Drawing on geek power to transform the Ocean State

BRIAN JEPSON
POSITION: Editor and programmer at "Make," a magazine and line of books on hacking and do-it-yourself technology projects published by California-based O'Reilly Media
BACKGROUND: Jepson graduated from South Kingstown High School and attended the University of Rhode Island before quitting school in 1992 to work as a computer programmer on Wall Street. He later worked as a technology consultant in New York City and northern Virginia before returning to Rhode Island in 2001 to work as a writer and editor for O'Reilly. Last year Jepson co-founded the Providence Geeks, a growing group of technology professionals who meet monthly at AS220, where Jepson is also a board member.
EDUCATION: B.A. in linguistics, 2005, University of Rhode Island
RESIDENCE: Kingston
AGE: 39

Brian Jepson has gained a reputation as an expert on and a catalyst for digital innovation in Rhode Island. At O'Reilly Media, he has authored and edited definitive technology books on such topics as software engineering and repairing and upgrading personal computers.

Jepson is also applying his expertise to projects in Rhode Island. He is developing an embedded system that will run on the Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs), an effort to make Rhode Island the first state with border-to-border wireless broadband access. He is also spearheading a joint technology project between Providence Geeks, AS220 and The Steel Yard.


PBN: How did you come to develop an embedded system for RI-WINs?
JEPSON: They ran a contest of while ago for members of N-GEN, which is part of [the Business Innovation Factory], and the idea was to submit a proposal … and you'll win access to the network and $1,000 to implement it. So I proposed "RI-WINs in a box" – a solar-powered, self-contained node that will consist of a modem, a small computer and solar power. And the idea is you would be able to deposit this kit on the roof of a building, if you needed to do some monitoring and you didn't want to go through all the hassle of running wire, because RI-WINs obviously eliminates one type of cable, and solar power eliminates another.

PBN: RI-WINs has yet to be financed and is at least a year and a half from completion. Meanwhile, Cingular is launching its 3G wireless network here. Has the moment passed for RI-WINs?
JEPSON: The niche for Cingular … is business users who want to pop open their laptops, put the card in, get their e-mails, surf the Web and download important information. But it's not going to replace cable modems, and it's not going to replace DSL. And RI-WINs has announced they're going to be working with the Town of Foster to bring broadband to the residents there. … So I'm careful not to imply that this is going to be a statewide thing, because I don't know, but I do know that in at least one town in Rhode Island they will be using this technology for a broadband replacement. And I can tell you that it's probably going to be a long time before Cingular or Verizon or any of those guys are going to be looking to replace your cable modem or DSL, because they want one user, one account. They want you to spend $59 a month or $79 a month, and they want that card to be used in your laptop – they don't want you to be sharing it in your whole household.
… What I'm getting from RI-WINs is, they've got bandwidth and they're going to work with towns, with universities and with private industry to define what's done with it. And that's not what Cingular is all about.

PBN: Can you talk about your work on the board of AS220?
JEPSON: AS220 is working to open a new space in the Dreyfus Hotel building at Mathewson and Washington streets. … There will be space for programming, a ground-floor restaurant tenant, and there'll be efficiency-style apartments for artists. So a lot of AS220's focus right now is on the capital campaign. We're in a period right now where a lot of our energy is raising money for that and planning how it's going to be done.
My primary role at AS220 is really as one of the resident geeks – and when I say resident geek, I'm not actually physically there; I'm often remote. Generally it means keeping the Web servers running. We have one Web server running – AS220.org – but we also host artists for their own Web sites – Erin McKeown is a really big one, she's a local musician who is huge.

PBN: How and why did you and Jack Templin come to found the Providence Geeks?
JEPSON: Jack was introduced to me by a mutual friend when he came to Providence. Jack saw what was going on here, and he opened my eyes to the amount of innovation in Rhode Island. … We talked about what we could do to energize the geek community, the digital innovators who are working in computer programming, design technology, design engineering. How do we get them together to share information? And the obvious thing was right in front of my face the whole time – AS220, which ended up being a welcoming and great environment for us. … And it just kept growing.

PBN: Tell us about the partnership between the Providence Geeks, AS220 and The Steel Yard.
JEPSON: There are a lot of people out there who want to build the sort of things that have traditionally belonged to factories and industry. Personal fabrication is becoming a very important phrase. We've been printing with ink-jet and laser printers for years in 2-D, so now people are saying, why can't we have 3-D printers? 3-D printers are also called Santa Claus machines, because you draw what you want to make, you press a button and that object comes out. They're often used for rapid prototyping – you come up with an idea and you want to crank it out and test it. Well, an artist or a sculptor could do a lot with it.
So there is a group, Fab@Home, that has come up with a design for a 3-D printer that you can make for $2,000. Right now most of them go for $20,000, so that's suddenly within reach of three organizations with a lot of energy and interest. The idea is we could take milling machines at The Steel Yard … and hook them up to a computer, so you do a 2-D design on your computer, you press a button and you have a piece of wood in the router and it carves it up for you. …
So what Providence Geeks, AS220 and The Steel Yard are going to start exploring is, how do we incorporate this sort of technology into our offerings to our community? It's really exciting. It could change the world!