FEPA News

FEPA NEWS 45 14 News from FEPA Members Earlier this year we were pleased to hear that on 16th January 2024 the Swedish and Norwegian Philatelic Federations signed a cooperation agreement by which they committed themselves to use the same host for their websites. In due course they expect that this will provide cost advantages for both associations. The Swedish Federation has also donated its website to the Norwegian Federation which means that in future they will be able to offer new functionality and other benefits at lower cost. The two Federations are also discussing other areas for cooperation including memberships and literature. Conscious that many philatelists in each country collect the other one, they want to make membership of each other’s societies as easy as possible by using the same platform. Their hope is that this cooperation may eventually extend to other Nordic countries though this is still an aspiration. Øistein Bøe, recently elected as President of the Norsk Filatelistforbund, kindly added a comment: The cooperation on website and digital strategy is formalised through a cooperation agreement with cost sharing. We launched the new Norwegian site based on the Swedish one in March and we are gradually building new functionality. The technology used is WordPress, which enables us to add functionality by apps. This means that good solutions developed by one country could easily be adopted by another country. The vision is, for example, to allow access to club auctions, digitized journals and handbooks, databases of cancellations etc. and sales products through the site along with necessary information (news, regulations, guidelines etc). A dilemma going forward is also to keep the balance right between social meetings and digital meeting rooms (we are a social and friendly hobby). The Sveriges Filatelistförbund (SFF) website is at filatelisten.se and the Norsk Filatelistforbund is at https://filatelist.no/ Closer Cooperation between Norway and Sweden on websites Bill Hedley writes: