University of Georgia: Wireless Cloud Permeates Athens
A unique technological town-grown collaboration has begun in Athens,
Ga., famous as the home of the University of Georgia Bulldogs and birthplace
of legendary bands such as REM and the B-52s. Surprisingly innovative
and prolific even for a college town, Athens' latest venture combines
experimentation with entrepreneurism. The project, dubbed the WAGZone,
creates a "cloud" of wireless access over downtown Athens, a 24-square-block
area. Under this cloud, anyone with WiFi equipment can access the Internet
and more.
The WAGZone project (so called because it is the domain of the university's
Wireless Athens Group) breaks the mold in many ways. Typically, universities
fund the installation of wireless access points and other essential hardware
to facilitate the use of wireless on campus. This may be an all-campus
initiative or a series of individual access points installed by various
users and departments. Until now, there hasn't been a lot of enthusiasm
from universities to fund and manage wireless access for those beyond
campus walls. What's more, universities that have installed wireless access
have done so to enable constituents to access the Internet, campus portals,
and specific projects. But the goals of the WAGZone are broader than Internet
access.
Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute (NMI) at the University
of Georgia, says the primary goals are research, development, and access.
First, according to Shamp, WAG and NMI want to learn more about how people
use and live with high-tech tools. "We want to explore the relationship
that people might have with wireless technology," he says. "Information
has always been a destination—people go to it when they want to learn
something. Wireless technology offers the possibility that information
can be a companion, something you take along with you."
To that end, every course offered with the New Media Institute this fall
will ask students to interact with the WAGZone. A usability course will
focus on designing interfaces for PDAs that will allow handheld users
to make use of the WAGZone. Shamp's lecture course will break into 11
teams that will explore what types of services people would like available
in a wireless environment. A rich media production course, to focus on
Web casting and streaming, will examine how Athens businesses such as
nightclubs might interact with the WAGZone. Students will interact extensively
with the greater Athens community to find exciting new applications for
wireless.
One outcome of the project could be an influx of innovative, wireless-content
development companies to Athens, spurring economic growth. Says Shamp,
"here in Athens we have talent and a reasonable cost of living. The WAGZone
is an opportunity to showcase what someone might do here." Sharing that
goal is the Georgia Research Alliance, a public/private partnership dedicated
to improving Georgia's economy. The GRA contributed $75,000 to fund the
WAGZone.
But economic development d'esn't have to come from the outside. WAG wants
the Zone to be a "sandbox" for ideas, a place where students and researchers
can "build prototypes, experiment, and explore." There is an open-ended
approach to the Zone that encourages innovation and an entrepreneurial
spirit, which Shamp hopes will lead to student-built companies. As he
puts it, "It's these 21- and 22-year-olds who are going to come up with
the exciting new ideas."
Finally, the WAGZone is about access. Shamp and his colleagues hope that
the development of the cloud will prompt other wireless constituents to
adopt compatible standards, establishing interoperability between systems
that will lead to near-seamless access as wireless use increases. At the
moment, UGA d'esn't have a consistent wireless program in place, and wireless
access on campus consists of a series of "scattered clouds." One potential
benefit of the WAGZone would be the eventual closing of all those gaps.
For more information on the Wireless Athens Group, visit www.nmi.uga.edu/research/wag
or contact Dr. Scott Shamp at [email protected].