http://www.visitsweden.com, the best website in Sweden 2008 and also nominated for a Webby award 2009, will soon be even better.

We’re quite pleased with how the website has been recieved since it’s updated features and design launched in August 2008 but there’s still more to come.
The purpose of this next phase is to improve on how visitsweden.com communicates with the tourism industry and existing and potential partners. An exploratory first phase is completed and our web and design agencies are now working on how to proceed.

Stay tuned here in the development blog for future updates.

• The CommunityOfSweden.com Widget that allows you to show community content on your own website.
• The possibility for you to invite your friends to CommunityOfSweden.com

Let’s take a quick look at the two feature here below.

Widget

A widget is a snippet of html code that you can copy and paste into your own site. This will then show CommunityOfSweden.com content on your blog or website according to the template you choose.

You can customize the widget any way your want or you can choose to use one of the ready-to-go themes.
(and if you’re a member you can limit the widget to only show your personal content if you wish)

Perhaps you have a blog and you want to show some nice photos of Sweden or you’re responsible for an interesting attraction in Sweden and you don’t have an online community of your own - well now you can show CommunityOfSweden.com content on your site and help inspire people from all over the world to travel to Sweden.

Click here to check out the CommunityOfSweden.com Widget.

Invite friends

Members of CommunityOfSweden.com can now invite their friends to join the site and also do a search amongst their contacts to see who are already members and then send a friend request to them.

It works like this:
The member enters their username and password to any of the supported web mail providers (hotmail, yahoo, gmail etc) and we’ll do a search of your contacts emails and the community member’s emails and see if there are any matches. If there are matches we’ll encourage you to send friend requests to them and if there are not you can send invite emails to them.
Don’t worry, your privacy is important to us. We will not store your username and password. We will not send any unwanted emails to your contacts.

The more the merrier we say and hope you’ll agree We all want to be with our friends right? If you have friends who are interested in Sweden then why not use this service to send them invites? Enjoy!

Click here to check out the invite friends feature.

We’re developing a “widget” for CommunityOfSweden.com. This widget might best be described as a web page element that you choose how it will look and what it will contain and that you can then paste into your own blog or website.
Right now we’re focusing on showing photos and stories in these widgets.

So if you have a blog or website and you want to show some of the amazing photos from CoS on that site, now you can! It’s completely free. We get visits to us from clicks in the widget so everybody is happy

Here below are two simple design mockups of the widget.

This design mockup of the CommunityOfSweden.com widget shows the creation process. Available sizes, number of photos and stories, color themes, tags etc

CommunityOfSweden.com design mockup widget - shows examples of three different sizes: normal, slim and wide, and various amounts of photos and stories.

Disclaimer: The design mockups above are created in a software called Balsamiq Mockups. I got a free license by agreeing to test it out and write about it here.
I have to say I love it! I created these mockups with lightning speed. It’s very easy and the design result it just right according to my taste. This is what my own mockups look on paper anyway
So you’ll be seeing more of these mockups in the future, I’m sure.
View a video of how it works here.

I’ve been invited to this year’s ETC e-Business Academy in Lillehammer, Norway where I’ll be the presentor and moderator of a 75 minute workshop;

“CommunityOfSweden.com - case study by Tommy Soll√©n, VisitSweden”

I look forward to the two and a half day event as a great way to meet people in the travel industry, show off our great work and be inspired and learn from other’s.

Take a look at the programme here.

It’s been almost a year of hard work and we’re very happy with the result. It’s been a few days now since it went live and the response so far has been amazing!

I’d especially like to mention:

• Popular and relevant user generated content from the CommunityOfSweden.com is shown on the new visitsweden.com
• An extensive implementation of Google Maps to show special points of interest in Sweden and to navigate the site.
• Bigger, better and more beautiful photos!

Our own Margareta Björnberg, senior webmaster, has been the project manager of the entire project.

Design by Starsky.
Development by Cloud Nine.

Darryl De Necker was the first to reach 1000 points and Susanne Västman was very close behind.
We’ve awarded them both with the amazing photo book “Swedish!”.
About the book:

“Ingalill Snitt is a photographer with a mind of her own, a highly personal way of seeing and selecting motifs. Together with Marita Jonsson she has travelled through Sweden in search of the Swedish soul. Is it to be found in our love of nature? In our sense of form and design? In our architecture? There is no explicit answer, but the pictures speak of a desire for infinite snow-covered expanses, wind-worn cliffs by the sea, bare facades, and pure, simple forms for everyday objects.”

