Sheryica Official Launch in Rotterdam

Youth Agora presented Sheryica, the Platform for Youth Information Workers, during the ERYICA General Meeting in Rotterdam, 3-6 December 2009.

In the Sheryica platform, Youth Information Workers from the 8000 ERYICA Information centers will be able to share stories and discuss topics about Youth Information. Sheryica will thus be both a dissemination and collaboration tool for the thousands of Youth Information workers in the ERYICA network.

Every platform member can create his own profile and choose his information centre, if already published on Sheryica, or enter the details of a new one. The profiles of registered members are listed with powerful search functionalities, that allow to select members based on their competences or country, thus helping in easily find experts and partners for projects.

Stories and outcomes from activities can be published on the platform, embedding pictures from Flickr, movies from Youtube and presentations from SlideShare. The other users can comment on stories. Stories can be entered in any language and the embedded Google translation is available to read them in any other language with the same layout.

 Platform members can also participate in discussions; an animated tag cloud with the most common discussion topics is shown on the home page and in the sidebar.

Integration with existing social networks was important in designing Sheryica. We use the social networks, namely Facebook and Twitter, in multiple ways:

• New content posted on Sheryica is automatically republished to Sheryica's Twitter account and Sheryica's Facebook Fan Page.
• Site visitors can bookmark and share stories on their personal Twitter feed or Facebook page
• Site members can be contacted by e-mail or through social networks, since the profile includes link to their Twitter and Facebook pages.

The final version of Sheryica is now available at http://www.sheryica.org.