In January 2008, ITPI took over the e-forum moderation and website development and management. The entire process was efficiently managed, which is substantiated by the fact that most subscribers did not even realise that a new team had taken over the responsibilities.
The team approach has yielded rich dividends, with few instances of communications breakdown and quick response time in fixing the bugs. Along with strengthening the e-forum membership (the numbers have grown from 1050 to 1191), the website has been completely overhauled and incudes new archive search facilities, an easily accessible expert database, and substantial new and current information. The website traffic data indicates that the changes have been beneficial.
A new TechNet21 logo was designed after considerable background research. (A note detailing the research undertaken is available.) To disseminate information about the forum and website, a flyer and poster were designed. Printouts of the flyer were distributed and the posters displayed during the GIM and the TechNet21 meetings. An e–invitation was also sent out to all subscribers to enable them to invite friends and colleagues to join the forum. An email was also sent out to subcribers to register with the new expert database.
Two powerpoint presentations were made at the Tunis meeting: one outlinging the eforum’s functioning and performance and the other outlining the future trajectory.
The following sections outline performance on the various parameters in greater detail, and the final section briefly outlines the plans for 2009.
2.1 Postings: From January to December 2008, a total of 156 postings were sent to subscribers. This is an average of almost 13 postings per month or around three every week. Though compared to 2007 (178) the number was less, on more than one occasion several contributions on the same subject have been combined into a single post. Further, during the initial discussions with the TechNet ‘troika’ the suggestion was that we post once in three days.
The postings continue to be made in the HTML format, allowing members direct access to links in the post. Except for a couple of complaints most members appear to be able access and read the posts.
The moderator has largely functioned within the defined parameters. The VVM post, which generated a heated debate, resulted in a TechNet flowchart that outlined the entire moderation process and the checks and balances.
Member contributions generated sixty-seven postings, representing 42% of all postings. As for subject categorization: reference and news constituted the largest proportion of the postings (50), followed by discussion (47).
2.1.1 Subject Areas
Major topics
- Cold Chain Maintenance: covering the decision to repair or replace equipment; new vaccines and the cold chain; budgets for scrapping equipment; economic viability of running workshops; maintenance training, etc. (13 posts)
- Polio Eradication (11)
- Health Sector and National Energy Policy--also linked to Waste Disposal (6)
- Waste Management: covering need for feasibility baseline, weighted approach for decision-making, needle-melting devices (7)
- VVM: covering the question of reliability, broadening its use in out of cold chain delivery, dark specks in active area (5)
- Vaccine Freezing Prevention Memoire (5)
- MIS for Immunization (5)
- Safe Injection Practices (4)
- School-based Tetanus Vaccination (4)
- Climate Change and Health (3)
2.2 Membership:
During 2008 the membership graph has moved steadily upwards. The English List has grown in strength from 1050 in 2007 members to 1191 as of December 2008.
Due to financial constraints the French list has been discontinued though the archives of the postings prior to 2008 continue to be available in French.
Members (unconcealed) of the English list are scattered over 78 countries, one more than last year according to the statistics provided by Listserv. However, this accounts for less than half of membership since 778 are users registered in the United States given that public servers such as Hotmail and Yahoo, and the Intranet of some organizations are located there. Turkey has the highest number of subscribers (43); then comes UK (35), India (32), Switzerland (27), Australia (22), and South Africa (21). After the TechNet21 meeting in Tunis, there has been a spurt in the number of registrations from Afghanistan. Some of the ids were included in the subscription list manually from the ITPI office. Hence 100% accuracy is not assured with regard to the location data.
2.3 Contributors
In 2008, totally 64 members contributed to discussions. Sufficient information is not available to determine the proportion of contributors located in the field.
A number of members made more than one contribution. Table 1 shows the distribution of these contributions.
| Table 1. : Number of contributions per contributor | ||
|---|---|---|
| Contributions | Contributors | Total |
| 1 | 44 | 44 |
| 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 3 | 4 | 12 |
| 4 | 7 | 28 |
| 5 | 1 | 5 |
| 6 | 4 | 24 |
| 7 | 1 | 7 |
| Total | 62 | 125 |
3. TechNet Website
The new and enhanced TechNet21 website became operational in June 2008. Figure 4 charts the web traffic, which has been steadily growing.
The new content and improved aesthetics has, along with the Search Engine Optimization undertaken in November, substantially increased user access. The figures from June 2008 to Dec. 2008 are as follows: Unique Visitors: 8041, No. of Visits: 18,271, Pages: 101002, Hits: 286909, Bandwidth: 23.58 GB.
(Note: The data plotted for 2008 is from June onwards)
Web content is updated every month. News is culled from all major websites and research journals to ensure wide coverage and relevance. The Expert Database now has a fully searchable interface, enabling both experts and institutions easy access. Information retrieval has become more efficient with the introduction of the new search tool that allows the user to search the archives using various criteria.
To list out the major inputs:
- New Subscriber Page: The new user-friendly subscriber-registration page has made the subscription process easier for new subscribers. The form now includes the following fields: name, organization, position, e-mail, city, and country.
- New fields have been added to the Expert Database: they are Rota Virus, Tetanus, and Pneumococcal.
- News scroller or marquee text to add currency to the home page: A layer that displays the current news headings and on clicking leads to the correct location in the news page.
- New pages have been linked from the home page: A new article feature has been added to the website. The articles that have been uploaded so far include a series titled Vaccine Visionaries featuring Jonas Salk and Emil Behring and articles on the eradication of small pox.
- Search engine optimization: The CSS, Links, Image name, Image alt name etc. have been changed according to the keywords.
4. Marketing tools
Parallel to e-forum moderation and website redesigning, efforts were also directed towards increasing subscriptions and access of the forum and website.
The TechNet21 logo was redesigned since the old one could not be used. The new logo highlights global coverage and the prime target of immunization efforts—children.
A poster and a flyer were designed to disseminate information on the features of the e-forum and the website. The few printed flyers were displayed at the Tunis meeting .
As part of the membership drive, emails were sent out asking subscribers to invite colleagues and friends and asking for feedback on the new website. Emails were also sent out inviting subscribers to register with the open access expert database.