telecentre.org | Social Signal

Client: International Development Research Centre

Around the world, grassroots technology centres help communities put technology to work, building local economies and strengthening their social fabric. Regional networks knit those telecentres together, offering support and coordination – but who supports those networks? The IDRC, together with Microsoft and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, has answered that question with telecentre.org, a five-year initiative to help those regional networks through knowledge sharing, peer support and services.

How we helped

• They approached us to pin down the technical and community requirements for telecentre.org’s web strategy.
• Our involvement grew to building the selected platform for telecentre.org’s beta launch; managing the design and development teams; soliciting feedback for the next round of site design and features; developing user documentation; and training team members in the use of the platform.
• We later advised Taking It Global – the non-profit selected to manage the telecentre.org network – in their transition to managing the network, and to support additional platform development activities.

Impact

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.

Lessons

This was Social Signal’s first engagement, and drove home to us the profound impact that online collaboration can have in driving real-world results.