Scott Shamp, University of Georgia at Athens

Scott Shamp keeps his head in the clouds. As the director of the New Media Institute at the University of Georgia at Athens, Shamp is the self-described facilitator of the Wireless Athens Group, a volunteer organization he calls “a slow-building coalition dedicated to making cool things happen” — cool things like the Wi-Fi “cloud” that now hovers over the city.

Dubbed the WAGZone, the cloud — which currently spans a three-block radius but will eventually expand to 24 — comprises a series of handmade antenna boxes that transmit wireless signals back to the New Media Institute's offices. Any user equipped with an 802.11b card can take advantage of the network to gain free access to the Internet.

Shamp — a 16-year university faculty member — co-founded the WAG a year ago. He said Athens' famously bohemian culture makes the town the ideal petri dish for such an experiment.

“We don't have many big business opportunities in Athens,” Shamp said. “These are quality-of-life businesses. With something like the WAGZone, the question isn't ‘What can I get out of it?,' but ‘What can I do with it?’”

Figuring out just what users can do with the WAGZone is the mission facing the New Media Institute's 400 students as the new academic year ramps up.

“They're the people who will come up with the wicked, wild stuff that will change the wireless industry,” Shamp said of his students. “We might develop 10 applications, and maybe nine will be silly. But the tenth one we come up with might change the world.”