ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are a number of people without whom it would not have been possible to carry out the evaluation of Scotland's Rural Community Gateway. Firstly, for the Rural Community Gateway ( RCG) site statistics, I am indebted to Clare Swinton (Account Manager, Sift) for her patience and clarity in accessing and presenting the statistics from the site database into Excel. Also to Bruce Wares (Content Manager, SCVO) for trawling through some of the member data.
For the Online Survey: firstly, many thanks to Sift for putting the online questionnaire onto the website, and for helping with the piloting phase. Secondly, I am once again indebted to Clare Swinton for sending through the weekly aggregated statistics; and to Bruce Wares at SCVO for keeping track of the questionnaires as they came in each Friday, to assess geographical coverage and whether certain areas therefore needed further 'triggering' to take part. Finally, my thanks to Susie Dingle for assisting in data management, through the production of pie charts and histograms. Finally, my sincere thanks go to the 241 survey respondents and to the 9 individuals who gave invaluable feedback in the pilot phase.
For the Workshops: I would like to acknowledge the local area organisers for their support in setting up the Infrequent Users Workshops: Jo Brown (Angus Glens); Amanda Burgauer and Frank Burns (Sharedbase and ALVO respectively, Lanark); Yvonne Hendry (Pultneytown, Caithness); and Marsaili MacLeod and Gillian Munroe (Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Skye). Also thanks to Bruce Wares, Sandra Hogg and Norman MacAskill for organising the Frequent Users Workshop at SCVO, in Inverness. In addition, thanks to staff at SCVO and at SEERAD for participating in the 'mission' workshops. Finally, many sincere thanks to all the participants of the workshops, who gave their time and travelled distances to participate, offer ideas and debate the future of the RCG.
For the review of Best Practice models, I would like to acknowledge the insights - through discussions, and through the illustrations included in this Report - into sustainable online communities, from Lawrence Clarke (Head of Client Services, Sift) & Helen Trim (Sales & Marketing Director, Sift). I would also like to thank Amanda Burgauer (Sharedbase.com) for pointing me in the direction of two key texts.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of the Scottish Agricultural College ( SAC), and particularly Dr Alan Renwick, as I transferred to SAC part-way through the RCG Evaluation contract period.