The Internet offers new opportunities to join in international
discussions without the disadvantages of costly and time-consuming
travel.
Doing more with less
Networking, long recognized as a useful tool for business, is
taking on a new lease of life as the virtual world of the Internet
offers new opportunities for international discussions without the
disadvantages of costly and time-consuming travel.
ITC has found that e-mail discussions can be particularly useful
in providing a low-cost and efficient way of promoting debate
between business in developing countries and trade development
organizations.
Extending the reach to a global audience
A recent series of e-mail discussion forums on the challenges
and opportu-nities offered to exporters in developing and
transition economies by e-commerce attracted nearly 600
participants from 86 countries, some 80% of them from the
developing world.
ITC was determined to share the debate at its Executive Forum on
Export Development in the Digital Economy, co-organized with the
Swiss state secretariat for economic affairs, with as many people
as possible. But at the same time, ITC wanted to limit the actual
event to 24 teams of government and business leaders from
developing countries, along with e-commerce experts, in order to
keep the discussion fruitful.
The e-mail debates enabled businesses in countries from Nepal to
Peru, and Viet Nam to Kazakhstan, to share their experiences of
e-commerce, from problems such as high telecom costs at home to
useful solutions such as global supply auctions.
Developing countries shaped the e-debate
The three e-mail discussions served as a complement to the
Executive Forum, and enabled interested parties all over the world
to follow the live debate and offer their own comments on
e-commerce issues. The debates were spread over three months and
enabled participants to offer input before the Montreux discussions
began and to continue exchanging ideas afterwards.
The first discussion was held in early September, ahead of the
Montreux event, and invited participants to provide
national perspectives on electronic commerce, and share their
ideas and experience in areas such as portal sites, e-commerce
strategies, community awareness programmes, and training programmes
for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Input ranged across the globe, from the United States to India,
Zambia to Russia, and included upbeat success stories of national
e-commerce portals or computer literacy programmes, and cautionary
tales about the problems of trying to do e-business in countries
where access to telecom services is neither universal nor cheap.
One participant also stressed the value of offering sites in
several languages, so as not to limit potential customers or
partners to a single, perhaps small, language group.
The second e-mail discussion took place during the forum, and
linked e-mail participants from around the world to the live
discussions in Montreux. Summaries of the Montreux discussion
sessions were posted within hours so that e-mail participants could
provide immediate feedback. Again, comments came from all over the
world.
The final session, in November, focused on identifying how to
develop these ideas into action and finding partners who might be
interested in helping e-commerce development on a national,
regional or international level.
The debates offered ITC a vision of the needs of would-be
e-commerce exporters in the developing world, right down to basic
questions such as where to start. But there were also some red
flags, notably on the need for balanced information in a wildly
fluctuating and emerging digital economy. This included calls for
the media to limit excessively positive articles about electronic
commerce, and to steer clear of buzzwords such as "market-space"
and "Internet pure plays".
Behind-the-scenes planning
The experience proved the usefulness of virtual networking, but
also offered a series of lessons in how to ensure that such
exercises are successful. In fact, planning, tight organization and
follow-up are just as important in the virtual world as in a
conference hall.
Most critical is to have a clear focus for the discussion, which
not only ensures that the debate remains on track, but ensures
visibility and support from staff and management. In this case, the
topic was export development and the digital economy.
ITC took care to ensure that it targeted a clearly defined group
of participants, focusing on developing countries, for the e-mail
discussion. One of its biggest successes was in securing
collaboration among staff by encouraging them to invite their own
contacts to register, using a short e-mail announcement that they
could forward. Staff targeted groups such as ser-vices exporting
associations, purchasing associations, trade development
organizations in developing countries, e-commerce experts, and
participants from ITC's Executive Forum, with a mix of business,
government and academia.
The wide geographical and national spread of the e-mail
participants, for many of whom English was not their first
language, highlighted the need for basic ground rules such as
keeping language simple and messages brief.
E-mail vs web
E-conferences on the web are not that uncommon, but conferences
by e-mail are fairly unusual. Yet they have distinct advantages.
For instance, rather than simply setting up a web site,
participants automatically receive new contributions to the debate
in their mailbox, rather than having to keep clicking on a web site
to find out what was going on or to put in their own comments -
something most people are too busy to do during their working
day.
But using the web as a reference point remains useful. To ensure
that the ideas and suggestions are not lost, ITC posted discussions
from the e-mail sessions on a special web site.
The e-discussions are available on ITC's Executive Forum web
site (http://www.intracen.org/execforum/)
Seven tips for a successful e-mail
discussion
• Aims. Determine in advance what the aims of the discussion
are, and how they contribute to the organization's strategic goals.
This will ensure visibility and support from staff and
management.
• Invitations. Assemble group e-mails by category and send off
short announcements. Conduct research and use your networking
skills to determine to whom you will send the announcements.
Encourage contacts to pass invitations to their networks.
• Promotion. Encourage participation through web, print and live
announcements, as well as web links.
• Content. Keep it focused. 'Chat' groups do not retain the
interest of busy professionals. Let participants know what the
collective aims are, and keep the discussion on track.
Make it easy for people to read. Group contributions by theme,
and cut out jargon and verbosity.
Don't forget to provide general information such as the aims of
the discussion, total number of participants and where they come
from.
• Ground rules. This is a new medium. Guide people on what to
expect and how to interact. For example, tell participants in
advance to write simply and concisely, and spell out what kind of
contributions you are looking for. Encourage bilateral networking
by listing the name, organization and e-mail with each
contribution.
• Technical issues. Remember to set up a listserve automatic
mailing list to ensure all participants receive all the e-mails
sent in to the debate, deal with bounced e-mails, manage incoming
requests, forward contributions to moderators, and post approved
comments. Put registration forms into a pre-defined database.
Monitor how many people are in the discussion, and from which
countries. Set up a system to help people register.
• Follow-up. Report results of the event. Send participants by mail
copies of relevant publications. Also, post the e-mail discussions
on a web site for future reference.
Lessons learned by Natalie Domeisen and Sarah McCue,
co-moderators of ITC's recent e-mail discussions on the subject of
e-trade for developing countries.
Getting the word out
This is adapted from an article in the latest OECD Observer magazine
(Rory Clarke, Editor-in-Chief and Sue Kendall-Bilicki, Senior
Editor). ITC encourages joint publishing and redissemination
arrangements with partners.