Comments on: #media140 – the wifi thing http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/10/27/media140-the-wifi-thing/ I'm the founder of the Tuttle Club and fascinated by organisation. I enjoy making social art and building communities, if you'd like some help from me feel free to e-mail me: Lloyd dot Davis at Gmail dot Com or call +44 (0)79191 82825 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:42:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Juan Lopez-Valcarcel http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/10/27/media140-the-wifi-thing/#comment-23516 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:32:02 +0000 http://perfectpath.co.uk/?p=1144#comment-23516 Good post Lloyd.

You will probably find this reporting previous instance of no wi-fi at 140conf hilarious: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/17/paul-carr-twitter-conference

Pretty much happens at any digital conference lately though.
Only 90% safe solution seems to be an full ethernet network installation like they did at TechCrunch 50 in SF, that connectivity was fantastic… but expensive for organizers.

Cheers,
Juan

]]> By: Media140 | Media Aces - UK http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/10/27/media140-the-wifi-thing/#comment-23508 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:56:34 +0000 http://perfectpath.co.uk/?p=1144#comment-23508 [...] Lloyd Davis talks about the lack of wifi provision, which was promised, but never fully delivered. It can’t be that difficult to provide (a) sufficient power sockets for a laptop-powered audience and (b) destruction-tested wifi, in (c) central London… can it? [...]

]]> By: whatleydude http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/10/27/media140-the-wifi-thing/#comment-23507 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:47:08 +0000 http://perfectpath.co.uk/?p=1144#comment-23507 I never made it to Media140 in the end (too much actual work to do), but watching the streams flow through the deck of tweets, I remarked at the time:

“Gee, you’d think they’d be more prepared by now.”

A statement that not only reflects your comments above about RIBA/Media140′s wifi capabilities etc… but also, to that of the delegates.

You’d think, after who knows how many months upon months of these kind of events where the wifi *never* works, there would be those who’d got smart and gone down the dongle route.

I like the ‘switch your wifi to 3G’ comment, that might work – but overall, you’ve got to wonder how the so-called connected-generation get by outside of event-based free wifi.

]]> By: mike bradshaw http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/10/27/media140-the-wifi-thing/#comment-23506 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:24:52 +0000 http://perfectpath.co.uk/?p=1144#comment-23506 Actually networking is potentially still hard, as there are not enough people who understand all of the subtleties of how to configure good WiFi for conferences.
Many conferences seem to rely on the venues WiFi network, which is *never* of a sufficient standard to support many active users.

Here is a post were it is explained how to configure networking for an event so that it does not suck.
I have also spoken with one of the network team of Assembly.org (a gamer conference here in Finland), and he pointed out that they use an expensive Cisco system to ensure that there is a working network.

So, for a conference organiser, they need to do the equivalent of the 1930′s Hair-Dryer conference and ensure they is sufficient power (which means ignoring the Venues normal power system and laying a (temporary) more capable one in it’s place). By the way, the expertise to do this correctly is not free ;)

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