🌀 Mesh Dispatch: Community Input, December Recap & January Meetup

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the December meetup — and welcome to the new subscribers. As we move toward January’s session, we’re gathering community input on the features and behaviors you want to see in an intentional regional mesh deployment.

Your feedback will directly shape the next post in our regional design series and help guide the working groups formed in December.

🧭 Contribute to the Next Regional Mesh Design Post

Our first article in the series — Beyond the Node Map — laid out why a regional mesh needs more than a scatterplot of nodes. December’s discussion reinforced that point: without intentional design, even a large deployment can fail to deliver reliable, resilient messaging.

As we draft the next installment, we’re looking for your perspective on questions like:

• What guarantees should a regional mesh provide during outages or heavy load?
• Which node roles or device types feel essential for your use cases?
• What message‑handling or bridging behavior would make the network feel dependable?
• What tools, dashboards, or onboarding flows would make participation easier?
• What would help you contribute — hardware, software, documentation, or testing?

If you have thoughts, we’d love to hear them. The next post will be published before the January meetup, so early input is especially helpful.

👉 Share your input: email info@capitalmesh.net

🔍 December Recap: A Shared Direction

Our December meetup brought together 10 attendees, including 6 newcomers, for a focused conversation on regional topology and deployment strategy.

After reviewing the risks of an uncoordinated build‑out, the group reached a clear consensus:

• Our initial prototype will build on Meshtastic, using it as a foundation while we design the features required for a resilient regional network.
• The regional Backbone will operate on the default public LongFast configuration, giving us a predictable baseline and avoiding a staged rollout.
• We launched bridge‑node working groups to begin prototyping a custom enclosure and defining the logic required for reliable message forwarding.

A full recap is available here:

📄 December 2025 Meetup Recap

These working groups will report back at the January session as we continue refining the regional topology plan.

🗓 January Meetup: Two Presentations + Working Session

Our next in‑person gathering is coming up on Thursday, January 8th at the UU Church in Concord. January’s session builds directly on the decisions and working groups formed in December.

This month features two technical presentations exploring alternative approaches to regional connectivity, followed by a collaborative working session:

• Using WireGuard to Build a Federated VPN Mesh
• MeshCore as a Regional Messaging Platform
• Review of December progress + planning for January

👉 Event details & RSVP

Whether you’re contributing hardware, software, documentation, or simply curiosity, your presence helps shape the direction of Capital Region Mesh. If you know anyone who might be interested in resilient, community‑driven communication, feel free to forward this email — personal introductions help us connect with people who care about this work.

Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas, joined the working groups, or participated in any way. Your input is directly shaping the next phase of the project — and the next article in the regional design series.

—Sam @ Capital Region Mesh

💬 Questions?
Email info@capitalmesh.net to share feedback or ask questions directly.
(If you reply to this newsletter, we’ll gently redirect you to the right inbox.)

📚 Blog posts & updates:
capitalmesh.net/blog

🌐 Project site:
capitalmesh.net

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