Rebuilding tech
to build community

Our Journey Map

Creating a community network builds relationships, knowledge, and community power.

It’s hard work. It takes time, energy, and patience. But it’s worth it. Beyond creating internet access, the process builds power among local residents and communities to become their own tech visionaries and problem solvers.

Start Exploring the Journey

While each community’s journey is different, we’ve identified 8 building blocks for creating community-owned internet infrastructure. Communities move through these at their own speed and in different ways, but usually via 4 pathways, or sets of strategies, and practices. To explore the building blocks and pathways, the journey map also includes a collection of resources - from community stories to curriculum and organizing tools.

Click the blocks to expand them.
The Pathways and Building Blocks

The 4 Pathways

To move through the 8 building blocks, a community must employ multiple sets of tools, strategies, and practices.
Each of the pathways also requires different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing.

Community Organizing

How to start from what and who is already living and working in a community to build power while you build digital equity. Wherever you live, there are probably people who are already toward a shared vision of a healthy and equitable future, whether or not they are working on digital equity issues. Community organizers know how and who to engage, and how to align digital equity goals with other community needs and priorities.

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

Teaching and learning about technology is critical to closing information gaps and asymmetries to build confidence and power. CTNY and our partners apply popular education tools and strategies and the Digital Stewardship and Community Technology approach developed by the Detroit Community Technology Project and the Community Tech Collective. CTNY also uses our PNK as a platform to apply these tools and strategies via collaborative hands-on learning and building opportunities.

Community ISP Development

The key to sustainability for the long term is creating intentional business practices in line with community goals and values. Becoming an Internet Service Provider means figuring out how to do business development, data management, and customer service, as well as how to connect into the bigger commercial internet. Tools and strategies needed for this path include entrepreneurship, organizational development, and partnership development, as well as tech skills and knowledge.

Governance, Ownership & Scale

The way we govern our media and digital ecosystems should be in alignment with our values and principles as communities. Yet the internet is local, regional, and national, all at once. CTNY and our partners work to build intentional governance from the ground up, starting with small-scale decisions about passwords, data collection, and participant consent on PNKs to understand and advocate for the collective digital future we want to see. Local governance guides where and how to expand, build off of our networks with new projects and applications, and how to advocate for policies and programs that will give back to our communities over time.

The 8 Building Blocks

We have identified these building blocks based on our experience with partners moving through the complex process of developing community internet infrastructure. While not every community will use every one of these building blocks, we hope that these resources and stories will help other communities as they take on the process of building towards digital equity. These emergent steps represent what we know about what has worked. The building blocks are: 
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Organize, Demystify, Plan, Educate, Build, Maintain, Expand & Transform

Organize

Listen, Learn, Connect

Community Organizing

"We begin by listening." The first step to organizing your community towards digital equity is to create a space for listening and coming together around shared challenges and goals. Rather than starting with technology, think about what’s going on in your neighborhood or town. How does technology need to be shaped to serve your community?

Sample Survey
Sample Community Meeting Agenda
Growing Digital Equity
Building Resilience with Community Technology
Community Networks
Community Stories: How Does a Community Internet Organizer Work?

An interview with Mother Cyborg, director of the Detroit Community Technology Project 2015-2019 and lead author of the Teaching Community Tech Handbook

Create Shared Principles

Community Organizing

Shared Principles—a set of foundational values and agreements—are the scaffolding that orient community-owned infrastructure towards equity and justice. Establishing shared principles is what allows you to do the work together. Develop collaborative principles to keep your project on track as well as accountable to those it serves.

Two-Way Streets
Getting to Know the Detroit Digital Justice Principles
Develop Digital Justice Principles
Principles of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition & the Equitable Internet Initiative
Community Story: How Detroit’s organizers created shared Digital Justice Principles

"Principles give names to the ways we love each other and the work."
—Mother Cyborg

An interview with Mother Cyborg, director of the Detroit Community Technology Project 2015-2019 and lead author of the Teaching Community Tech Handbook.
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In conversation with CTNY, Mother Cyborg talks about creating strong relationships for community driven projects, principle building, letting learners lead, and avoiding burnout in organizing work and “DiscoTechs” (Discover Technology Fairs)!

Demystify

Demystify the Internet Together

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

There is a lot of jargon and mystery around the internet and tech in general—which encourages gatekeeping and an unjust distribution of power and resources. Share and build knowledge to re-center community power and build trust and confidence while creating tech together.

Activity: Every Network Tells a Story

This game allows participants to envision how their social relationships and the built environment of their neighborhood could combine to become the foundation for a community-owned wireless network, all using markers and paper.

Activity: Investigate That Tech

Instead of trying to fit our communities to existing technology, we need to reshape technology to fit our communities. This activity from the Teaching Community Tech Handbook investigates ownership and impact of everyday technologies, and then reimagines them as if they were built by and for your community. Learn more.

