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How can you build a social web service that will support cultural exchange and regional development across a border which has existed for 88 years?

That was the task that we were given here at Socialsquare last autumn by the joint Danish-German project Grænselandsportalen. Funded by the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media as well as EU Interreg funds, Grænselandsportalen – which literally means Borderland Portal – is a online portal offering information on the border region between Denmark and Germany in order to promote much needed regional development and cultural exchange across the Danish-German border. It looks like this:

Today, Grænselandsportalen is a solid encyclopedia of the region, but it lacks ways to actively engage the inhabitants of the region in using and expanding the site. Based on a series of fieldwork visits to the region with interviews and participant-observation, we developed a conceptual sketch of the version 2.0 of the portal that turns the site into an online hub for cultural and social events and organisation in the region:

To present this concept, we built a website which not only showcases the website concept itself but also the research and analysis which led to it. Since the project has been transferred to the new cross-border regional authority, Region Sønderjylland/Schleswig and is currently being considered for funding, the project group has allowed us to share it with all of you.

So, come on in and have a look!