The partners in the Networking Djursland project had a chance to meet at the conference today at the Labour market educational center in Djursland. The conference was called to by DIIRWB and also Djurslands Development Council, Djursland Business Council and the labour Market educational Center. The participiants in the conference was wellknown and allready established partners as well as invited businesses, politicians and municipallity officials. As the conference was publically announced also some private citicens had found their way to the middle af Djursland.

The conference was placed on the exact day and place where a similary conference 6 years ago (at march 21. 2001) was held with the title “Broadband to Djursland now!”.

This conference 6 years ago had a major role in the process which led to the establishment of Djursland.net and its 9 local nets. Until now the local nets have established broadband access to more than 5000 households to 1/3 af the marketprice which is payed in the big cities. The conference had focus on building on top of the established infrastructure - to build also human networks and to benefit from the synergies possible from networking the different projects in Networking Djursland, - all to further develop Djursland in respect of informational techonology and -communication.

The establishment of DIIRWB is in fact one of the projects contained in the Networking Djurslands framework. The initial 16 pilotprojects has expanded to a few more: The digitalisation of material in public local archives and also the establishment of a “virtual Djursland” in partnership with amongst other the turist business.

A new webbuilding workshop started wednesday, March 7 at our administration office. The participiants all lives in the new settlers village Friland or are in the process of moving to the village, as it’s expanding this year. It’s all in our very neighbourhood, as Friland is also where our administration office is located.

The participians in the webbuilding workshop have different motivations. The majority wants to build their own homepages to expose businesses or projects they are engaged into.

From the very start of the settlers village back in 2002, it have been the intention that one person in every household must start his/her own business or telecommute. In the light of that websites and good internet access are crucial.

It is however also a major focus to build a portal for the settlers village.

The introduction focused on CMS, and wordpress in particular. Searching and evaluating themes was one of the tasks.

Bjarke handed over a map to Vic Hayes showing the coverage of communitybased wireless network at Djursland.

The reason was the celebration february 6. to 7. of Vic Hayes by an event at the depatment of Technology, Policy and Management at the Technical University at Delft, Holland, and Bjarke was invited to speak over Wi-Fi Community Initiatives - the Case of Djursland.

The Board of Directors of the IEEE had elected Vic Hayes to receive the 2007 IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award. Vic Hayes is considered the primary inventor of Wi-Fi and has been named the father of Wi-Fi, and as such involved in designing the Wi-Fi standards such as IEEE 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g.

Besides Bjarke key players from the industry had been invited to contribute to the seminar to address past, present and future developments in relation to Wi-Fi.

Bjarke and Vic Hayes first met at the Airjaldi Summit WSFII-seminar in Dharamsala, India october/november last year.

The handover of the map was followed by also the handover of a co-ownership to the Djursland network, as the network was made possible by the foreseen work by amongst other Vic Hayes to create standards which had cheapned the equipment and also the insisting of licenced free spectrum for Wi-Fi.

More from the workshop here: http://www.eviconference.nl/WiFiWorkshop/WiFiWorkshop.html. Presentations from the seminar here.

DIIRWB starts a workshop for teachers at the three shools at Djursland involved in education and training for adults.

The workshop itself will go on as elearning, allthough we will physically meet to a brief introduction and also to a conclusive meeting in the late summer.

The workshop intends to give an introduction to the elarning-platform, followed by a small educational task. Then the participiants will split up and explore different aspects of elearning by the use of the elearning-platform.

It´s our intention that the participants after the end of the workshop will have created a network which will have the strengt to help each other to overcome the always present starting trouble when the schools starts elarning cources for the benefit of the rural population at Djursland.

Grenaa Technical School has already decided to use the open source application Moodle as their elarning platform.

The workshop starts at march 30.

March 21. DIIRWB has invited to a conference for partners, educational institutions, municipalities, local politicians and businesses at Djursland.

The conference is a follow-up of a hearing 6 years ago where the theme was “Broadband to Djursland now!”. Now, 6 years after, the 9 local community networks and the volunters at Djursland has created properly the largest rural community-network in Europe. The network is constant evolving and the conference will focus on the oppertunities the broadband infrastructure will bring to the rural community. In that sense Informational Technology will be a cornerstone in improwing the quality of life at Djursland, and hense to prevent emigration from Djursland.

Networking Djursland is a joint efford between Grenaa Technical School and the Computer-Bøvl-environment on Djursland, and is basically about letting network grow at Djursland to create the future informational and communication socity, - the broadband network as well as the social networks. The initiative covers 16 synergetic pilot projects i.e. further development of the infrastructure, elearning, and multiple portals. The preparation and establishment of DIIRWB is one af the 16 pilot projects.

As co-inviters are also Djurslands Development Council, Djursland Business Council and also the vocational training center of Djursland.

Futher presentation of the Networking Djursland project here.

Networking Djursland (in danish): www.networkingdjursland.dk.