CUWIN, first panel

We arrived late on Friday at CUWIN with an Alacloud router in tow and after a good night sleep and a nice breakfast, the first panel of the Community Wireless Summit on current & future developments in Europe was underway.
The first panelist presented Funkfeuer and it was interesting to see their more centralised approach based on one uplink and that they are not relying on grants but have their own colocation facility. Should I ever move to Vienna, there is where I'd place my box. While they stressed the involvement of universities this might not be a primary approach for Alacloud.net since they are already operating a closed network and might be reluctant to fund or even interface with something so open.
This was followed by Guifi and their management interface was especially impressive and reminds me how much that is still missing for our project, since our IPs are still managed in a spreadsheet...
I really liked a shop they showcased called Setup Informàtica. They provide several different bundled packages of routers, antennas and t-shirts. It's all you'd need to get started and wouldn't this be a nice thing an entrepreneur in Gainesville might take advantage of and provide as an independent business locally?
I was very happy to hear that many nodes in the Freifunk Leipzig network are simply situated close to a window and aren't located on the roof, which makes me hopeful that we don't have to break through too many walls in the beginning.
Lastly, BG Wireless made the important point how important it is to emphasize the team spirit within the community, and while we probably wont't hold a snowball competition in Florida, we can probably find something that serves the same purpose.