An online questionnaire survey of 14 villages in Elassona province, in order to investigate the risk of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, was conducted from February 11 to March 2, 2015 by the Pulmonary Clinic of the University of Thessaly and the Sarantaporo.gr team.
Local residents participated in the survey through the Sarantaporo.gr NPO’s website http://surveys.sarantaporo.gr utilizing the modern telecommunications infrastructure of community networks developed in these villages and providing open internet access to all.
About 300 residents participated in the questionnaire, with 15% reporting sleepiness while 30% were aware of sleep apnea syndrome. 23 of them said they would like to be screened to see if they have the syndrome.
"Our goal is to create a shared infrastructure and build a community around it. This is not just about accessing the internet in remote areas. Locals are actively involved by providing space in their homes to host the necessary networking equipment, forming local support teams for infrastructure development and maintenance, acquiring and sharing knowledge on modern technologies, further enhancing personal interaction and collaboration between people.
Through this experience, we want to create a model not only for the development, operation and expansion of community wireless networks, but also for building communities that aim at local development and co-operation for the production of common goods.”
"Free software communities, hackerspace collectives and do-it-yourself groups, alternative communities, movements for free access to knowledge, for the free internet but for a creative recapture of public space ... What do they have in common? Are they coincidences, random, unrelated cases or are they expressions of a new culture with all its contradictions and opportunities for regeneration? Signs of an emerging and created world within on the outskirts of the old, from new subjective subjectivities and like the lava through the cracks trying to create a new land? The documentary "Knowledge as a Common" tells us that, in Greece of crisis, knowledge communities create the world they want, within the world they want to overcome."
Vassilis Kostakis, P2P Lab & Foundation
"Intellectual commons flourish precisely at the heart of the cognitive economy, where capitalist modes of production are supposed to reach the height of their competitiveness and efficiency. This new way of producing, managing, and distributing spiritual resources emerges in the gaps and contradictions of capitalist intellectual production / distribution when people take immediate action and form self-governing collaborative innovation communities, with the goal of producing and managing freely accessible resources for everyone."
“The first and second Solidarity and Co-operative Economics Festival, which were widely attended, left us with smiles, a lot of food for thought and an appetite for more action. Today, we are preparing for the continuation of this effort to network and exchange experiences and concerns between groups and to inform citizens about a different world, a world that is not only feasible and necessary but also real."
The Sarantaporo.gr team, having already met with some of the communities organizing and participating in the festival as part of the CommonsFest 2014, will participate in this festival presenting, in a related workshop, the work that it has implemented with wireless community networks in the wider area of Sarantaporo, by opening a dialogue with other collectives in order to create opportunities for improvement, cooperation and promotion of its activity.
The workshop will showcase the techniques and technologies used, the community building process around community networks and how the daily lives of residents through the use of the Sarantaporo.gr network improve, as well as some plans for future development. At the same time a short presentation of the documentary prepared by the director Elias Marmaras on the Sarantaporo.gr wireless community networks will be presented. Watch the promo video of the organizers:
The University of Thessaly and Sarantaporo.gr NPO launched a Collaboration for the extending of Sarantaporo.gr Wireless Community Network in Elassona Municipal area, in the framework of the European Research Program named CONFINE (Community Networks Testbed for the Future Internet), funded under FP7, in which Sarantaporo.gr NPO participates as a partner. The project is about leveraging existing wireless community networks in Europe (Greece - AWMN and Sarantaporo.gr, Spain - Guifi.net, Austria - Funkfeuer, Italy - Ninux) to conduct experiments related to developing applications for the service of citizens and by improving the software that supports the operation of these networks.
The wireless community networks involved in the project are interconnected, forming an experimental devices, the so-called testbed, used by researchers to conduct experiments. At the same time, the entire infrastructure provides its services to citizens within an open wireless Community network, providing free access to residents from 14 villages in the area.
