The Kingston Community Network is an initiative conceived by Bitswift, aiming to connect customers to businesses with the goal of stimulating the local economy. The network is composed of local businesses contributing their network resources in and effort to provide the community with Free Wi-Fi internet service while passivly offering a promotional platform for the businesses involved. KCN uses pre-existing network infrastrucure to provide a platform for local businesses to advertise their products or services directly into the hands of people nearby.
This way, KCN aims to be a catalyst for:
Bitswift Technology Solutions Inc. is a technology company based in Kingston, ON, in operation since 2017 servicing clients for their IT infrastructure and connectivity needs. Over the years it has grown into a multifaceted company spearheading the use of cutting edge technologies for Kingston businesses and homes such as mesh networks, utility for digital assets and basic IT infrastructure needs.
First and foremost, this repo is a place for people interested in this initiative to keep track of its rollout. It's more importantly a place for developers to propose changes or contribute to what's already here. This can range from modifications in the website's copy, to creating the backend for handling business onboarding. Just make a pull request. :wink:
Built using a fantastic template released under the GPL originally by Cruip, the website is a place for people to learn about the KCN initiative, sign up for updates and onboard new business owners.
This is an actively maintained todo list for new features. It will soon be ported over to Issues:
The platform being built here is completely open source (MIT License) for others to implement in their towns or city neighborhoods.
With a few local businesses on board and a splash page for users to connect with, KCN has what it needs to test its potential. These businesses are all in the service industry, either hotels, restaurants and cafes. In this phase, we'll make sure to process all the feedback we get before moving onto the next phase. :ramen:
We'll be using our website to onboard new businesses who want to participate in the network. This may require installing access points for those who don't have a mesh-friendly infrastructure already in place. But these are inexpensive. And we'll make sure all the relevant information is communicated during this phase. :telephone_receiver:
Here we plan to build out a dashboard for businesses to use KCN to customize their promotional activity. Think of it as like having coupons or writing out daily specials on a sidewalk chalkboard. With this, business owners can broadcast their promotions to a specified coverage area on KCN. :dart:
As a final feature to KCN, we envision giving businesses the option to reward their customers with either general purpose KCN tokens or business specific tokens. These would be secured as digital assets on a public blockchain. For example, a customer receives KCN tokens for referring a local business to a friend. Those tokens can be spent on whichever business connected to KCN accepts them. Tokens can be created and managed by businesses themselves. Bitswift provides good guidance for using this world. :moneybag:
The network splash page will consist of advertising options for participating businesses along with Terms and Conditions for using the network. Participating businesses includes those which are offering their bandwidth and network services to provide for the KCN. Splash page will also be used to authenticate users who are connecting the the KCN. Users connecting to the KCN SSID will be immideiately redirected to the KCN splash page and will not be able to utilizie the network otherwise.