Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband (DIIRWB) invited and hosted a regional workshop on development of a common an comprehensive ICT-strategy for Djursland.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a cruzial part of the infrastructures of modern society, and a lot of people are now realizing that the ICT-level of a society and all the resulting competences its inhibitants obtain, already are dictating the quality of life in all spheres of existence. At the same time it is clear that the necessarry ICT-development does not come by itself in rural areas like Djursland, because a small population has to pay the heavy expenses for infrastructure caused by the big rural distances.

DIIRWB had on this background called upon key-individuals in the ICT-development on Djursland for a coordinating strategy-workshop Wednesday 11-06-2008. Based on an introduction from the institute the workshop should seek to develop a common, shared and comprehensive ICT-strategy between public adminisration and -authorities, institutions, businesslife and community initiatives, which can secure a development of Djursland into a exemplary good ICT-countryside-community. The initiative from the institute is based in a comprehensive innovativ preparatory work in the EU-supported BIRD-project (Broadband access for Innovation and Regional Development) with partners in the countryside in all the countries around the North Sea. The workshop actually concluded the Djursland part of the transnational project into a future ICT-strategy for the rural Djursland. 

Many good initiatives has already been carried out on Djursland by different players, but according to the institute more has to be done in the future to create the best framework for the population and to match developments in the big cities. During the meeting the institute therefore proposed to join powers to implement the following supplementing concepts in a shared strategy:

1. Triple-play service - data, telephony & TV - has to be made available all over in the countryside through optimisation of the capcity of the 10 wireless landscapenets on Djursland.
2. A portal for every village has to be established to give the villages a mirror providing all-round news and local  activity-calendar etc., all assambled and easily accessible in the already through many years existing Djursland-portal.
3. Local and regional net-TV has to be developed together with Grenaa- and Ebeltoft city-antenna communities and other players, including the wireless landscapenet oranisations to involve and provide for the rural population.
4. Electronic archives must through digitalization of the 10 district archives, give free access to our history from everywhere, through the Djursland-portal.
5. Fre wireless Internet access, made available through a pattern of hotspots - first in the mid-town of Ebeltoft and Grenaa, and eventually everywher throughout all of Djursland - must make access to and exchange of information possible, whereever you might be all over Djursland.

The participant in the ICT-strategy-workshop agreed that initiatives in these areas of effort, and as conclusion the workshop asked the institute to go on with these visions and prepare an initiative for implementation of a shared and all-comprehensive vision for a good rural ICT-community in the Djursland region, created in a coordinated cooperation between the 10 wireless landscapenets, other ISPs, the 25 Networking Djursland partners from the EU-supported The Baltic Rural Broadband Project, the Local Action Group and all other possible players in the Djursland-community.

DIIRWB (Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband) was established in 2006 to give on to other rural people the lessons learned from establishing the Djurslands.net. DjurslandS.net has made access to broadband on the peninsula Djursland - a rural area of 60 times 50 km - so cheap that everyone can afford to be connected and use the Internet. To day DjurslandS.net is decentralised into 10 local landscapenets, which all together provides each of about 7000 households, firms and institutions with wireless Internet access at 4 to 10 megabit bandwidth for only 1/3 of the average commercial city price - all expenses considered over 4 years. Actually 1/4 of the 82000 inhibetants of Djursland have to day there Internet access and -competances through this initiative, as a household of cause can connect several computers.

More information can be obtained here:
DIIRWB: http://diirwb.net
Bjarke Nielsen
Educational leader
Mobile: 60250001
founder@DjurslandS.net
 

As partner in the EU-supported BIRD-project our educational leader Bjarke Nielsen have created 3 best practices.

• Rural Internet at 1/3 of City Prices - lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience 
• Networking Djursland - lessons learned from developing ICT-society on rural Djursland
• DIIRWB - teaching the world the lessons learned creating ICT-society on rural Djursland

These best practices will be part of a collection of best practices from the projects participians, which are all located around the North Sea.

This is the fourth season of DIIRWBs “lær IT lokalt” - learn ITC locally. The cources are primarily aimed for people, who have little or no computer experience, and the courses have been well visited. We focus on ”down to earth” practical skills to handle computers in the daily life. The courses are held in villages all around Djursland.

In the next days the DIIRWB staff will hand out posters to customers in the local shops and other places in the villages - to further extend the knowledge of the courses.

