falklueke.com

“We become stronger conference organizers through the experiences and feedback of our audiences,” said Jen Pahlka, Web 2.0 Expo General Manager and Conference Co-Chair.

Well, you have to. Otherwise you’d fail in your job and your company would go down the drain soon.

I was one of the critics of last years Web2.0Expo at Berlin Messe venue. If you have the absolutely wrong setting for a conference, you don’t have to care much about the content either. The BCC is at the heart of Berlin, it is used every year for Chaos Communication Congress.

Now I gotta wish Jen, which I think was doing a great job despite all well reasoned criticism last year, and her team a lucky hand when planning the conference slots and inviting speakers. Knowing that this is not America. You got to prove your ability to do more than just putting a bunch of ideas, speakers and presentation formats into an airplane to Berlin. Looking forward to see the result.

Date: 21st - 23rd Oct 2008
Location: Berlin, Berlin Congress Center

Something quite remarkable about the number of paper based magazines/newspapers which are printed on no demand:

But the problem isn’t with individual magazines but with the whole industry: As long as publishers consider it acceptable to destroy, unsold, twice as many copies as they ship to newsstands, the word “magazine” won’t deserve to appear in the same sentence as “green.” (Average newsstand sell-through is only about 34 percent.)

Jeff Bercovici at the Mixed Media Blog reports. Maybe that’s well known, but at least to me, that sounds very low. I don’t know the numbers for Germany, but I will try to find or research.

(via OTR)

Occasionally, I check what I can find about my former class mates on search engines. I think it is a good indicator on where the line of on-/offline people is right now.

It’s no surprise that most of the names do not result in at least one hit. But it starts to change a little bit: some of them are working at companies which offer employee profiles or something similar online. One year ago, even this was almost unavailable.

But still it’s a very few people I can find online that way. It’s easier to search for them on StudiVZ, the german facebook clone (even though I’m quite sure most of them are no students anymore these days :)). On Xing, in Germany a very popular business networking platform such as Linked-In, even less of them registered.

I doubt this will change soon. On the other hand, significant change already happened, compared to some years ago when I was one in three who were “googleable”. This is not the generation where the majority has grown up with computers and the net already. I think it’s the last one before.

Michael Arrington, the main writer and founder of TechCrunch, sometimes picks up topics from Germany. For example today. “German tech bloggers can’t stop posting” about a new startup which is announcing it’s upcoming launch by using some online spots without any message, he writes.

In fact, I never heard of it. And I think my eyes and ears are quite open to new stuff. “Deutsche Startups”, which Arrington links to, in my opinion is nothing but a PR blog (self description: “to inform in extensio about aspiring german startups”), financed by well known venture capitalists and investors.

The thing I wonder about the most is that Arringtons posting is showing his cluelessness about the German scene. Of course the german market is much smaller than the US market, but it’s much harder to find any successful “viral marketing”-dontknowwhat here. And according to the well-hated Technorati (which is probably wrong but the same degree of being wrong for all, so you can compare the data anyway), the buzz about this company is much higher in the english language world. For german language blogs, it counts 20 references only right now. That’s just: nothing.

I’m sorry Michael, but that’s something you could and should have checked out before writing your post.

Yep. You can buy me. Well, my content. A new (german language) blog will be starting in may.

The green is coming to Berlin again: spring is returning, slowly, steadily. Just like many people from all over europe do: if you walk on the streets now, hang around in cafes or bars, you’ll hear a mixture of spanish, italian, french, czech, polish, american and british english as well as “euro english”, swedish, danish, dutch and sometimes you’ll even hear some german.

And in fact, I really like that. Will be a nice spring and summer. I think I need a camera.

From last wednesday until friday, in Berlin the german “blogger and other net inhabitants” conference re:publica’08 took place. For the second time, most of the german language blogosphere and international guests came into the great location of the Kalkscheune in the very center of Berlin (geographically, hence a center does not exist for real in this city).

About 900 people registered for the conference and I really don’t have a clue about the real numbers. It was a great meeting place to me with some coffee, club mate, beer based talks. I moderated a panel on political video podcasting on friday, which is online available (german only). Sebastian Reichel from the german Ministry of Work and Social Welfare, Robert Heinrich from the german Green Party, Bernd Steinmann from the labor union ver.di and scientist Jan Schmidt from the Hans-Bredow Institute discussed about the now-and-then impact of political videos on the internet. I had a good time with these four very smart guys, who turned out not to be aliens in the online world.

Since I moderated a panel on the topic of Politics on the Internet at re:publica’07 too, I really enjoy a look forward on next years re:publica’09: in beginning of June the European Parliament Elections will take place, in September or October the german federal elections will follow. It will be a great time for discussions and in-depth-workshops for all those who are interested in internet based political communication.

I met a lot of very nice people. Old friends whom I met online for the first time more than 10 years ago, new faces I never met before but know for years via the net and absolutely new ones. I really enjoyed the time and hope to see all of you again next year.

(I did not write articles on anything regarding the conference since I was involved into the programs committee.)