Build a Starter Project Together

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

Before jumping into planning a big neighborhood project, try building something small as a group. CTNY uses the Portable Network Kit (PNK) and accompanying curriculum as a way to dive in. The PNK serves as a learning platform and an opportunity to start small with a mini-network – and it can become the first node in a bigger network. Getting hands-on with technology builds power and confidence. Go ahead and break things!

PNK One-Pager
PNK Building Blocks
Community Story: Building PNK's

Whether it’s in-person or remote, PNK building workshops are a great way for learners to understand how the internet works by building their own network. In these photos, our Tennessee partners build a red PNK for teaching, while Detroit residents build a yellow PNK for deploying in their communities.

Video: "How to build a PNK" @ NYU

In December 2020 Benedetta Piantella at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering invited CTNY to present our PNK. Her class syllabus to A Practical Guide To Resilience asks: when a storm disrupts the wireless networks we rely on for communication, can we leverage other techniques, other frequencies and bandwidths to still share messages across our communities?

Plan

Designate roles and responsibilities

Community Organizing

Who's in your coalition? What different kinds of skills, knowledge, resources and backgrounds are people contributing? Who needs to be recruited, and what’s in it for them? Work together to match your goals with your resources and build relationships to help you realize your principles and create your network.

Resource: Sample FAQ: Small Business Network Participation Benefits

A document highlighting the potential benefits for small businesses when they support a community wireless network from the Resilient Networks NYC mesh networking project.
Download

Resource: Sample Project Timeline

A handy Gantt chart illustrating a timeline and milestones for a coalition and project team.
Download

Resource: NYC Resilient Mesh Networks Partnership Map

This chart illustrates all the partners who worked together on the Resilient Networks community mesh network project. CTNY team members worked on Resilient Networks from 2016-2019 via New America’s Resilient Communities Program.
Download

Research Your Internet Ecosystem

Governance, Ownership & Scale

The internet is big—and it's all around us! You’ve already demystified some of the foundations of tech, and now you need to understand how the internet works and where it comes from.

How the Internet Works (beta)

Create and Formalize Agreements

Community ISP Development

Establish and agree on clear expectations and roles for more harmonious and effective collaboration. A shared set of agreements - on paper - can help keep everyone accountable.

Resource: Sample Compliance FlowChart

This flowchart was created to help participants in the Resilient Networks NYC project—a public-private partnership—understand formal requirements. CTNY team members worked on Resilient Networks from 2016-2019 via New America’s Resilient Communities Program.
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Download

Educate

Train the Trainers

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

To steward your community's digital ecosystem, you need community leaders to share, build, and pass on collective knowledge. Support the development of facilitators and organizers who will be on the frontlines of building community internet.

Resource: The Teaching Community Technology Handbook

This handbook focuses on teaching strategies that make learning technology accessible and relevant. Those new or old to teaching will find this book useful in creating community-rooted technology programming and educational materials.
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The Handbook was created by the Detroit Community Technology Project with the collaboration of the Resilient Networks NYC team.
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Download

Resource: PNK Learning Module 1

This is a sample learning sequence from the CTNY PNK Curriculum. These modules are designed to give participants transferable skills to understand, design, and build what is needed to not only create a community wireless network but to also expand it and govern it.
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Download

Recruit Community Partners & Digital Stewards

Community Organizing

Build on your coalition's relationships with community hubs, anchors, and networks to get people on board to share their resources in the effort - from contributing rooftop space for antennas to sharing time and interest to contribute ideas. Recruit local residents to become Digital Stewards, who organize with the community and build together.

Sample Digital Stewards recruitment flyer
PNK Zine
Growing Digital Equity
Digital Equity Laboratory
DCTP
Activity: DiscoTech

How to DiscoTech Zine:
‍This Zine teaches how to organize an engaging community-connected Discover Technology or DiscoTech event.

Podcast: What Digital Stewardship means to me, by Monique Tate

Monique became one of the first Digital Stewards in 2012. She skilled up to start her own neighborhood project, then became a Network Manager for the NewCC Equitable Internet Initiative in Northwest Detroit. Among her other roles, she currently works with CTNY and DCTP to train Stewards for a growing network of partners.

Digital Stewardship Trainings

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

Once you have identified folks with interest in organizing, building, and maintaining your network, build skills and knowledge together. You have a lot to learn from each other!

Podcast: How we developed the Digital Stewardship approach, by Andy Gunn

“These are like community organizers but the idea is they keep it going for a long time, and so they steward a project from concept to execution and they help define the narrative to their neighbors”
—Andy Gunn

Build

Network Build Out: Build Distribution Network

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

Digital Stewards build a rooftop "backbone" network connecting the primary internet "hubs" in your community. Smaller area mesh networks connect and branch off from there.

Installation of distribution network - Coming Soon!
CCI Build Out
Community Story: Installation of distribution network
Digital Stewards build a rooftop "backbone" network connecting the primary internet "hubs" in your community. Smaller area mesh networks connect and branch off from there.

