The features of the virtual office are an interactive and constantly updating website; email, and software videoconferencing.

The website is interactive because of subscription lists (to webcasts) and discussion boards. The discussion boards are significant because they are transparent and have memory. Posts to the board remain and may be reopened for discussion in other contexts. Typically stakeholders are asked to post to the board once a week. Reports, agreements and surveys are also pasted on the board.

Participants are asked to use the board instead of email which is reserved for private correspondence and quick replies. Typically they will check their email at least each day however. Email is often used for distribution of administration documents; transparency is still an issue.

We hope to improve software videoconferencing as a tool for the virtual office. In Enlarging the Circle we have made it the meeting place of the advisory group (design team). Ryakuga has videoconferencing rooms established on the internet, as well as a videoconferencing guide. Focus areas include the importance of the group experience; facilitation, and the ergonomics of the room, both virtual and real.

It is an important concept of this process that online tools enhance face-to-face communication, not replace it. Our projects include "realtime" meetings and training events.

And even with new technologies, we continue to use the telephone, fax and teleconference.

The virtual office originated with the participatory evaluation and development of replication kits for Communities In Schools Newfoundland circa 1997.

At the time the challenge was to maintain cost effective contact with local coordinators working in community education projects throughout the region. This process was called networking and borrowed from the extensive reporting techniques of CIS and added internet tools, including an early web board.

The design of Sharing Our Future in 1999 also borrowed from CIS networking, reporting and training components. The goal of the project was to facilitate a process of community communication and cultural celebration in about a dozen rural communities. The concept was that this network of rural communities with communication capacity would be also used by professionals in community education, health and community economic development.

Like the CIS coordinators, the local SOF facilitators were paid employees and online reporting and networking was part of their job description. They were also asked to develop their own websites on free internet services. These facilitators, for the most part, were unskilled in using the computer for communication.

Enlarging the Circle has a number of stakeholders who will use the virtual office in different ways. The advisory group (design team) and evaluation committee will use videoconferencing; the steering committee will use email and the discussion board; the local committees will be offered use of the virtual office; the public at large and expatriates will also be invited to join the discussion on the web board, and the facilitators will make daily use of the tools.

The virtual office will be evaluated with a view to further improvement. Quantitative data will include how many people used the tools and how many times. Qualitative questioning will ask what worked and what didn't for the participants. The design team and participants alike will be asked to suggest ways to finetune the process.

Finally, the process will be highlighted in the documentation and evaluation reports.