One thing I’ve run into many times is the lack of internet bandwidth at events. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it is a big pay-for thing or a BarCamp - once everyone was online, things slowed to a crawl. This was a really big problem at Dojo Camp last year where we had to get a ton of kids setup with the Arduino IDE and other tools. In the end it was faster to pass around a USB key but we lost a lot of valuable time doing this.
PirateBox has been around for ages as an anonymous drop box (not DropBox!). Basically it’s software and configuration using dirt cheap TP-Link routers to provide a wifi access point with connected storage and files. Version 1.0 was just released which is a ground-up rebuild.
So at events you could tell everyone to connect to one or more of these PirateBoxes, where you and the various presenters/talkers have pre-uploaded all of the relevant material and assets, so they can be quickly accessed and downloaded.
In addition to file sharing, it also has chatting, message boarding, and media streaming. I’d love to check out how many people it can support simultaneously.
As a $35 self-build exercise, it seems like a no-brainer.