I’ve had the opportunity to work with OpenSignal / Portland Community Media twice, on two very different contract projects.
My first engagement, in 2024, was primarily an Apple hardware deployment project. I returned in early 2025 for a second engagement, this time to replace the wireless network serving their corporate office.
Network Infrastructure Project
January 2025 – February 2025
I returned to OpenSignal in January of 2025 to design and deploy a replacement Wi-Fi infrastructure for their corporate office.
This was a project I was able to take from beginning to end. I assessed what the organization needed, developed the network design, selected and ordered the appropriate UniFi hardware, configured the equipment, deployed it throughout the building, and ultimately brought the new network into production.
One of the more important parts of the project was making sure that the design worked well in the actual building, rather than simply looking good on paper. Once the equipment was deployed, I performed wireless heat-map testing throughout the facility to identify coverage strengths, weak areas, and places where the design could be improved. I then used those results to refine access-point placement and configuration.
The goal wasn’t simply to blanket the building with as many access points as possible. I wanted an efficient design that provided the necessary coverage without adding hardware and complexity where it wasn’t needed.
There were also longer-term considerations. The network needed to be secure and reliable, certainly, but it also needed to be straightforward to administer and flexible enough to accommodate changes in the future. I deliberately designed the environment with scalability in mind so that future additions or modifications wouldn’t require starting over.
Cost was part of that equation as well. Keeping the design efficient helped control the immediate cost of the project, while choosing an architecture that could be easily adapted should also help reduce the cost of future changes.
By the end of the engagement, OpenSignal had a completely replaced UniFi wireless environment that had been designed, deployed, tested, and optimized specifically for the building it was serving.
IT Project Deployment
2024 – Two-Month Contract
My first engagement with OpenSignal was a very different sort of project.
The primary task was to work through a large collection of approximately 200 MacBook Pro systems and prepare them for whatever came next. Depending on the individual machine, that could mean deployment back into service, sale, or donation.
Each machine needed to be processed, evaluated, and, where necessary, repaired before being properly imaged and prepared for its eventual destination. With that many systems involved, organization and consistency were every bit as important as the technical work itself.
In addition to the MacBook project, I consulted on mobile Wi-Fi deployments and 3D-printing projects and provided additional IT support as needed during the engagement.
While not a long engagement, I was still able to engage with several different project and build a good working relationship with the organization. When future projects opened up the following year, I was contracted again, to take ownership of the project. This directly indicated to me that my initial contract with them had gone well. Subsequently, my second contract with them went equally as well.