The eBritishColumbia Network Project

The magic number for e is said to be 50,000.

e stands for eBusiness, eGovernment, eCommerce, eXchange, or any form of community building, commerce, transaction, or interaction that can happen online via the world wide web. And 50,000 is the critical population number that an area must have in order to support e.

Although much has been done globally for the major population areas that can easily support e, what about sparsely populated areas?  The eBritishColumbia Network Project is a provinvial portal website that unites the 700+ BC communities to achieve the critical 50,000 population number and allow e to work in rural British Columbia.  From Osoyoos to Fort Nelson to Zeballos to Elkford, most communities in British Columbia are represented on the portal.

The first step is community building. There are a number of functions in this portal to help us build our online communities and help us connect to each other.  They are:

• Message Board, or Forum, called the Northern Lights Café
• The Neighbourhood - self-administered web pages that can be used for business or personal use
• Blogs, or Web Logs are a form of online diary that you can use to keep your audience informed.
• Auto Trader where you can buy and sell autos, RV's, logging and other heavy equipment, and parts
• a classified ad system called the Buy-Sell-Trade
• Skills Exchange
• Garage Sales system
• Opinion Polls
• Community Events Calendar
• Directory of local Webs
• Distance Charts
• Joke Shoppe

The portal is designed so that all communities, businesses and families in BC can maintain their individuality yet participate online as one big community. One key feature are feedback loops. This allows anyone to suggest changes and enhancements to the system. The concept being the community shapes itself over time and in this respect, the eBritishColumbia portal will never stop growing. It is a living entity.  Maybe best of all, the eBritishColumbia Network Project is absolutely free to use.