Re: hardware grant/loan program ideas

On Sep 3, 2007, at 11:49 PM, Russell Senior wrote:

>
> Back in March, the Personal Telco Project purchased 30 Netgear
> WGT634U's.  It also has various other gear.  Stacks of gear are great,
> but not as great as if that gear is actually being used.  However, as
> a non-profit, I feel like we need to take care about how this gear
> gets distributed and used and that the process doesn't just devolve
> into dodgy practices like handing it out to our friends.

Yes! I was just talking about this over the weekend.

> Therefore, I am suggesting that we institute a kind of gear grant
> and/or loan program.  We talked about this at the August 1st Weekly
> Meeting.  I recall (or maybe it is my imagination) that Michael
> Weinberg even sketched out what a request form would look like.  We
> should review what ideas we had then, and get something final-like
> pulled together.

I do have it pretty much mapped out (based on our August discussion.  
I'll bring those notes to the Weekly for finalizing into a document  
and (why not) a webform.

> The basic idea is to make the inventory and request public so that if
> other people think they have a better use for the gear, they can make
> their own request.  The board of directors, or perhaps some designated
> granting committee, can decide which requests are worthy and
> fulfillable.

We should probably draw up some guidelines based on type/value of  
gear, so that things like WGTs and NuCabs, which are somewhat  
abundant and fairly cheap, we can grant quickly, while things that  
are fancier can be deployed with adequate oversight that they not be  
squandered.

> This is a little more pressing than it might otherwise be, as Aaron
> Baer has expressed a desire to request about 5 of the WGTs to enhance
> the Arbor Lodge network.  If we can get our process finalized, this
> can be a test case.

Sounds like a good application, so let's get that form to Aaron  
Wednesday night!

Michael

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