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Internet On-line Service for the Toronto Session

With the continuing development of electronic communication, Toronto 2000 will be the first General Conference Session that can provide a level of on-line access so that members around the world can experience a virtual General Conference Session as it happens.

Many of our members have come to expect a high level of service from the World Church as it communicates its program. With the rapid development of the World Church website, over half-a-million individual members and visitors are taking advantage of this electronic communication avenue each year. They now expect as a matter of routine the ready availability of news, text material, pictures, graphics and video clips.

In order to capitalize on this useful technology and to fulfill both the World Church's mission and the members expectations, plans are underway to bring this "virtual" General Conference Session program into reality. It is planned to provide regular news updates, feature stories, background information, pictorial presentations, video highlights and even updating webcams-inexpensive automated video shots of the Session-at regular intervals. In this way, the membership and interested visitors can be made aware of the significance and process of General Conference Sessions as never before. The overall communication plan includes interfacing with the audiovisual broadcast team and their audio and video productions. Session photography will be also stored and offered digitally by the Internet team for instant downloads by publishers.

The provision of this On-line Toronto 2000 Session service is not expensive. The on-line team will utilize the existing web server which will be complemented by some additional hardware. A four-member technical support team will cover web technical support, including encoding, design, and layout.

The General Conference Communication Department is committed to assisting the Session Planning team in fulfilling its mission and mandate of sharing this highly important event by making it accessible in as many ways as is feasible. This includes using the providentially provided technology to speed the sharing of the gospel message. [Jonathan Gallagher]