International Development Research Centre (IDRC) | Social Signal

telecentre.org is a five-year initiative aimed at helping telecentre networks – regional networks that support on-the-ground community technology centres – work more effectively together. By allowing those networks to pool knowledge and support, telecentre.org improves their ability to help telecentres – which 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 C$21 million over five years to strengthen the capacity of the global telecentre movement.

The vision for the telecentre.org network originated with its director, Mark Surman. Mark’s approach to building telecentre.org has profoundly shaped our own perspective on online community-building (beginning with the large-font word “ITERATE” that has adorned our wall ever since Mark admonished us not to try to get everything perfect on the first try). And it was in talking with Mark that we realized our obsession with tag-based aggregation actually translated into a crucial methodology for decentralized web development, using what he described as an “ecosystem” model of linking multiple web sites together via RSS.

Mark retained Social Signal to pin down the technical and community requirements for telecentre.org’s web strategy, and evaluate the options for meeting them. 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 help them take on management of the network and support additional platform development activities.

The success of the site and strategy became apparent at the launch of telecentre.org at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in fall 2005. 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.