Projectname: Telemark Heritage (for emigrants from Telemark)
Portal: TELEMARK HERITAGE
Starting: 10. Sept 2003 Ending: 31.12.2004
Process after this: Continuous
Based on: Prosjekt (2003) (2004):
The prestudy Telemark Heritage for emigrants Compleating
1. Background, targets and frames for this project.
1.1 Background
Telemark County Council has taken the initiative to invite the Project’s steering committee for the pre study to a meeting, to prepare a follow up project to establish a website for Telemark emigrants.
This project is mainly based on the pre study report April 1th 2003. When this report was published, Telemark Count Coucil asked all the municipalities to give their propotions to complete the project. One of the responders was Fred Øveraas, web-responsible for Skien municipality. He was invited to this steering committee-meeting. After that he was asked to take responsibility to establish this new web-site – Telemark Heritage.

After this meeting, Telemark County Council has announced they are not able to continue their initiative, their work in the project or coordinating activities. However they will be a part of the supporting network.
1.2 Target
The project target is to:
1.2.1 Establish a website – Telemark Heritage – based on the pre study. And also based on experiences from similar projects in Norway. The project period will be from September 2003 until December 31th 2004. Therefore there is both long time goals and short time goals. This projectplan is first of all directed to goals and activities which is necessary to establish a functional and interesting website for worldwide users – Telemark heritage. The Link between Telemark Heritage on Internet and all the facts available in Telemark and elsewhere – is the webmaster-function.
1.2.2 Telemark Heritage is ment to be the first-choice site for everyone seeking information about their Telemark roots.
1.2.3 Our main focus according to ”how to make use of Telemark Heritage” – is to make the user interface as easy as possible.
• Easy to use
• Easy search-functions
• Good and relevant links
• Good and functional schemes for any registrations in our web and databases..
1.2.4 The project description for Telemark Heritage – should as a minimum contain this:
• Mapping all rescources necessary to establish and run our site.
• Mapping and organizing the responsibility and tasks for all activities in the practical work, and for the continuous and periodic work with Telemark Heritage. First of all: Who is responsible for the many tasks.
• Prepare which channels are the most relevant channels to make Telemark Heritage known abroad.
• Make a pre-study of relevant added values – as a result of this common municipality project in Telemark – taking advantage of Telemark Heritage.
1.3 Frames for the establishment of Telemark Heritage 2003.
1.3.1 Time:

a. Establish the domain, and starting to put on Facts and links – will start during September
b. Who is doing what? – organising as practicle – should be clearified by Sept 15th.
c. Provided financing – Telemark Heritage should open on Internet by Sept. 15th. – with menues and some functional facts.
d. Available facts in english should be linked from our site, from excisting sources by turn of the year.
e. Fullfilling this project - Telemark Heritage – will have a time-frame until Des 31th 2004.

1.3.2 Financial rescourses required, and minimum time for working the tasks in every municipality

a. Work-factor
Telemark’s municipality-administrations must guarantee a minimum use of time – 10 hours - from the persons in charge of delivering data to Telemark Heritage. The contact person from each municipality, might be an employee or another person in the local area with special interests in these subjects. These persons work for the project cannot be capitalized, at this time of the project. But these enthusiasts are invaluable for the success of telemark Heritage.
b. Investments and operating capital – 2003 Buying this domainname heritage.telemarksnett.no:
lisences, programs and annual fees: ca. 3500 kr.
Webdesign, guestbook and development ca.17600 kr.
Consultants ca.10000 kr
Totally ca. 31100 kr
(prepaid by Skien municipality, and this is covered by annual fees from all participating municipalities – 2500 kr from each should be paid in 2003.
Translation work.
There will allways be needs for translaters into english. These costs will be covered up under the post: Continous development - watch... d)

c. Capital needed i 2004 (and annually)
This capital must be guaranteed by all participants in this project by the end of November 2003. Potential interests for this project in the market, should create enough money every year, and by all means the Telemark Municipalities. We will try to get finacial contributions from the museums, central authorities, financial interests in USA and Canada – and local and national industry. Therefore it’s important to link our project to Norway’s 100 year celebration in 2005. (One hundre year since we were released from the Denmark-Norway union).
Annual fees ca. 3500 kr
Travelactivities ca. 10000 kr
Continuous development ca. 20000 kr
Consultants ca. 11500 kr
Totally in 2004 (annual payments) ca. 45000 kr
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Finaced by a symbolic fee 2500 kroner from each participating municipality.