Besides the cources for less computer experienced people, we also start a netbuilding-course for beginners and partly skilled netbuilders. This is a workshop with a lot of practical experience.

Click here for poster.

Here are some relevant links and documents for visitors and others from our stand at the European Commissions conference and exhibition Bridging the Broadband Gap.

Link to the presentation of Djurslands community-networks and DIIRWB at the conferences homepage - click here…

Posters etc:

The Wireless networks at Djursland consists of about 250 radio nodes, each giving wireless access for households, institutions and firms in a distance up to 5 km. The radionodes are linked together with high-performance wireless links. Through a number of such links a connection from the individual node is established to fiber-accesses to the global internet (marked at the map with white dots).

Click here for pdf-file.

This poster at the exibition at the “Bridging the Broadband Gap” conference set up the headlines for our stand. Pointing out the important message: by involvment of the local volunters it is possible to bridge the Broadband Gap. It is, however, not a trival task as people in the community must acquire a lot of different skills and qualifications to make this to happen.

Click here for pdf-file.

DIIRWB has been invited to participate in The European Commission’s conference “Bridging the broadband gap: benefits of broadband for rural areas and less developed regions”. The conference will take place on the 14^th and 15^th of May 2007 in Brussels.

The event will investigate how increasing access to affordable broadband services and the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT) can support regional and local development, ease infrastructure and geographical handicaps and make these areas more attractive to business and individuals.

Our experience and knowledge from establishing the World’s biggest and cheapest non-commercial rural wireless community network on rural Djursland in Denmark, made us want to share our knowledge and help other rural people around the World bridge the broadband gap in an affordable way. As we are also deeply engaged in building services on top of the broadband wireless infrastructure initiated and build by Djurslands.net, DIIRWBs presence at the conference is obvious.

We will be present at a stand at the exibition, which is part of the event. Our project will be visualized by the headline “Rural Internet at 1/3 of Average City Price”.

More on the conference here.

Contribution from the Danish DjurslandS.net experience

Educational leader Bjarke Nielsen and projectleader Charlotte Holst participated in the VII Infopoverty World Conference in the UN Headquarter in New York, April 19 and 20 2007.

We have collected some relevant documentation for participants and contributors, concerning the teaching of the “Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband”:

• Presentation from DIIRWB by Bjarke Nielsen, in the panel “BROADBAND SATELLITE PLATFORM FOR E-SERVICES AND INTEGRATED TERRESTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURES:
  http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/DIIRWB-presentation_final-2.pdf
• Indepht report on lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience, delivered by Bjarke March 6 2007 to InfoDev, commissioned by the World Bank:
  http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf

The In-Depth Case study covering the Djurslands.net experience has now been finalized and submitted to InfoDev at the Worldbank.

This study is one amongst 7 open access network initiatives around  the world, which were asked to make such a Case Study with detailed data and information on their own local open access network. These seven projects have distinct types of PPPs and project finance approaches. 3 of these 7 is networks are established and run purely by volunteers, namely http://www.nepalwireless.net/, http://www.wirelessghana.com/ and http://www.djurslands.net/. Already last autumn reports were published from the first two of these 3 non-commercial networks. As founder of DjurslandS.net and educational leader of the “Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband” Bjarke has written the remaining report on behalf of the Djursland society.

The report was send to InfoDev by the 6th of March 2007. It is called: “Lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net experience - An In-Depth Case Study of the Huge Rural Area Wireless DjurslandS.net in Denmark”.

You can download the report here: http://www.diirwb.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf 

Bjarke will participiate in the seventh Infopoverty World Conference which is to take place the April 19-20 at different locations around the world, as the locations are linked together in videoconferences.

Bjarke will officially addresss the conference as member of the panel in the fifth and final session under the theme of “Broadband Satellite platforms for e-services and integrated terristical infrastructures”. Bjarke will take part in the conference from the UN headquarter in New York.

The conferences title is “Harnessing the use of ICTs towards the Millennium Development Goals”, indicating the extreme importance of informational technology in fighting poverty and to better the quality of life for people around the globe.

Bjarke will point out how the population in the rural districts of Djursland has been successfull in establish cheap broadband access to only 1/3 of the price which is paid in the big cities. The success has been possibly by the work of hundreds of voluntarys in the communitys, and DIIRWB will pass on the necessary knowledge on how to do this to people in marginalized rural areas in the industrialized world as well as the developing contries.

More on the conference at http://www.infopoverty.net/

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.