The Austin Chronicle has a terrific profile of Rich MacKinnon, founder of the Austin Wireless City Project and Less Networks. When I met Rich at South by Southwest in Austin last March, he was wearing an orange Keep Wi-Fi Free t-shirt and giving an energetic presentation about their activities in a small packed room at the Austin Convention Center. The Austin Chronicle has a terrific profile of Rich MacKinnon, founder of the Austin Wireless City Project and Less Networks. When I met Rich at South by Southwest in Austin last March, he was wearing an orange Keep Wi-Fi Free t-shirt and giving an energetic presentation about their activities in a small packed room at the Austin Convention Center.
Because of the Austin Wireless City Project’s efforts, there are more free than paid-for hotspots in Austin. The Project has an all-volunteer board and staff that includes Austin Electronic Frontier Foundation President and Polycot Consulting CEO Jon Lebkowsky.
This is Rich MacKinnon’s manifesto.
Many companies are sales-driven, marketing-driven, or engineering-driven. Less Networks is philosophy-driven. We believe that we are emerging from several years of excess that we like to call the Times of More. Those were fat times and it seemed like everyone was making more money and buying more stuff. Now that the dust has settled, it’s not clear we’ve ended up in a better place. Lots of companies are gone and lots of friends are unemployed. It seemed like fun at the time, but perhaps at too great an expense.
We believe the world is ready for a new way of doing business and living life. It’s not about more money and more stuff. It’s about knowing the difference between a life well-lived and a life that’s purchased. It’s about how much you can do with what you have.
I realize that several readers might scoff at Rich’s philosophy, but consider this. I know of more municipal wireless broadband deployments that use open source, off-the-shelf mesh equipment than proprietary ones. Cheap and easy wins over supposedly carrier-grade (whatever that means today) with all its bells and whistles. And we all know that practice makes perfect. The more you deploy, the more you can tweak and improve.
So why are the open-source, open standards mesh vendors winning customers? Could it be because the hardware is good enough and the software is robust enough? How is it that self-funded open standards-based hardware vendors are getting more municipal projects than vendors with millions of dollars in VC funding? Could it be that those vendors have bet on the wrong horse – the enterprise market? Remember when many people believed that Wi-Fi would first take off in the enterprise and then at home?
I will be posting a guest commentary from Rich MacKinnon next week. Stay tuned!
Hey,
I’ve been looking at Municipal Wireless stuff, trying to see if it would have a place in Rochester NY, which is already a pretty tech-friendly place. Thx for the heads up about Less Networks.
Esme, those that scoff at Rich’s philosophy might ponder on the intent and spirit of his message. The idea of getting to a better place — with more meaning, more substance, and more passion for one’s cause (the work) — which is clearly missing at most traditional telecom service providers.
Incumbent carriers often have the reputation of poor customer service, and employees who lack a sense of purpose or caring. Their leaders speak rhetorically about the notion of a compelling corporate vision, and yet their employees rank as some of the least motivated people that you will ever meet in business.
In contrast, Rich’s message is so compelling that people choose to join his cause in Austin, and offer their talent in return for no payment. Enough said.