Curious as to what drew people to the project?

I have seen a lot of activity on the forums about how different people are using the box, but I find myself wondering what drew you into the project to begin with?

I first heard about piratebox when I was doing some research on mesh networks and how they have been used in activist communities to share information. I have used the first box I built to share files with my classmates as we tend to offer a lot of suggestions for research and readings and I figured we could just start sharing the actual files rather than just referring to specific articles. I plan to build a second box and to looking at ways to turn it into a synchronizing "private" cloud drive (I currently use microsoft onedrive for this because it synchs folders and notes the best across my desktop and laptop, but its 5gb limit on the free account is wearing thin on me). While I have learned that I need to do a major brush up with my coding skills, I was wondering the different ways that someone less code-fluent can contribute to the long-term development of the project?

How does everyone else see themselves in relation to the project? Has it motivated/helped you to build on your tech skills? Where do you see you work with the project going?

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I was wondering the different ways that someone less code-fluent can contribute to the long-term development of the project?

Testing, finding issues in the documentation (and fix it). Try to help at the forum and testing :-)
Did I mention: documentation updates or finding missing points (which are frequently discussed in the forum). :-)

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How does everyone else see themselves in relation to the project? Has it motivated/helped you to build on your tech skills? Where do you see you work with the project going?

I stumbled over the project right after David's first announcement through the media. I decided back in 2011 to give something back to the open source community and this project hit my points of interests "Linux" and "Networking".
I grew my Linux scripting skills with the projects. You can find alot of legacy code, which I would write differently with today's knowledge. I also learned from a green field the knowledge about mesh networking and IPv6.
I am still motivated to push the project forward, but due to personal reasons I do not have enough freetime to invest. :-(
... I also take care of our server infrastructure to build automatic images and host this forum & website.

best regards Matthias

Matthias,

Thank you for the quick response. I just built a second piratebox to provide filesharing for a digital media project with high school students at a community literacy center (I will be sure to share this in the appropriate forum). I am going to dabble in a video tutorial for getting (just to get some practice in) and will be sure to share the results in the forums (if it turns out 'good'). I was looking over the FAQ and was wondering if there were any sections you felt were in needing of updating (as in they haven't been updated in awhile). I was particularly interested in the "Why piratebox?" section, or if there was any desire for some mention of the community that has formed here around the technology? Or the end goal of project (if there is one)?

Thanks again for your continued work on the project (It has gotten way more accessible/easy to get going, I am trying to arrange a mini-piratebox building group at my university to see what people end up doing with it).

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I was particularly interested in the "Why piratebox?" section, or if there was any desire for some mention of the community that has formed here around the technology? Or the end goal of project (if there is one)?

uh mh.
Never thought about an end goal of the project. .. And the community around isn't really a strong community like you would expect on projects like RPi or other FOOS. We have a lot of people coming and going frequently. Only a few ppl which stay longer and regular participate (helping in the forum and with code commits), like TheExpertNoob.