1.3.3 Workers:

a. Webmaster Telemark Heritage.
Skien municipality has offered their own webmaster to Telemark Heritage - as a web-master – for 2003 and 2004. All municipalities in Telemark will have to dedicate one person to the project - bing their contact-person and coordinator. This person should coordinate all municipality-interests and communicate regurlarly with Telemark Heritage webmaster.
b. Other personal resources
We intend to build a national, international and regional interest network for Telemark Heritage. This will be adminstrated in common. Building this network will be a fellowship between the project-administration, webmaster and representants from all municipalities.

1.4 Webshop - Telemarkproducts – and other programing needs for the future

A professional webshop is really expencive, with ectreme secutrity requirements. In america and other parts of the world – is creditcards a most common means of payment. Credit-card-functions must excist on webshops, and this is very expecive. Therefore we will – for a start – establish another kind of web-shop, simple and cheap, to make it possible to handle prdouctsales from our web. We will also direct potential buyers directly to shops and producers – who is on Internet allready.
In the future we’ll probably be able to invest for seeking-function-databases on our web, to find emigrants and their roots in Telemark. But we’ll stat directing users to allready established functions with links to other sites.
We also intend to establish an archive for photoes and facimiles.

Such functions are to expencive at the moment, but we will develop these step by step – depending on finances.

1.5 Telemark Heritage contents
1.5.1 Content from the very start
(depending on translations)

• emigrant-views
• genealogical data
• information from churchbooks
• Churcyard-views
• Available historical and cultural information from Telemark (in english)
• Map - Telemark and all municipaliteis + picture-galleries (links to galleries)
• Studies – possible Telemark subjects
• link-library for valuable relevant information - national and international
• News from Telemark (and ather interesting news)
• Reports from international projects related to Telemark and/ or Telemark Heritage
• Museums and museumsactivities
• Photoes - pictures – cards – from Telemark
• Guestbook
• Make Telemark Heritage a natural first choise for Telemark descendants – for englisk-speaking people with roots in Telemark
• Our work should primary be based on what others have prodused and presented , - as we do not intend to waist time. Our main view is to ”make facts available”!
1.5.2 New facts and subjects on Telemark Heritage – for 2004 and further.

• ”Telemark – an artisic oasis”
• Painters, and other picturbased artists
• Authors and poets
• Musisionsand composers
• Folklore
• Textile- and national costume artists
• Smith-art
• Woodcarving and other sculptural art
• Photo- and graphic art
• Buildings art and buildings usage
• Food- and drinking-culture
• Film and theatre
• Ornamental art
• Other cultural activities
• Studies and subjects according to art and culture
• Photo-database

1.5.3 Activity-plan – prosjekt - Telemark Heritage
1.6.1 Spesifications

Telemark Heritage project – activityplan – shall provide Telemark Heritage to be an interesting and functional collection of relevant information for descendants of Telemark emigrants. The website-tools and services from Telemark Media – will be signed medio September.

a. The project administration group was established in august
b. The projectplan and invitation to participate will be sent to 10 municipalities in Telemark medio September, asking for one responsible contact person from all municipalieties.
This contact person must have a dedicated responsibility for his or her municipalities interests in this project.
c. The interest-network will be created as times goes by – after having response from the municipalities.
d. Building Web-design and functionality will start in August, and is ment to be functional on Internet by October 1th.
e. Translations from all reports in this project will be translated and on net – by Telemarks and Skien municipality’s visit at Norwegian Autumn festival in Minot, USA, in October. As much translated documents as possible should be on Telemark Heritage by this time. After this – ”we’ll build the road as we go”.
1.6.2 Market research on
• Generic research and genealogi
• Demand-research – potentially how many people could possibly be Telemark Heritage supporters? They will probably be members of this group ….descendants of 343.000 emigrants from Telemark.
• Making Telemark Heritage become an easy way to get information - and this will release new sources of information for genealogists in norway. ”What happened to my relatives who left Norway? How communicate in a better way with foreign databases?
• Telemark Heritage is mainly based on english language. German and French will not be included by this project, if not abroad and national supporters will make it finacial possible. And translaters are willing to take the job.

