A Summer of Building Community Infrastructure
This summer is shaping up to be a big one for Queen City Resiliency Salon here in Staunton!
Over the past few months, we’ve watched a small experimental project grow into something much larger: neighbors helping neighbors learn communications technology, repair household items, coordinate mutual aid, and imagine what resilient local infrastructure could actually look like when built from the ground up by ordinary people.
We’ve now posted our full summer schedule on our website, Eventbrite page, and Meetup group; and there’s a lot happening.
Repair Café Round Two
Our second Repair Café is also officially scheduled for August 1st.
Repair Cafés are one of the simplest and most powerful forms of community resilience:
instead of throwing things away, people come together to repair them, share skills, and help each other learn.
Every repaired toaster, lamp, bicycle, or jacket is one less item in a landfill and one more excuse for neighbors to connect.
We'll have a computer corner for those who want to experiment with Linux in advance of Windows 10 discontinuing in October. Those computers still have years of life in them! Changing your operating system allows you to avoid being nickle and dimed by subscription software models.
Find Us at the Farmers Market
Throughout the summer, we’ll also be hosting several community outreach tables at the Staunton Farmers Market.
These market days are a chance for people to stop by, ask questions, see mesh devices in person, learn about local resilience projects, and connect with others who are interested in building stronger community infrastructure here in the Shenandoah Valley.
We see the market as more than just a place to share information; it’s a gathering place and community hub. A place where conversations happen naturally, ideas cross-pollinate, and people discover ways to participate at whatever level makes sense for them.
Our hope is that these regular public meetups help weave together the many different resiliency efforts already emerging throughout the community and make them more visible, accessible, and connected to one another.
If you plan on staying and chatting for a while, feel free to bring a chair!
Mesh Networking Workshop: Beyond the Basics
We’re also thrilled to host a second major mesh networking workshop this summer:
Mesh Networking Workshop: Beyond the Basics
This session will be led by Andy (K1RA) from NoVa-Mesh and will dive deeper into practical mesh networking applications, off-grid communications, and community infrastructure building.
The first workshop introduced people to the fundamentals. This next one is about expanding the network both technically and socially.
Queen City Resiliency Salon Monthly Meetings
We’re also continuing our monthly Queen City Resiliency Salon meetings focused on strengthening the hOUR Economy time banking program and other local resilience projects.
The broader goal behind all of this work is simple:
How do we create stronger local systems that help neighbors support one another directly?
That includes communication systems, repair skills, local exchange networks, mutual aid coordination, and spaces where people can actually meet and collaborate in person.
What-the-Node Wednesdays: Let’s Mesh Around!
One of the things we’re most excited about is our semi-weekly “What-the-Node Wednesdays: Let’s Mesh Around!” meetups.
These are casual, hands-on work sessions where people can:
- troubleshoot mesh devices
- learn about LoRa and BLE mesh networking
- help install rooftop nodes
- collaborate on community technology projects
- and experiment with resilient local communications systems
Some of the projects currently in development include:
- planning infrastructure nodes on major hills around town in coordination with city officials
- building a demo mesh-radio-controlled irrigation switch using soil moisture sensors
- testing local communications systems that can continue functioning independently of major telecom infrastructure
These gatherings are part workshop, part community lab, and part neighborhood infrastructure experiment.
A New Experiment: Local Social Media Infrastructure
We also want to announce the very early beginnings of a new project we’ve been quietly discussing for a while:
a locally-oriented communications and coordination platform built using the protocol:
Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay (NOSTR).
This project is still in the extremely early stages, realistically many months to a year away from being fully operational, but we’re excited enough about the possibilities that we wanted to begin talking publicly about it.
Why NOSTR?
Because it allows communities to own and operate their own communications infrastructure from the ground up.
Potential future features could include:
- locally-owned servers running docker containers to host our own data
- local directories for coordinating our time bank without publicly exposing phone numbers
- swap meet coordination and local exchange tools
- resilient communications systems capable of interfacing with mesh radio
- bridges into the broader Fediverse (including potentially the Charlottesville Mastodon instance)
- event coordination and community bulletin systems
And yes:
if the world-wide internet goes down, we could theoretically continue shit-posting to each other.
That’s important.
What excites us most about this project is that it represents a different model of technology:
small-scale, locally controlled, community-operated, and resilient by design.
Not infrastructure owned for communities.
Infrastructure owned by communities.
Help Us Choose a Name
The very first step in this project is deciding on a name. Click here to vote in our poll!
We’ve narrowed it down to four possibilities:
- Opossum Wire
- Free Tree People Network
- Static Fox
- Thunder Holler
Personally, we’re pretty convinced every resilient network should sound at least slightly like:
- a pirate radio station,
- a folk band,
- or a cryptid sighting.
Thanks to everyone who’s helped make these projects possible so far. We’re excited to keep building with all of you this summer.
Stay tuned. Stay connected. Stay weird.