On the 31st of May 2007 the ePractice.eu Kick-off workshop was held in Brussels, where participants discussed and gave input on the development of the portal.

The workshop commenced with a welcome speech by Mr. Trond Undheim and Mr. Emilio Castrillejo, the European Commission project officers responsible for the portal on behalf of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General and the Informatics Directorate-General/European eGovernment services, respectively.

The opening speech was followed by the presentation “Sharing eGovernment experience” by Dr. Frank Robben, which concluded with Questions and Answers and a short interactive discussion.

Afterwards, Mr. Bernat Guitart (Infonomía) and Mrs. Anna Schmitthelm (P.A.U. Education) presented the ePractice.eu methodological approach. The first part of the presentation focused on web 2.0 functionalities; during the second part the portal concept and services were explained. The presentations were followed by an extended discussion and questions and answers session.

In the afternoon the workshop participants were split into two working groups and two parallel working sessions were held: The session “On- and off-line exchange dynamics” addressed the integration of workshops in the portal concept, while in the parallel session “Cases – Moving from static to interactive best practice exchange” participants discussed the best way to create an interactive exchange of case studies.

Results
The workshop participants welcomed the ePractice.eu project and showed keen willingness to contribute to it. Communities building, as well as ease of searching and finding relevant case studies were amongst the issues identified and highlighted by participants.

Participants of the “On- and off-line exchange dynamics” working session were very enthusiastic to provide their input and to participate in the development of ePractice.eu. During the session an interesting list of possible inputs was been developed.

During the “Cases – Moving from static to interactive best practice exchange” working session, participant concerns focused on the structure of cases, and what key learning points could be transmitted through the adequate development of case studies. All participants showed genuine interest in sharing experiences and participating in the knowledge exchange process.

Feedback
Over 50% of the workshop participants provided their direct feedback by filling the questionnaire distributed after its termination. As a remarkable result, 100% answered they were “very satisfied” or “satisfied” about the workshop.