telecentre.org

telecentre.org is a five-year initiative aimed at helping telecentre networks -- regional networks that support on-the-ground community technology centeres -- work more effectively together. By facilitating knowledge exchange and support among telecentre networks, telecentre.org will help those networks do a better job of helping telecentres, so that telecentres can then do a better job of helping people. Jointly funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Microsoft, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the project will invest Canadian $21 million over five years to strengthen the capacity of the global telecentre movement.

Social Signal was retained to pin down the technical and community requirements for telecentre.org’s web strategy, and to evaluate the options for meeting those requirements. Our involvement grew to encompass configuring the selected platform for telecentre.org’s beta launch; managing the design and development teams; soliciting user feedback to guide the next round of site design and features; developing user documentation; and training telecentre.org team members in the use of the platform. We later worked with Taking It Global, the non-profit selected to manage the telecentre.org network, to assist in their transition to managing the network, and to support additional platform development activities.

The launch of telecentre.org at the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) in fall 2005 demonstrated the success of the site and strategy. At a busy gathering with high levels of competition for public attention, all telecentre.org events were packed. The excitement at WSIS has been mirrored by the telecentre community's eagerness to embrace the new network by launching additional sites on the platform that Social Signal helped to develop.