From the beginning, I’ve tried to keep the application simple, not just for the end users, but also for administrators. I’ve done this by using third party API’s to offload data storage and administration to those sites. It means that if you or a customer hasn’t already added your business to Yelp or Yahoo! Local, you can add yourself and show up in Bridge into Beacon.

This approach leverages high connectivity and remote resources to ease the burden on administrators, which increases the initial viability of the application. However, it seems antithetical to the idea of resilience and sustainability. I wonder, in using third party APIs to promote resilience, is Bridge into Beacon past the threshold between local production and global services? What are the tradeoffs, and are they worth it? It seems to me these are some of the same issues facing resilient community advocates. Hope some of you will weight in.

With these points in mind, I plan to make the home screen a list and simple map with markers showing all locations, with three filter tabs: Food, Arts, and Shops. Each tab will narrow the map markers and the list to that category. If the user taps a marker or list item, they will see a details page with the location name, subcategory (i.e “cafe” or “gallery”), address and phone number, and directions from their current location in list form. Preview to come.

Fallout 3, a favorite video game of mine

My new approach is to take the principals of resilient communities, specifically the self-sustaining qualities, and augment them with the resources that global and national infrastructures offer. I’m calling this approach “Hybrid Communities”. There is a clear analogy here with hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius, which operates on battery power when it can, but fires up the engine when it needs to.

Some communities are leaning towards a hybrid model already, at least in production. In Brooklyn for example, I can get locally grown produce at my local CSA, buy a handmade knitted cap down the street. These are pretty standard features of resilient communities. It gets really interesting when I can build a kitchen lamp with a MakerBot at NYC Resistor, or sell that knitted cap on Etsy (also in Brooklyn). These latter examples facilitate local production by leveraging global goods and services.

What this means for my work is that I will assume existing infrastructure (power, transportation, education, communications) and use use that to leverage the effects of local efforts.

Some parting thoughts:

• Could I sell the kitchen lamp on Etsy?
• Is the term “Agile Communities” a better way to describe what I’m talking about?
• see Wired Magazine’s recent article for more details on desktop manufacturing.

The plug computer is a mini linux server, meaning it can host website, databases, and applications. The open-mesh routers can then extend a mesh wifi network, making the shared applications available to the community.

Perhaps most intriguing aspects of this solution are the low cost and high portability/configurability. The hardware infrastructure can accomplished at under $200, depending on the desired network range (server is $100 and the routers are $30 each), and they could come already setup with the required (open-source) software, including pre-configured applications. Because the software is not proprietary or hardware specific, it could be easily distributed and modified. The hardware itself is componentized with a small form factor, so it too would be highly portable and configurable.

Lowering the technical barrier to setup would be critical to adoption, so I’m exploring what software and applications to include in a default package, how much documentation to include, and what pre-configured options to use in order to mitigate the time and cognitive overhead required to get a community network up and running.

WordPress has the advantage of a standalone installation and very strong developer documentation. A standalone package is attractive because it does not rely on third party hosting, and could operate on a local mesh network without internet connection. Ning, on the other hand, is a hosted solution and the documentation is less comprehensive. However, setup is a cinch.

My inclination right now is to prototype a solution in Ning, then create a standalone WordPress package that can be installed on any server. I will probably end up creating custom plugins, especially for wordpress.