1.6.3 Establishing Telemark Heritage (heritage.telemarksnett.no)

• We bought an adjusted copy of telemark.no – to make the costs as low as possible.
• We’ll design and develope user-spesifications.
• We’ll make leads for investors on the norwegian and foreign marketplace
• We’ll work out foundations for marketing towards other potential finacial supporters

1.6.4 Establishing this project requires organizing tools for all info-handling, and as effective as possible.
This prosjectplan is concluded by a recommendation from all partners in the Coming Back Home pre-study, to establis and develope Telemark Heritage website. Guidelines and documentaton we will establish:

• Technical resourses local and extern.
• Resources in english language – local and extern
• Schemes to make datacolletion easy.
• Resources for system (web) development and data-punching
• Maintenance userguide
• A system for making desicions for all tasks and development
• Proposals for announcements
• User-guide for Telemark Heritage

2 Organizing and responcibility
The person i charge for this project will participate in all project meetings.
Other resource persons :
WEB-master – Telemark Heritage – Skien municipalities webmaster (2003-2004)
Project group will be responsible for the project for the period 2003-2004.
Juridical and administratively responsible for Telemark Heritage is elected for two years.
The project group is elected for 2 years. Election for a new period – before 31.12.2004.
Prosject Manager 2003-2004 is: Nils Hoppestad.
Members of project administration: Rolf Haugen, Fred Øveraas.
Consultant: Hermod Monsen.
3 Planning, follow ups, reports

Planning, follow ups and reports through this project – will be produced and communicated to the partners through a simplified issue of the PLP-method.
4 Riskanalysis/criticle factors
The finacial risk is related to the annual project costs before we directly or indirectly are able to realize the economic results through increased sales of products and services from Telemark.
5 Project meetings
The project management group will arrange meetings monthly, according to a presceduled plan. Subjects who requires decisions, will be sent to the projectgroup member one week before the meeting. Reports from every meeting will be sent to all partners in this project.

5.6.1 This project prosess – will be based on the pre study and the established competence-network - and thereby help us make the growth and development of Telemark Heritage as good and fast as possible
The pre study report made clear that in the very first period of emigration, Telemark was the dominating County in Norway – according to:
- Total number of emigarants
- Number of emigrants compared to numbers of inhabitants in Telemark
Several of the Municipalities in Telemark do have good summaries about emigration, especially from specific areas and for defined periods in their municipality .
The Pre Study showed a big interest outside and inside Telemark and Norway – to evolve this subject. This interest is coming from all parts of the society, included industry, public organisations and privat persons – especially in USA and Norway.
The dimensions of emigration from Telemark was quite big. More than 49.000 persons. If we put to use the most common calculation methods, there might be more than 343.000 descdendants from Telemark emigrants in the United States and Canada – or more than twice the number of inhabitants in Telemark today.
6 Contracts and agreements
Contracts will be signed between Telemark Media and the Project Management. Skien’s City Manager will sign and Skien Municipality will prepay the investments - on behalf of all partners in this project – to make a kickstart for the website, Telemark Heritage. This contract also defines all running annual costs and licences/fees. Skien will send an invoice to each municipality’s City Manager – according to required amounts as said in this project plan chapter 1.3.2.
All extern expertice required to establish Telemark Heritage on the Internet, will be called up by Skien Municipality through the web-master and the Project Management. All according to the financial limits described in this Project Plan.
Skien Municipality – as written above – will fully support this intitative, and therefore prepay all the costs (2003). Thereby this project will have a kick-start – and Telemark Heritage will appear on Internet ultimo September.
Skien, September 10th 2003
Nils Hoppestad (sign)
Project Manager