One of the problems with having thousands of techies converge on one city, Austin, for a few days for SXSW is connectivity. After all, with all that data being sent — mainly photos of nerds drinking in bars and eating BBQ in between sending countless annoying “Hey I’m at South By ” tweets — wireless phone and wi-fi problems are bound to arise.
Another problem for a city hosting such an event is what to do about eyesores like dirty, worthless homeless people when all the big sh*t tech folk fly in from places like New York and San Francisco? The iLiberal elite certainly don’t want to be brought down and bummed out by pestering panhandlers, right?
Luckily a comically named tech marketing firm — Bartle Bogle & Hegarty — has come up with a solution to both problems: turn the homeless into wi-fi hotspots.
Reports the New York Times:
With a project called Homeless Hotspots, a marketing company is helping out with this, while helping the homeless and promoting itself. Homeless people have been enlisted to roam the streets wearing T-shirts that say “I am a 4G hotspot.” Passersby can pay what they wish to get online via the 4G-to-Wi-Fi device that the person is carrying.
So does this means one has to actually stand next to a stinky homeless person in order to use a homeless person wi-fi hotspot? Ugh, gross. No wonder some people think SXSW is the worst.