Internet Resiliency Club update#

Valerie Aurora, Bow Shock Systems Consulting

• Why: Not a fit for any of the core areas — and exactly why it's a wildcard: a grassroots operator collective building a LoRa/Meshtastic mesh for text communication during power and Internet outages. It's a failure-mode frame (total infrastructure loss) that DC/WAN people rarely practice, assembled by exactly the kind of people who could pull it off.
• What: The Amsterdam Internet Resiliency Club (started January 2025) now has ~20 members, monthly in-person meetups, a working private Meshtastic channel, a partnership with Waag Futurelab, €10K received in grants (of €50K applied for), and contact with the city of Amsterdam and the Dutch defense ministry. Key operational lesson: Meshtastic worked great at the WHY hacker camp (high node density) but is unreliable across Amsterdam — the constraint is node density, and the fix is more nodes, i.e., money for hardware.
• How: Low-power LoRa radios running Meshtastic in a decentralized mesh; the human layer is Doodle-scheduled meetups, a mailing list, and personal invitations. Hardware recommendations given (solar-powered WisMesh Repeater Mini enclosures, card-shaped trackers, T-Beam home stations; avoid the T-Deck keyboard).
• Where applicable: Explicitly replicable — the recipe quoted is 1–2 hours/week, ~€200 of floatable cash, and a large personal network. Amsterdam-density findings will differ by city; the model is aimed at the gap before government disaster-recovery programs arrive (~2028 by their estimate).