Here are some Questions and Answers with our first recognized superusers!

Tell us why you’re so active in CommunityOfSweden.com?

Darryl: I love meeting people, I love learning new things, and I love networking. And being a member of CommunityOfSweden.com affords me that opportunity. Afterall, it’s all about Sweden the country I live in now.

Susanne: Trough my work I met a lot of people who is working with tourism in Sweden. During the years I have come to the conclusion that it is very much variousity in how different companies and communities showing themself towards the rest of the world and inside Sweden. Especially up north where I come from. That made me curious.. I found the community by an accident, visiting Visit Swedens site and now I cant stop!
I absolutely love the interest among people around the world taking an interest in Sweden. I had no idea the interest was so genuin all over the world! In my work I have the computor on and is logged in the whole day..If I have a minute or two I look at peoples pages and photoes! In my work I have a lot of phonecalls and sometimes they keep me wait..there is a minute again!
Also I started this updating everyday news, I found out that there is several members that is regulary visiting my page every day just to see what I wrote. That is very motivating!

How do you think CommunityOfSweden.com sets itself apart from other online communities?

Darryl: Transparency. That for me is one of the keys to the success of the site. There’s no private area, or a “friends” only section. You can see who was on your page. All the comments, all the photos, all the stories, all the forums, everything is open, and that I find appealling. There’s nothing to hide, so everyone can learn from everyone else. Another key that seperates this site from others, is the fact that the subject matter is very focussed. It’s only about Sweden. It’s not trying to cover the Northern Hemisphere, or the globe, or be all things to all men or women. It’s plain and simply, only about Sweden. That in itself focusses the membership too.

Susanne: The biggest differens between this community and other must be the common interest of sweden and that everyone, almost, has a story to tell, pictures to show or questions to ask. It is Sweden that is the subject.

What’s your favorite feature in CommunityOfSweden.com?

Darryl: My favourite feature is “My Guestbook”. It’s a place where your friends, strangers or new members can write messages to you. It’s good to see notes there and it’s really good to catch up and chat to others, learn new things, teach new things and have a good time.

Susanne: I like the communikation with everyone the most! I have met some really nice people in the community and I wish they all could come and visit me!

What’s your least favorite feature in CommunityOfSweden.com?

Darryl: My least favourite feature is “I was here”. Not because it doesn’t function well, not because of where it’s positioned on the page, and not because of the colours. But because on mine, there aren’t a lot of flags yet, not a lot of places visited, not a lot of places seen. The entire North of Sweden is empty. Then I look at some of my friend’s “I was here” map, and they have flags all over the place. You can hardly see any blue. So I don’t like the feature because, every time I look at it, it reminds me of how much of Sweden I have missed out on still, and how much I still have to see. And that it’s about time we booked that elusive trip to Kiruna.

Susanne: I am not a regular in the forumpage..I like to go in and read there sometimes but compared to talk directly on the front page feels more alive. Also I must admit that I havent yet taken the time to understand the newest sharingconcept..

Do you have a favorite memory during your time in CommunityOfSweden.com that you can share with us?

Darryl: My favourite memory was the day a friend of mine, who shall remane nameless, changed her profile picture from a beautiful, slender lady sitting on a couch, to a flower, and then to an alligator lying on a river bank. She said it had something to do with marketing, and sending out a message. I think it worked. It’s really funny though.

Susanne: I sure have! The best one is the one who includes one of the members in the community from Italy who was sending me a note that he was searching for a family who lived in Luleå in 1979! He was hichhiking towards the midnightsun in Norway and was picked up by this family and got a lift all the way and an invitation to spend a night on his trip down through Sweden later on. He did and stayed for a week. But then during the years he lost contact with the family and asked if I had any way to search for the family.. I took my detectiveglasses on and acually found the family!! I called the lady the same day and explained who I was and my mission. This now elderly woman was so happy that she started crying, they had thought of this young man several times during the years and she told me that when they was picking him up that day in - 79 he was searching for snails to eat in the ditch! They now have contact again and she has even valled me up on the phone thanking me again for bringing them together!
Right now Ive become involed in a family from argentina who is seriously thinking of moving to Lycksele who is a town not so far from Umeå. Also nice to be able to help!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Darryl: I like the site because the tone set by our captain (Tommy), is very friendly and sociable. When you start your profile, he’s always there, with a message, to welcome you to the community, and that sets the tone for open and friendly communication. He’s also very open for suggestions and comments on how to improve, what is already a great site. That for me, makes this site and this community, truly remarkeable.

