Municipal Wireless and Nonprofit Service Delivery
T.J. Rogers, NO/AIDS Task Force
I live and work in New Orleans and therefore my experience with municipal wireless has been rather unique. When I returned home after Hurricane Katrina, anywhere with wireless access became my office. I spent many days at a table littered with coffee cups, trying to get work done. I was hardly alone. Every patron in that coffee shop had turned it into a temporary office. Wireless access was everyone's lifeline to keep their business or organization going.
In the months following Katrina, New Orleans implemented a free high-speed wireless network in the downtown area, and last month made the service available citywide. Now that we are no longer operating in survival mode, we have a chance to evaluate how municipal wireless benefits organizations in the city.
The most obvious lesson is that nonprofits can now be more mobile. We can take our programs to streets, venues, and on the road, and still have access to information and online databases without much extra cost to the organization. I work for an AIDS service organization in New Orleans and one of the things municipal wireless allows us to do is streamline our venue-based HIV testing and counseling. We are able to put information from testing sessions directly into the city-wide database, check to see when follow-up appointments are available for those who need them, and overall have more information at our fingertips. All of that essentially boils down to making the process of getting someone into service quicker and more efficient. This same scenario could also be true of voter registration drives, meal delivery programs, and many other services.
Whether your organization is focused on education or the environment or social services, municipal wireless can benefit it. Communicating with its constituents is necessary for every organization, and with municipal wireless your message has the potential to reach more people as more people will have access to the Internet and email. It is also inevitable that Internet hotspots that provide computers will become more prevalent around towns with citywide wireless. Web 2.0 concepts and tools will be more useful and more popular. If anyone can access the Internet, the use of things like MySpace, Flickr, Technorati, Bloglines, and other web based tools will increase. Bookmarks, data, pictures, and more will be online not as a means of convenience and fun but of necessity and everyday work. Nonprofits can harness the power of these free networking tools to promote themselves as well as keep their clients informed.
Municipal wireless has any number of other potential uses for nonprofits, and that potential is increasing exponentially. Google has launched free wireless internet access in Mountain View, CA, and is teaming up with Earthlink to do the same in San Francisco. Google is also working with Alpha Networks to create a Google Talk Wi-Fi phone with access to Gmail. Skype has announced that four phone manufacturers are working to release cell phones that will be pre-loaded with Skype software and able to be used anywhere there is wireless access. I'm sure there are a host of other things I could discover if I just typed "wireless technology" into any search engine. All of this promises the potential for more people to be more connected more of the time. In New Orleans where regular trash pick-up excites us, this seems far away some days. The future is coming, however, and nonprofits would be wise to be ready for it.
We're all very confident in Earthlink, and hope that they manage to
provide the service. We've asked that it reach into some of the flooded
and recovering neighborhoods as well. Dave Coustan sat with Mid-City
residents Bart Everson and Michael Homan to hear the case for Wifi in
recovering Mid-City.
http://b.rox.com/archives/2006/09/14/beer-with-the-earthling/Verizon
cards have been successful. They are used at the new community center
set up by the Lower 9th Ward's neighborhood organization, NENA. A
single Verizon card serves as the Internet connection for six computers
on a LAN.
http://lower9thwardnena.com/It
does help.
Also, there is long way to go before scripted browser applications are
ruling the recovery. People still swear by email in New Orleans.
Alan, This article was actually written a number of months back. My
organization was able to use the original wireless network after the
storm, which was considerably stronger than the one we have now.
(Technically that network was illegal because of how strong it was, I
think that's mentioned in the Times Pic article.) The switch to the
earthlink network was scheduled to happen about 6 days after I
submitted this article. And of course, as with everything in this town
right now, the idea of "citywide" seems to have turned out to be an
empty promise. We are now using Verizon Broadband when we need to
access the web when we are mobile. So, for a brief while we enjoyed the
wireless utopia I speak of here, only to have the rug pulled out from
under us after. -----
It doesn't. There is no such network outside of the CBD and French
Quarter. There, it works intermitantly, and people tend to use the Wifi
of the hotel or cafe where they've opened their laptop.
I don't know how this could assist nonprofit, since most of them are
operating in flooded neighborhoods. How as the City of New Orleans wifi
network employed by teh author?
Hi Alan,
I'm not in New Orleans, but I did a quick Google search and it looks
like the SSID for the city-wide network is "CityofNewOrleans." I found
this at http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=1&tabid=60.
Let us know how it works!
I'm here near the corner of Magazine and Napoleon. What's the SSID of
the city-wide Wifi network?