Imagine you want to introduce a videoconferencing unit in a local hospital to cooperate with a hospital in Europe. How does one do this? What equipment does one need? Where will one get the funding? Where does one find others that have faced similar problems?

In almost all projects up-to-date knowledge about Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is crucial, but resources and access to this knowledge are very limited. Moreover, in most projects there is neither time or money to carefully compare the various options available. In such a situation, the experiences of others facing the same problems become invaluable. By learning from the mistakes and successes of others, one does not have to reinvent the wheel.

The adoption of innovations in the field of ICTs poses a problem in the sense that information is (excessively) abundant, rapidly outdated, unstructured and thus hard to retrieve. This hinders the acquisition of up-to-date knowledge by means of formal education and training, especially in countries with little financial resources. Moreover, the cost of ICTs restrict the opportunities to experiment and learn by doing. With information readily available but hard to find, and relatively limited opportunities to learn from one's own experiences, the sharing of experiences with others becomes an important way to become knowledgeable.

Undoubtedly, there are many 'stories' to be told about the introduction and implementation of ICTs. The stories deal with a range of problems and opportunities and with a variety of actors, project sizes, objectives, target groups and regions. People may learn how to use ICTs by exchanging these stories. The experiences (or 'stories') of others facing the same problems is invaluable, if only as a source of inspiration.

Knowledge is generated throughout the entire course of a project. Our objective is to capture the learning process that accompanies the introduction and implementation of ICTs in a project in exemplary stories. These stories describe good practices and lessons learned from contributors' experiences. The collected stories are stored in a database on this web site, and available to anybody interested in projects with ICT components.

By means of a single keyword search one can retrieve a collection of stories from a number of different projects, all discussing a single issue. The readers could then learn about those experiences and contact the project implementer if they wish.