An overview of the EU funded Communities of Practice site for Innovation Mainstreaming.

1. CoP Innovation & Mainstreaming: an overview of the online space www.innovation.esflive.eu

2. I am registered in CoPIM as “Lavender.” This is what I see when I log in. These are six tabs that help me navigate round the site. The front page is not static. It is updated with new content created by users in the community when they write blog posts, events or resources.

3. In the right column of the screen I see a welcome message. I can click on the Mission statement and see what this community means by Innovation and by Mainstreaming by clicking on the links. I can see how many registered people (members) and how many unregistered people (guests) are visiting the site at this moment. This is a picture of the members of the CoPIM steering group in Lisbon.

4. As well as being able to see which users are online… I can see previous issues of the monthly CoP - IM newsletter, easily subscribe or unsubscribe to forthcoming newsletters by email or by RSS feed. I can see the Tags of this community. The bigger the tag (key word/s) the more often it appears on this site. I click on a tag to see everything in the site that was tagged with this key word (or expression).

5. On the left side of the screen I quickly get to my groups, my blog and my account. The news aggregator collects relevant things from outside the site. I’m not sure how, but it doesn’t matter! Under “Content” I can create content on the site, see my unread messages and check my own tags and recent posts on the site. There are some “Quick Links” to get me easily to key places on the site.

6. If I click on the main tab for Community at the top of the page I find all posts related to community. I can also click into a group where I might want to participate.

7. When I click on the tab Members I can see an outline of all the members in this community.

8. Clicking on a member’s name takes me to their personal profile.

9. In Events I can find out what’s happening. I can find out more information about the event and download relevant documentation by clicking on it.

10. To find tools, methods, cases or stories of innovation mainstreaming I go to Resources. I can download the documents and read how people have used them. I can write my own comments about the tools.

11. About takes me to more information and context about the community.

12. I can find answers about how to use the site in Help.

13. For more information contact a facilitator: