One focus area in Caddies project is to develop opportunities of local inhabitants and other stakeholders to communicate with each other. In the project this issue has been discussed with inhabitants in all three cities. The result was that there is a big need for local meetings places. They can be physical like for example a square, office or restaurant but in this matter we decided to work with digital meeting places at Internet.

The use of social media is growing fast all over the world. For example Twitter has over 23 million messages everyday, Facebook over 500 million users, and more are coming all the time. This is a fact that we didn’t want to ignore but instead put our focus on utilizing the opportunities that social media has on offer.

The challenge that Caddies team wanted to tackle is how to find the relevant information from a wild data jungle. So to speak, how to handle multiple info streams. For an ordinary inhabitant living in a neighbourhood it can be hard to find the correct information concerning for instance local recycling places. Besides finding a solution for this challenge it has become clear that inhabitants want also to find other people interested in the same topics. These became the base lines for the development work: 1. To make it easier to find and spread information 2. and to help inhabitants and local stakeholders to find each other.

Norrköping Science Park (NOSP) is a partner for Caddies team in this development work. NOSP’s role is to give expertise help for the team. During 2010-2011 the target is to develop a solution for handling different info streams coming from existing communication networks on Internet but also info coming from partners’ organizations. The idea is to combine different info streams together into info channels based on a common topic. One info channel could be for instance “Sustainable living in the neighbourhood”. There you could find e.g. local energy saving tips and also discuss about the topic together with other people interested on it. The idea is that anyone can somehow be part of the discussion or content production. In the future all info channels can be found on a common local communication platform.

The first concrete result of this development work will be a communication platform prototype including some info channels. It will be tested during the winter 2010 and 2011. Status updates of the development work will be updated on this page. If you want more information about this focus area, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Contact persons:

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