So you want to kickstart The Things Network in your area?

Awesome!

With a small group of people it is possible to provide an entire city (or an area) with data connectivity for things to connect to the internet. In less than 6 weeks, the city-wide network in Amsterdam was crowdsourced and implemented, you can do the same in your area.

This page provides the basic information about communities and the role of an initiator. The button at the end of this page leads you to the initiator submission form.

What is a local community ?

Local communities take up the role to build the network in specific defined areas. For the realization of the network different stakeholders need to be involved to collect sufficient resources, including:

• Budget for purchasing the LoRaWAN gateways
• Technical skills for configuring the gateways and connecting devices
• Proper locations for placing the gateways
• Organizational skills for building a thriving network of people

Communities are particularly suitable for transferring (technical) knowledge, enhancing creativity and discovering business opportunities. We believe that by bringing together people with different skills, backgrounds and expertise, beautiful things will happen.

The core principles of The Things Network community are:

• Endorsing the principles mentioned in the Manifest of The Things Network
• Open for anyone
• People are the foundation of the community, not gateways
• Regular social contact is the driving force of the community’s development
• Diversity is crucial

What is the role of an initiator

For a community to emerge, a community initiator is required. The Things Network supports the initiator with the first steps of building a community by creating a campaign page. The page acts as a platform to communicate all relevant information about the members, activities and the current state of the network in the given area.

Community initiators can always count on our full support and can carry the title “Initiator”. In return we ask initiators to respect the manifest, keep the community page up-to-date, make sure local meetings are organized and be approachable for people to connect to. There is an Initiators Slack channel to discuss this with people worldwide.

Once your community becomes official, community initiators are allowed to carry the name “Initiator” forever, no-one will ever take this away from you.

Manifest

The manifest is created during the start of The Things Network and contains the principles of our mission. The main principle states:

Anyone making use of the network is allowed to do so for any reason or cause, possibly limited by local law, fully at own risk and realizing that services are provided "as is" and may be terminated for any reason at any moment. The use may be open for anybody, limited to customers, commercial, not-for-profit, or in any other fashion. "The Things Network" providers will not pose restrictions upon its users.