This afternoon I had a meeting with a community wireless advocate. We had a good discussion and developed a number of ideas for how we might convince some of the gate-keepers in moving the project forward. I also exchanged email with one of the smaller ISPs in the area. He is enthusiastic about wireless, but his idea about "community" is that the wireless will work great with the "community of subscribers" and if you're not a subscriber, you can become one for a low monthly fee. He thought it might be possible to provide free local transport, within the Five Colleges, say, but that providing a gateway to the internet would require cash.
This evening I presented the 
Community Wireless ideas to WeMaLU. I made about 11 slides, transferred them onto my Tungsten, and used my Margi Presenter-to-Go to project them at the talk. It worked perfectly. The talk was brief and mostly went over the questions I identified in my journal yesterday. There were a number of good suggestions. The best suggestion was to contact some of the business advocacy groups: they could be a powerful ally and would almost certainly favor something like this that would make the community more attractive to a technical population. The two biggest stumbling blocks are paying for connectivity and dealing with the ultimate lack of accountability. The best way to win people over would be to get a big grant. I guess I need to go back and look at potential grant opportunities again.