Richmond Free WiFi Blog

Every so often we like to surf around and see what other freenet initiatives/projects are up to. We came across an interesting marketing plan for U-Link, an initiative based in Missouri, that highlights marketing free wireless to apartment tenants/residents.

This could be a good way to market the RFW initiative to area developers, property owners/managers and residents and tenants. We also highlighted this on a post recently made at our discussion forum where a local property manager expressed a valid concern about file sharing, etc.

For more info, feel free to contact us if you’re interested in helping out! If you’re ready to participate, check out our “host a node” page. In addition, feel free to visit our discussion forum to converse with our current volunteers.

Greg Hershey, of Brick Weekly, wrote an awesome article about our project, along with an effective picture of the project’s founder (left) by Jay Paul. We not only had the pleasure of being written about but Greg was kind enough to join us for a tour of one of our gateways to get a true sense of our vision as well as seeing, in person, how effective our project and overall efforts really are.

I met Mohr and his son Matt on Saturday morning at the Science Museum. He wanted to show me the first step on the yellow brick road of his dream—city wide, free wireless internet. We walked a few short blocks and knocked on the door of a typical Fan apartment. We were greeted by Justin, a pioneer, the first link of what Mohr hopes will be a Richmond-wide net of volunteers. On Justin’s second-story porch, we gathered around a small box with an antenna on top. Not much bigger than a cigarette pack, this box is what makes Mohr’s dream technologically feasible, a Meraki radio unit.

Thanks for the plug, Greg. We greatly appreciate it!

Special thanks, as well, to John Sarvay of Buttermilk and Molasses fame, for plugging Greg’s story to the RVA blog masses!

Brenda P over at the Petersburg People’s News has generously donated one of her banner ad slots to further support our project. PBURGPN.net is the place to visit for the latest news and information related to Petersburg.

Thanks for helping out, Brenda!

If anyone is interested in seeing how the RFW network works, this is an open invitation. An informal Q&A session will also be offered, i.e. a “meet and greet” or whatever.

Date: Tomorrow, Saturday the 18th
Time: 10am
Where: We’ll meet up in front of the Science Museum off of Broad St. and walk over to the gateway location around the area of 2600 W. Grace St. Just look for the geek with the black Macbook bag near the front of Science Museum. I’ll be wearing a blue Cabela’s Goretex hat, possibly my RFW t-shirt, cargo shorts and hiking boots.

Bring your laptop!

If you have any questions, feel free to drop us an email at info@richmondfreewifi.org or via a comment below.

Hope you’ll join us!

We’re please to announce the launch of our new discussion forum, in categorized format, at our parent company, The Virginia WiFi Company’s forum. We receive many excellent questions and feel this medium will best serve interested parties, our volunteers and anyone interested in our initiative.

Feel free to visit our discussion forum at http://forums.vawifico.org/ to join in on the conversations today!