TRN was founded in 1996 by regions from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the UK. From the beginning the members have insisted on the necessity of including political represenstatives in the activities of the network. Therefore projects and other activities have always had the political support of the participating regions.

Workshops

Interregional workshops have been created, which have throughout the years initiated projects, some with European funding, some independently, to increase the positive effects of technology in the regions concerned. It is believed that on a regional level concrete activities are best started and coordinated for practical reasons: short communication lines etc.

The workshops dealt with the following subjects: e-Government, education, health care and SME's. Some topics resulted in applications for proposals for the 4 th ,5 th and the 6 th Framework program.

Projects

Various important projects have been developed during the years. Amongst the more notable ones we find for instance the following.

The Infoville project, with the Valencia region as coordinator, in which Seven different regions took part.

Another was the Centuri21 project with West Sussex as coordinator and eleven partners.

From 2006, InnoSME project is running.

Conferences

The results of interregional activities and new projects have been presented to members and other interested organisations at annual conferences, aimed at dissemination of knowledge and steps forward to more cooperation. Each year 200-300 participants attended, among who were member representatives, other regional representatives, industrialists, civil servants, politicians.

The most important conferences were those at:

• Alicante, Spain - 1997
• Bari, Italy - 1998
• Tanum, Sweden - 1999
• Venice, Italy - 2000
• Valencia, Spain - 2001
• Cardiff, Wales - 2003
• Gothenburg, Sweden - 2005

The main topics at the conferences have been the progress in the development of the Information and knowledge society.

In recent years have the e-Government issues and the enlargement dominated the subjects.

As dissemination of best practices always has been one of the main purposes of TRN, the success of these conferences and the practical follow up, can surely be considered as concrete results of the network.