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June 11 repeater meetup

We will hold a second repeater meet up at room C-9019 of Lionel Groulx wing (3150 Jean-Brillant, Google Maps link) of Université de Montréal on Thursday June 11 from 19h to 21h.

This will be, exceptionally, a hybrid meeting, to allow external participation, on Jitsi:

https://meet.jit.si/moderated/7166e3ba08dc351aea738c80fe797bcd8555ffcfeb74b31ec26e90e2008d2ef8

Important

Note that the Jitsi link above has changed on 2026-06-01.

But we prefer if you could show up in person.

We invite everyone who currently operates1 a relay in the greater Montreal area, whether it is Meshcore, Meshtastic, or Reticulum, to join us to talk about how we organise.

Context

It is the second time we hold a Réseau Libre meeting in over a decade. Those familiar with history now that we used to hold regular meetings; we're starting those again. Many old timers, but mostly newcomers were present at the previous meetings, and there's lots of energy in the air.

Mesh night

Mesh night also continues! There is one this Wednesday June 3rd at Foulab, from 19:00 to 22:00. We will be talking about and experimenting with mesh networking technologies such as Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum. Foulab's location is Suite 33B, 999 du Collège, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H4C 2S3 (Google maps link).

Réseau Libre

Réseau Libre is a project that has existed for more than a decade (2010), before LoRa (2015), Reticulum (2018), Meshtastic (2020) and MeshCore (2024). This project existed, and still exists with a certain baggage and history that is probably not well known by a large number of people currently contributing to Meshcore.

Réseau Libre is not Meshcore Canada, Québec, or even Montréal. The project never had the pretense to be the sole mesh project in Montreal, even. It is an experimentation and research project, particularly associated with free software and social justice.

Agenda

Here is a new tentative agenda. The agenda of the last meetup was too ambitious, and might have led some to believe we will organize everyone and everything. I don't think that energy is there right now, and it is not our mandate.

I therefore propose we keep things simple, in general. The first meetup was an "ice breaker", in this one, let's try to converge over a common project, a community.

  1. Welcome: translation, agenda, facilitation, minutes, timing (anarcat), 10 minutes
  2. Round table: name, pronoun, call sign / nick, relay description (newcomers)
  3. Introducing Réseau Libre: 15 minutes on the history of RL, the mesh in Montreal and elsewhere, presentation of the values and the code of conduct (anarcat)

  4. Platform choices (30 minutes):

    1. proposal: Réseau Libre continue on Matrix
    2. proposal: Réseau Libre continue on lora.reseaulibre.ca
    3. proposal: Réseau Libre continue on Meshcore, researches Reticulum
    4. proposal: Réseau Libre organises by in-person meetings, exceptionally online if necessary, using free and open tools like Jitsi or the channel #reseaulibre-decisions:matrix.org
    5. discussion: did you know we had mailing lists? should we keep them?

  5. Next meeting

Other proposals can be added to this agenda until Monday June 8, through a request on Codeberg, on Matrix (#reseaulibre-decisions:matrix.org) or by email (on nodes or directly to anarcat@anarc.at).

Note that while this agenda was translated from French, the last meeting was held in French and English, but mostly in French. We try to accommodate both languages to the best of our abilities, but so far most people speak in French. We hope to provide interpretation between those two languages if needed.

Minutes

Minutes have been taken, in french, see the french version.

  1. For now, we consider a "relay operator" to be a person who is currently responsible for the operation of a device which repeats signal for other devices. This includes essentially every Meshtastic device out there, Meshcore repeaters, and Reticulum transport nodes. But intent matters: we're happy to welcome you if you haven't setup your Meshcore repeater or Reticulum transport node just yet but are almost there, but we're less interested if you're "just" experimenting with Meshtastic to connect devices in your backyard. ↩