I'm home from the meeting and can write a bit more.

The gathering was interesting and I'll probably go again. I had brought my cantenna along. I wasn't sure exactly what the meeitng woudl be like and thought it might be useful. As it turned out, the reception in the IHOP was good and I didn't need it.

Many people wanted to look at the cantenna and ask me questions about it. I tried to explain what I could, but I'm not sure how clear my explanations were. A reporter from the LA Times asked me a few questions as well. Who knows, I may end up in the paper.

I mentioned that the cafe.com people spoke about their business. It was interesting, but hard to follow since I was on the side of the room and couldn't follow along with the powerpoint slides he was talking from. There aren't any cafe.com sites near Pasadena right now, so I doubt I'll be using it anytime soon.

The next presenter was Cliff Skolnick of the Bay Area Wireless User Group (BAWUG). He had driven down to Los Angeles to discuss what the Bay Area folks were working on. He discussed there work on developing a free network of 802.11 access points for use by the general public. He mentioned several sites that I need to look into a little more including freenetworks.org, nocat.net, nodedb.com.

After I do some reading I'll have a better opinion of what these guys are up to in San Fran.