ECHOcommunity.org – The First Year

At the Southeast Asia Conference in October 2011, ECHO launched the new ECHOcommunity.org website and internet portal for our network members. Since it has been up and running for a year, we decided to update our readers about how this site is being used. As of September 30th, 17,136 individuals or organizations have visited the site. They have viewed 234,596 pages, with an average of 6.90 pages per visit, and spent an average of 7 ½ minutes per visit. These visitors represent over 169 different countries, and over 60 different languages. We now have over 3543 active members, with 1262 of them having joined ECHO since the website was launched in October 2011.

Our goal is for ECHOcommunity.org to be much more than just a repository of information; we want it to be a networking tool. The following features have become very popular in the ECHOcommunity.

• ECHO Courses and Conferences are posted on the Event
Calendar. Registrations for the ECHO Courses are accepted through this site and links are provided for registrations for ECHO Conferences.

• The site can be translated into 54 different languages.
This is however a machine translation, and is therefore not a perfect translation. Some technical and information documents have been professionally translated into different languages and are available for download from the site.

• Documents are searchable and available for free download, including ECHO Technical Notes, ECHO Development Notes, ECHO Asia Notes, and many others. The new Ag Options for the Poor book is the exception, but it is linked to our ECHO Bookstore and can be purchased from there.

• Groups are available. Join groups organized by geographical area, popular plants or agriculture techniques. The groups include forums and blogs where you can browse information submitted by others, or start a new thread with a question for others to respond to.

• Information regarding our research projects is posted on
the site; you also have the opportunity to contribute information about your projects.

• Seed information. Detailed plant and seed information is
available to assist you in determining what you should plant, and how. We encourage you to submit your seed trial report to the ECHO Seed Bank through the form on this site. This will enable us to better understand which crops grow best under various conditions.

• Request Trial Seed packets from our online store (this
feature is for Active Development Workers only)

• EDN Articles Forum. Let us know what you would like to see
discussed in upcoming issues of EDN, and submit potential articles.

• Contact Us. The “contact us” link allows you to send a request
for information directly to the Technical Response Unit.

• Links. We have updated our subject-oriented list of links to
outside sources of information. This list includes many of the links referred to in the Ag Options for the Poor book.

• Career Center. Active development workers are able to post and view development-related job opportunities.