WiFi @ LMI launched in 2016 to offer pay per use internet to generate revenue and offset the massive financial burden of hosting live content on a series of touchscreens and digital signs I was planning. Just after the installation of $20,000 of distribution hardware, signage and print materials, I found myself in a conversation with a community member about my business expansion. They asked where it was located. My shock resulted in a slow but firm response, “you are standing in it”.

Since then I have become coldly aware of the myriad of unforeseen complications that inevitably come with marketing an invisible product delivered at high prices, in packed public areas trafficked by mobs of international transients during peak season in Rural Alaska. I scrapped the brand. After the 2019 launch of WiFi @ Eagle Eye at the King Salmon Airport, I realized my design trials were not over due to the distinctly different destination goals for travelers; these were bear people, not commercial fisherman and cannery workers.

This spring I finally rebranded. I uploaded a new splash page to the hotspot, installed a brand new road side sign and mounted product info and login instructions on the seats at the public access area. I also produced the cutest sticker freebie in the world to bridge the distance between both service locations, ease the painful realities of the prices and offer the promise that our wilderness always offers a better connection…because all other communication systems in Bristol Bay WILL inevitably crash.