Toronto Public Library: https://tomesh.net/peer-to-peer-internet/
  • Varying levels of expectations, from beginner to advanced
  • ben: Important design choices to keep:
    • Markdown based everything (i.e. website, PDFs/worksheets, presentation) so we can iterate and translate (e.g. es)
    • Offline environments
    • Hands-on (e.g. get to work with pis)
    • Self-guided (e.g. via worksheets)
    • Fixed set of hardware
    • Political and technical
    • Reset on power cycle (using Mesh Orange at the moment)
  • Who we want to target?
    • General audience
    • Developers
    • Educate about how the internet works

What does Oakland want to teach/add?

  • Source of Internet bandwidth, share your internet vs. supernode
    • "Wide internet" VS "local mesh internet", what's the difference and how does that work?
  • WHY MESH: Security, financial, meeting your neighbour
    • How do I talk to my neighbors about this? Should I?
  • About the current Internet, practically how do you do it?
    • Who do you talk to?
    • What roof you mount and antenna and how to ask?
  • Small activity sort of thing?™ -Hank (a formal selection of activities that can be run outside of specific workshops but are still valuable and fun)
  • Place for people to share past facilitations and experiences
  • Section on each lesson or activity about how tested it is
    • ben: issue / PR template
    • facilitator gather feedback

TODO

Benny notes from homework

  • pre-workshop survey seems like another good source of framing / context for participants and encourages self-reflection
  • In lesson 1, could add links from lesson plan to print-outs so instructor knows what to hand out when
  • In other lesson plan slide decks I've seen people include slide notes for the facilitatormight help them associate the slides with specific parts of the lesson plan. Maybe unnecessary thoughI see that the slide titles match the section titles.
  • It's a little bit confusing that some sections are broken up into Objectives, Materials, Format, Activity, and others are not. I think it can end up reading like those headings are about the entire lesson, as opposed to being about a specific section within the lesson.
  • Love the Home Internet -> Mesh Topology -> Peer-2-peer applications sequence.

Meeting 2

SF workshop & trip planning

  • pam: 30-second response to "what is a mesh for you?"
  • benhylau: visiting SF March 29 to April 8:

Workshop Project Board

  • Project Board
  • Need a Facilitator Guide
  • Difficulty level classification
    • benhylau: this is typical of other curriculum like from Software Carpentry
    • Difficulty for facilitator vs. difficulty for audience
    • Is difficulty a technical skill level indicator?
    • Currently barrier to entry is too high for facilitators and audience
    • Things that students can look at independently to reinforce learning
  • Criteria to classify modules:
    • Technical difficulty
    • Time required
    • Hands-on vs. self-guided
    • Specific skills required
    • Run in what setting?
    • Stand-alone vs. progressive
    • Categorized by target audience?
    • Categorized by learning outcomes?
  • Is a self-guided version a separate project?

TODO

  • benny: check who wants to participate in workshop at People's Open during week of March 28 - April 8
  • benhylau: confirm workshop date and send material list
  • all: think aboit criteria to classify modules and how existing resources (Toronto Mesh stuff + People's Open's stuff) would map into that schema, and the UX for someone navigating this website

Meeting 3

One and Zeros

  • Photos of workshop in progress
  • Usually $60, sometimes covered by organizational sponsor
  • Email us to find out more and how you can contribute, or sponsor one workshop seat ($60) right now.

  • benny likes "It costs 60 dollars but you just have to check this box to make it free"
  • Transparency about cost
  • https://onesandzeros.ca
  • http://subtletechnologies.com/workshops-2/

Mesh Shop

  • tindie.com (your own adafruit)
  • Althea uses Shopify
  • Swag sales have been talked about at People's Open
  • Prefer value-aligned platforms over Shopify and definitely not Amazon
  • Has CAD 1750 that can possibly be allocated to this
  • Stock things we need already
  • benhylau: US store makes more sense than Canadian (US is 10x)
  • Start thinking about a mesh store

Discuss the issues in the issue discussion section!

  • The Project Board
  • pam: Create an outline of topics for participants before workshop. Email or cheatsheet/handout to mentally prime them to absorb the workshop content.

Workshop at People's Open

  • People's Open to order 1-2 Raspberry Pi Kits
  • < 10 people
  • 3-hour block on April 6
  • benhylau to send pre-workshop email