Today's ND11 Event, Billingsgate

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Created on Saturday, 21 May 2011

One of the things that plays on my mind a great deal is whether or not we have actually reached any of the most vulnerable people in the work that me and my small team have been doing since the end of 2009. But, I feel more optimistic this week than ever that we now have all the tools available to make massive and groundbreaking strides into the millions of adults in the uk who have not been online. There are three major reasons people have never used the web – motivation, skills and price.

Today we are announcing that this one wobbly champ is going to become a network of many hundreds of thousands of digital champions who will formally and informally train people in the wonders of the web. We have commitments for 100,000 volunteers to get millions more online by 2012. We know that 9/10 people not online know someone who is and we know 70% of people want to learn from a trusted friend so I think this is a vital step. Hundreds of partners from the PO to mecca bingo to the scouts have all said they will help build this network. I owe them big time as my role just got a lot easier! The second thing we are announcing is 3 different deals for a PC, support and broadband for under 100 pounds – we really hope that with this, cost will be taken off the table for people.

Its very exciting to see these two things come to fruition as the team have been working on them for a while as have all our partners without whom nothing would be possible. You can read our press release here, but I am off to welcome 1000 of our new digital champions to ND11 to show them the things we have developed to make their role fun and easier – including helppassiton.co.uk. The highlight of the day will definitely be the show at the end of the day by Stacey solomon, queen of the jungle – I will report back!

There is still so much to do – I feel frustrated at the complexity of some of the myriad of brands trying to reach people who are offline and at some of the bigger companies that have not make the pledges I think that they could. However when I think back over the last year and the momentum that is building then it is very encouraging.