  In recent years there has been a paradigm shift from centralised to
geographically distributed resources. Individual entities are no longer able to
host or afford the necessary expertise in-house, and, as a consequence, society
increasingly relies on widespread collaborations. Although such collaborations
are now the norm for scientific projects, more technical structures providing
support to a distributed scientific community without direct financial or other
material benefits are scarce. The network of European ALMA Regional Centre
(ARC) nodes is an example of such an internationally distributed user support
network. It is an organised effort to provide the European ALMA user community
with uniform expert support to enable optimal usage and scientific output of
the ALMA facility. The network model for the European ARC nodes is described in
terms of its organisation, communication strategies and user support.
