What if you could build a Wi-Fi Hot Spot that could support 100+ people at the same time doing bandwidth-intensive, multimedia things?   What if your connection back to the internet for these users was not a DSL, or even a T1 at 1.5 Mbps, but a ADSL2+ running at 10 Mbps or a fixed wireless link running at 10 Mbps full duplex?  

Let's say that Wi-Fi Hot Spot was covering a public square, or a music stage, or a theatre such as Union Square, Summerstage or The Delacorte Theatre.   How could a highly localized wireless multimedia experience be developed in such spaces?    What amenities in terms of localized content about the performance, artist, venue could be delivered locally?  How can Wi-Fi enhance public art?  How can it become a platform for media driven promotions?  How can Wi-Fi, especially when combined with a local portal or event portal, become the medium through which to drive multimedia content locally for whatever arts, cultural, marketing, or commercial purpose?

 

Wi-Fi can be more than the means to the internet.  It can help us experience anew social spaces and bring us closer to them.  When it comes to Wi-Fi for performance venues, with all the new antennas and with higher speeds, with the iPhone and with Web 2.0 functionality at hand, there is a lot now that can be done.

When people think about Wi-Fi, they think of it in terms of connectivity:  I am able to surf the web.   I can get my e-mail.   I can access my corporate network.  

Wi-Fi though can be more than just wireless internet connectivity.   It can be the place where you go for mobile multimedia, whether you want to watch streamed video, video conference, or game.   For all the promise of 3G to provide a means of delivering multimedia content to a handset -- or to be more accurate, to hundreds of types of handsets (with all sorts of formats, browsers, renderings) offered by a handful of carriers (who control the phone interface or 'deck') for a fee, or series of fees - a well designed Wi-Fi Hot Spot is just the better short range option for delivering multimedia content at high speed. 

With the world going broadband and wireless, and with the web becoming pervasive and social, with hyperlocal content and advertising and location-based services now being enabled through the geocoding of information, or through GPS, business improvement districts (BIDs) in towns and cities everywhere have in potential a rich new marketing and communications platform for local businesses.

What BIDs generally need to do though, to meet this opportunity, is to develop a set of best practices in  web site design, digital marketing, telecom, and so forth.  Today I will just discuss what could be done with BID web sites in this new environment.

The Local BID Portal

Typically, when you look at a BID web site, you will a membership directory, usually searchable by business type.    You will often see a BID map as well.   You will sometimes see a map with the BID members located on it.   You rarely see the BID map with the members located on a map dynamically -- that is, as something you can click on to get a menu, hours, phone number, web site, etc.

This kind of functionality is of course available on Google, Yahoo, or Citysearch.   Given the direction coding for the web is going, every BID could have such functionality on their sites.

Since most BID sites were built say more than a year ago, most don't have 'dynamic content' -- that is local news feeds, local event feeds, content aggregation tools.    Instead, content must be 'posted' by their marketing person or webmaster or by the company that designed the site.   

With the web now feed driven and modular, local BIDs can now have portals designed to capture all relevant information about the neighborhood and its local businesses.  With the content auto-refreshing, the site becomes more 'visible' more interesting to visit and much easier to manage.

The next step after creating a feed driven local portal is to give locals the ability to post their own blogs, photos, videos about the neighborhood and its local businesses.   

How valuable would it be to have locals aggregating local content for the BID portal?  When people come to the BID's community web portal, they will read what the locals have to say before anyone else.

As we speak with our clients, we find more often than not, they would want the comments and user submitted content to be reviewed first.   The good news is that this functionality is easy to implement.

Next:    The Local BID Portal in a Wi-Fi Hot Zone





 

 

 

Wi-Fi Salon has for the past several years been offering free public internet via the parkwifi network in 17 locations in 10 flagship NYC parks in 4 boroughs (Central Park, Battery Park, Washington Square Park, Union Square Park, Riverside Park, Prospect Park, Corona-Flushing Meadows, Van Cortlandt, Orchard Beach, and Pelham Bay Park.

Here is a screen shot of a typical local portal on the parkwifi network:

  

Community Wi-Fi for NYC BIDs:

 

For 2008 we are launching a new venture to service NYC's BIDs.  These new community Wi-Fi networks will help the BIDs and the communities they serve in three major ways. 

 

They will

1.     Help local businesses by increasing foot traffic, improving marketing, enabling e-commerce and VOIP, with shifting demographics come shifting shopping patterns.  Those small businesses that learn how to use technology best will best weather the transition.  The BID network and community portal will help keep the local businesses relevant and competitive in a retail world increasingly dominated by big box and online stores.

 

2.     Address the Digital Divide by offering a free bilingual local portal in a Wi-Fi Hot Zone right in the middle of the neighborhood.  

 

3.     Support the young professionals coming to the neighborhood.   With an eight block stretch of coverage, and some outdoor and café seating and indoor venues to sit in, we can make the BID more hospitable to mobile users.

 

On April 26th, The Parkinson's Unity Walk took place in Central Park.   WiFi Salon was asked by Netbriefings, a company specializing in high quality large scale webcasts, to provide an uplink to the internet so that they could conduct 'man on the street' interviews along the Mall in Central Park.

Mediabistro's MediaCircus came to town, holding a two day event May 20th-May 21st at Skylight NYC {275 Hudson St) that addressed how web journalism / publishing will continue to evolve

As web sites become modular aggregations of feeds
As the web grows pervasive through wireless technologies
As information is geotagged
As knowledge production becomes over more open source / community generated
As the social web is harnessed for promotion, production and distribution

Finding how to create value within that web economy is a challenge for old media and for anyone who ever gave a thought to becoming a blogger/web journalist.

The speakers at the event demonstrated that where ever this is going, there is still room for talent, especially if that talent happens to be the ability to explain where we are now and extrapolate a bit ahead to where we are going both eloquently and succinctly.

We were providing the Wi-Fi for the event, but it became much more than that.   I spent the last part of Day One and all of Day Two.

I particularly liked what Steven Johnson of Outside.in had to say about community generation of hyperlocal content.

I met Laura Trouby their founder after about seven years of e-mails -- I 've been subscribing.  It's a great organization she's built.  As well organized and presented conference as I have attended.

Convergence at last!    Wi-Fi Salon's long time goal has been to put a Web 2.0 interface on public Wi-Fi and create  Wi-Fi 2.0.   This Wi-Fi is not about access, but aggregated and community generated local content available on any device within a neighborhood or business district Hot Zone or over the web on a local community portal.   That all had to wait though until the devices came, and led by the iPhone, here they come!  It also had to await the arrival of 'good enough' networks.   3G anyone?  Or public Wi-Fi that works.

Wi-Fi is the internet localized, and so a perfect platform for community publishing, for highly local multimedia services and experiences.    We very much look forward to our next event with Mediabistro.