Mar 12 2010

Wi-Fi Hot Spot

Chris

This brings me great joy to be able to share.  Two Story now has a Wi-Fi hot spot powered by Wandering Wifi.  As you connect to Two Story’s Wi-Fi, you are welcomed and asked to accept the terms of a User Agreement.  Once you accept the terms of the agreement, you are directed to Two Story’s website and from there you are free to surf the internet!  It is simple, clean, fast, and stable.  And, the best part is that if you do experience any difficulty connecting to the internet, you can call Wandering Wifi’s support line, and friendly people will help walk you through any issue that you may be having trying to connect.

From my previous blog post Wi-Fi and Our Journey, I received great feedback about our decisions, issues, and solutions.  Thanks to Matt Farmer for his input.

As, I said before, while using customized pass codes–that a customer would receive with a purchase at the bar–would help the issue of non-paying customers, I believe (at least I hope) that there are other solutions and ways to address this issue without hindering the entire community.  Because let’s face it, sometimes you like to come in and get settled into a spot for a minute before you purchase a coffee or a gelato, or maybe you simply are driving-by and need to stop on the front porch to check your directions real quick on your way out of town.

We are a community-gathering place, and we hope to always be.  For this reason, the internet is remaining open until we exhaust ALL romantic, revolutionary, dreamer, and idealistic methods of asking our customers to please patronize the bar as they utilize this space and the internet.  And our recent decision to continue to provide open and free internet was filtered through this mission.

I hope that you find the new Wi-Fi to be stable and secure and easy to use, and please help yourself to a cup of coffee…


Mar 4 2010

Wi-Fi and Our Journey

Chris

It is our hope and focus to always be open with the Two Story community regarding our business and our decisions. Like all businesses we should constantly be striving to enhance your experience within our doors. However, unlike many businesses, we truly want to ensure that we are striving for this—for you.

With this in mind, one of our greatest frustrations for you and us has been the Wi-Fi within Two Story. There is no hiding the constant drops in service, the inability for you to connect, our incapacity to accept credit cards, etc. As a community gathering place in this age, we need to be able to offer you a reliable Internet connection to ensure that you can study, work, check your emails, or stay connected with your friends when you are here and do this regardless of how many other Two Story friends and customers are also trying to do so.

We have made attempts in the past to add access points and replace hardware to fix the issue of “poor Internet.” We have even contracted out I.T. Professionals who have been unable to deliver and subsequently dropped the job. But, we believe that we have once, and hopefully, for all remedied this issue.

You may have noticed that in the past 3 or 4 weeks from writing this, that the Internet connection has been more stable and reliable. We finally found a piece of hardware through the help of Connected Technologies (a local I.T. Provider) that has been able to enhance your Wi-Fi experience greatly! Consequently, we have experienced zero (0) downtime on a whole!

We hope this has proven helpful to you and that you have been able to notice a difference. However, we are taking this one step further. We are partnering with Wandering Wifi, an Atlanta based Wi-Fi solutions company to bring an even faster, more stable, and more reliable hotspot to Two Story. Quite honestly, compared to your experience in the past month, we (Two Story) may be the ones to truly gain an advantage by making this switch to Wandering Wifi. They will be able to offer support and scalable potential for our Wi-Fi needs as our business grows and expands. It is a vital business relationship that we are thankful to have from this point forward. And we can expect the new Wi-Fi to be in place and functioning by the middle of March.

Partner With Us

We would like to ask for your help and support as well. One of the issues that arise for a business who offers free Wi-Fi is the tendency for patrons to utilize the Internet for hours without patronizing the business. Two Story has a unique house and location that makes it extremely conducive for studying and work, and this was our initial and current vision for Two Story. But, even a house this size has a tendency to reach capacity quickly.

Whether you are here only briefly or for a full day of studying, working, or socializing, please help Two Story by patronizing our coffee bar for food and drink.

It is our hope and strong goal to keep the Internet open and free to our community. When being faced with the decisions to charge for Internet or require our customers to retrieve a password at the bar to access the Internet, we are choosing to keep the Internet open and free at Two Story. While requiring each patron to visit the bar for a password would enhance our sales, we believe that it would hurt our mission as a community-gathering place, and our mission will always come first.

For this reason, we simply want to be able to offer this space, coffee, conversation, and community for many years to come. So, please partner with us by visiting our bar as you utilize this incredible space. I mean grabbing a cup of coffee can’t be that bad…

Chris

What are your thoughts on the Wi-Fi at Two Story?