Network Expansion

Governance, Ownership & Scale

Digital Stewards fill in neighborhood networks by expanding out and filling in spaces with rooftop and in-building installs between and among the backbone hubs.

Community Story: LA PNK workshop, by Elmer Perez

Avalon Gardens resident and Digital Steward in-training, Elmer Perez, shares back how he configures a router in order to expand the reach of their community WiFi network. Elmer sets a static IP address on his laptop, then accesses the router’s interface to upload the latest version of the firmware.

Community Story: Rooftop Install

Digital Steward crimps an outdoor ethernet cable.

Digital Stewards attached antenna mounting hardware.

Maintain

Build A Business Plan

Community ISP Development

Create a financial plan for your network to collectively manage any costs associated with community infrastructure. Whether you're self-sustaining or applying for grants, having a transparent and organized process for managing costs is crucial for building trust and sustaining the project.

Network Sustainability Models
Participatory Budgeting
Sample Model Cost Calculator

Create a Community Advisory Board

Community Organizing

Identify and recruit local leaders to share decision-making and ensure that your network is serving shared goals and building community power.

Podcast: The Point by Danny Peralta

“As organizers, we understand that there are a lot of different ways the work can happen but at the same time we’re also really positive of the fact that if you’re at the table, especially when you have folks that generally might be opposed to each other, but do have a greater interest at hand, how do you bring them to a working capacity?”

The Point CDC Executive Director Danny Peralta describes how they used principle setting as a way to ground their advisory board.

Set up Ticketing/Maintenance/Support System

Community ISP Development

Create a system for your network's participants to let you know when there's an issue or request services.

Resource Coming Soon!
Resource Coming Soon!
Tip: Managing a Network

Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software tools to manage your network or any other open source or free platforms to connect with users

Expand

Contract with Wholesale Data Providers,
Tech Support and Vendors

Community ISP Development

Securing a contract with a wholesale bandwidth provider can expand your network and improve speed, reach, and scale.

How The Internet Works
Transform

Create Outward Facing Functions, Services, Apps

Governance, Ownership & Scale

Build customized services and tools to move networking participants from consumers to creative collaborators and producers.

Local Servers for Local Networks
Tip: Build Resilience by adding battery/solar power to your wireless community network

Rewire your power system to function off the grid in order to communicate during catastrophic events.

Practice Building Resilience and Self-reliance

Building Knowledge, Building Networks

Learn how to use your network to build self-determination, resilience, and respond to emergencies and disasters. Communications are essential in keeping everybody safe and working together!

Don't Panic, Organize!
The People's Internet
Detroit residents' own internet
Activity: Don't Panic, Organize

In this hands-on activity, participants role play a scenario to learn tools and techniques to prepare for emergencies. Participants will walk away with skills and practical approaches to make their communities more prepared and resilient.

Reach Out, Build Community of Users, Share, Celebrate

Community Organizing

Celebrate, commemorate, enjoy together! Eat and drink, sing songs, make jokes. Build infrastructure by building community.

Community Story: Avalon Gardens PNK Launch Celebration

Due to Covid, CTNY trainers decided to take Digital Stewardship training online in the spring/summer of 2020. Over Zoom, trainers demystified how the internet works with public housing residents in South Los Angeles. When we finished Phase 1 of the project, we celebrated the launch of the Avalon Gardens WiFi Network.

About the Journey

This Community Journey Map shows what CTNY & our partners have learned while building community WiFi projects in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and rural Tennessee. CTNY collaborated with the Parsons DESIS Lab and Digital Equity Lab to develop this map as an exploration of collaborative and participatory service design rooted in community needs. The map is a choose-your-own-adventure experience, which reflects the complex way a community must work with different conditions, elements, and priorities to build towards digital transformation. We hope that the stories and resources here will be useful for other communities heading into the journey.
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Support for the Community Journey Roadmap and the New School's partnership with Community Tech NY in our South Bronx, and Tennessee engagements was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

A Project by

Funded in part by

Design Team

Lead designer
Antonia Yunge Soruco
Design technologist
Mia Meusburger
Design strategists
Eduardo Staszowski
Lara Penin

Content Team

CTNY content wranglers
Raul Enriquez
Greta Byrum
Houman Saberi
Partner stories
Ever Bussey
Miliaku Nwabueze
Content editors
Ingrid Burrington
Raul Enriquez
Miliaku Nwabueze
Erica Kermani

Community Voices

Andy Gunn, April Jarocki,
Benedetta Piantella, Danny Peralta, Diana Nucera / Mother Cyborg, Elmer Perez, Greta Byrum, Monique Tate & Sara

In Partnership with

The Southern Connected Communities Project and Clearfork Community Institute (Eastern Tennessee), THE POINT CDC (South Bronx), The Kounkuey Design Initiative and Community Health Councils (South Los Angeles), The Detroit Community Tech Project and Equitable Internet Initiative partners (Detroit)
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