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Internet and Evolution in Manchester Communities

Wed, 03/08/2011 - 09:34 — Rob
Nigel Stewart with Radio LAN transmitter (photo scanned from early addition of .Net magazine)

I was encouraged to move onto the Bentley House estate, more commonly known as the ‘Redbricks’, back in 1999, in order to help with the Redbricks Online community internet project that was then being rolled out. Back in the day, a visionary called Nigel Stewart had a plan to provide Manchester with high broad band internet, using short wave radio. Although he was unable to make it happen back then, MDDA, with a little help from the EU, have plans to do something very similar now, a decade later. Here is the story ..

In ‘99 some friends of mine purchased a ‘leased line’ from BT, and installed a server in a flat on the Redbricks estate. Leased lines were a pre-runner to broadband, providing a 24/7 connection, but costing a small fortune, for a comparatively small bandwidth, relative to a modern home broadband connection. Still, the plan was that by squeezing 30+ flats through a single line, it could be made cost effective. So recycled PCs were bodged together, and flats across the estate were networked with 100s of meters of blagged ethernet cable, and servers hacked up with Linux free software ...

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Envirolution Festival blog

Wed, 22/06/2011 - 19:24 — Rob

I didn't get to see much of the entertainment myself however, as I was involved in a couple of workshops. The first one was called the 'Green Economy', and included talkers on LETS (including myself), social enterpise, and a district wide loyalty card which is being set up in Manchester.

The second workshop, which I facilitated, was about local food, and enjoyed speakers from Kindling Trust, Leyland's City Farm, Slow Food Manchester, and an nutritional scientist from the MMU. Both workshops provided good discussion and an opportunity to network and meet interesting people.

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Community Growing Network in Salford

Thu, 01/10/2009 - 18:40 — Rob

Kevin Coakley local community activist from St Sebastian's community centre tells us about recent plans to create a Growing Network of people in Salford, to share resources for allotments and get people active. Watch this space as this is the first of many films about the growing network. East Salford Direct TV is Internet TV by and for the people of East Salford. Check us out on http://eastsalforddirect.co.uk

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