Meeting with David Mathews
Today I met with David Mathews (website, campaign blog and LinkedIn profile), ACT Labor party candidate for Molonglo, primarily to discuss Free Australia Wireless.
We covered a lot of topics during the 40 minute chat … although a) I talk fast; and b) I didn’t go into too much depth on some of the topics as they’re more the domain of people like Stephen Collins, Laurel Papworth, Justin Kerr-Stevens and others - so it was mainly an overview of several things, including:
- Free Australia Wireless: The aim of the project, progress to date, the technology, why local government should be interested in this project, why local government should not be driving this project - unless the right business model is adopted (something the NSW government has failed to realise several times now) and what the correct business model is (something I’m working on and will either blog about on Free Canberra Wireless or develop as part of the content for the new Free Australia Wireless site.
- BarCamp and BarCampGov (particularly mentioned UK and NZ, although there may been other gov BarCamps held).
- OpenAustralia and TheyWorkForYou: What those projects are and their role in general community initiative to create a feedback loop to the political process for policy development.
- Government 2.0: Government engaging with and consulting the community through the use of appropriate enabling technology to inform policy development and test policy before it’s rolled out.
- Social computing: The benefits of social networking tools as a productivity platform and how standard government IT policy of blocking access to social networking sites is inhibiting progress.
- Recruiting: Old-school recruitment and lack of understanding of Web 2.0 and the modern web worker as opposed to recruitment agencies like Happener who “get it”.
… and so on.
Really enjoyed talking to Dave - he works in the IT & technology sector (in fact he’s a director of Crystal Approach) so had a head start there; already knew about wireless networking technology, about BarCampCanberra and he supports government collaboration with the public and realises it’s the smart thing to do - instead of government doing what they thing best then trying to force policy on people who have had no buy-in to the process and no reason to want to adopt it!
So next step - well I’m writing up some of our main messages and goals with Free Australia Wireless specifically for use in a government policy context, so we can get local government talking about this project - and hopefully get the right people in government and the commercial wireless network technology space talking to each other to go about creating a city-wide wireless mesh network that’s free for public access (which is what Free Australia Wireless will focus on) but instead of being a dead investment like the NSW government’s attempt in the Sydney CBD actually provide infrastructure the government can use; for example by providing ubiquitous secure access for authorised government and infrastructure personnel and systems to the dedicated 4.9 GHz public safety or safety and security band.
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