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.

NetSquared

NetSquared is a major conference and online community initiative undertaken by CompuMentor, a non-profit organization that provides software and technology assistance to more than 80,000 non-profit organizations across the United States and Canada. NetSquared aims at dramatically expanding the strategic technology capacity of these organizations by engaging them in a series of online community activities, culminating in a May 2006 conference.

Social Signal was retained by CompuMentor to develop an online community strategy that would engage its diverse user base in a process of online learning and discussion about the latest generation of online technologies and technology strategies. The strategy we developed outlined recommended content and activities for the eight months leading up to the NetSquared conference, and specified the technical and staff requirements for a web site that would support those activities. Our involvement was subsequently expanded to include the implementation of many aspects of this online community strategy, including setting up the NetSquared web site, configuring major web site features, managing custom development work and writing and editing site content. We also conceived and created Net2Learn, a companion site that allows NetSquared community members to create resource centers on different topics related to nonprofit technology strategy.

NetSquared has rapidly become one of the web's most visible forums for exploring the social web's significance to nonprofits. The levels of interest generated by the online community has led to the successful launch of NetSquared groups in San Francisco and other U.S. cities, and to an overwhelming demand for conference registration. That success has confirmed hopes that NetSquared would give rise to a durable, vibrant online community, taking a key position at the heart of CompuMentor's future online plans.

Vancity

Vancity is Canada’s largest credit union, with over 300,000 members. As a community-based organization with a proven commitment to environmental, social and economic sustainability, its brand is closely tied to both values and relationships.

We've been thrilled to working with Vancity on their ground-breaking project ChangeEverything.ca –  an online community where people in the Lower Mainland and Victoria can find information, tools and connections to inspire and support change in their own lives, their communities, and the world.

Confeederation

Confeederation.ca is a news aggregator that gathered candidate blogs from across the political spectrum during Canada’s 2006 federal election. The Confeederation site provides a single window on candidate blogs, organized both by party and by province. The site garnered widespread blogger attention and became a key source for journalists following the election campaign. The Confeederation web site is now being used as the basis for Confeederation.us, an aggregation of American candidate blogs that is being created by a US web development team.

Social Change Institute blog

The Social Change Institute (SCI) is a new initiative aimed at building the capacity of the community and social change sector. The Institute is a project of the Hollyhock Leadership Institute (HLI), which provides training and strategic assistance to the social change sector. SCI’s inaugural event was a four-day retreat to held in May 2006.

As part of its work on SCI, HLI has undertaken a pilot e-learning project that aims at supporting the SCI community while also exploring the potential opportunity for extending HLI’s reach through online community tools. HLI retained Social Signal to advise on its e-learning strategy, and to set up a conference blog as part of its e-learning pilot.