“When Kim Hawtin, like many other young Australians, went to
London in 2000 to work. he never knew that he would be introduced
to one of the abiding interests of his life while there. Then in
his late 20s, he had gone over to the mother country after
graduation. While there he got involved with Consume.net, a group
aiming to build up community wireless networks.“Hawtin, who now works with the University of Adelaide as a
systems administrator, says: ‘I spent a lot of time at dek.spc, a
workshop/lab hosted by James Stevens, one of the founders of
Consume.net. There I met a great many folks into community
wireless, radio, networking and FLOSS. James really planted the
seed of community wireless for me. Julien Preist, co-founder of
Consume.net was a technical guy and pointed me in the right
directions early on, on the hardware front…'”