Susanne: I sure hope the community will live on and the numbers of members will grow as it has so far. Right now I wish I could somehow transform it into a real job! That would be great, having a nonstop communication with people around the world who is taking interest of my country! Wow!

Thanks for the kind words there Darryl The forum will get some improvements in the near future so I hope Susanne will start to use it more frequently.

As I always say; a community is only as good as it’s members.
By the looks of it we’re in good shape!

Win SJ train travel in Sweden worth SEK 5,000!
Sweden has 25 provinces and they all have something amazing to offer. By entering a travel story in english from your favourite province you have a chance to win some great prizes!

That sums up the competition in a nutshell. Now it’s time to present the winners!

Cedric Pieterse has won the 1st prize! He’s recently moved to his girlfriend in Uppsala from South Africa. He wrote a story about bicycling in and around Uppsala. Read the entire story here.

The visitors on the competition site voted and the VisitSweden jury chose a winner.

Here’s the jury’s comments:

“The winner has written an inspirational description of a relaxed and enviromentally friendly way to discover one’s surroundings, rich with facts and with personal insight into the richness of the city and nature environment.”

We also asked Cedric a few questions.

Where will you go with the SEK 5,000 in SJ travel checks you’ve won?

Well, Sweden is a big place, and I have not seen much of the country, so I will look at the maps and make a choice. I am going to Kiruna soon, so maybe South will be a good place to start…

Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to Sweden.

I am from South Africa, and I had an engineering company that I sold so that I could travel. I had been travelling for four years, and had a lot of travel partners from Europe that joined me on my trip in Africa. I drove an old Land Rover, so there was always space for people. One day a very nice Swedish girl came on board, and well here I am!

Why did you choose to write about bicycling and Uppsala?

I have always enjoyed cylcing, and did a lot of it in South Africa, so when I got to Sweden, I decided to buy myself a bicycle to explore the area a bit. I do not own a car yet so cycling is the natural choice. One really get in touch with yor surroundings on a bicycle, the sounds, smells, and the hills! Uppsala, well this is where we stay, and my girlfriend is working, so I had a lot of free time to explore the area. I am currently busy with SFI, a Swedish language course for beginners, so I do not cycle so much. I do cycle to class every day, come rain or snow. It is the ice that makes things rather interesting. Read my story “The ministry of funny walks” in the communityofsweden.com website.

You’re also a member of Sweden’s official online community CommunityOfSweden.com How do you like it?

I think it is brilliant! It is a fantastic way to get to know the culture, and the place a bit better. It is also a nice place to meet other people online, that shares the same interests. There are some nice photos as well, and this is an excellent tool to market Sweden as a travel destination.

What about Sweden do you think is most peculiar?

The language is pretty much out there as a peculiarity, also the way people stop for you at pedestrian crossings. I am not used to that. In Africa, no-one will stop for you. Every time I get to a pedestrian crossing here, I feel sooooo guilty for making a car stop. I tend to wait in the background untill there is no traffic before I cross over!

Cedric won train travel from SJ worth SEK 5,000. The other winners for their respective provinces won the photo book “Swedish!”. Here are the other winners:

Bohuslän
√Öke Svensson

Gästrikland
Stellan Eriksson

Halland
Siw Christensen

Jämtland
Markku Pispa

Lappland
Jeff Perro

Norrbotten
Thomas Lahtinen

Skåne
Karin Hoffman

Småland
Rickard Nordin

Södermanland
Eva Westin

Uppland
David Jaffray

Värmland
Entered by “V√§rmland”

Västergötland
Kerstin Thorell

√Öngermanland
Annica Sjölander

Öland
Annika Wilks

The books are in the mail!
We would like to thank you all for your participation and of course SJ for their great 1st prize.
Thank you!