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Today, I attended the speech of Barack Obama at Street of the 17th of June/Siegessäule. As I did, another estimated 200.000 people came to hear Obama speak. On my way back, on an escalator at central station, I was asked by two nice elderly US citizens why I’ve been there since they could simply not understand what’s on a u.s. presidential candidate so interesting to so many people here.

My answer was just half of the truth, I have to admit. I said that I studied political science and one of my main subjects was political communication. I was interested in the setting, the scenery and the speech of a presidential candidate abroad. But thinking about it later, I have to add some more remarks (even though this post is going to have some lengths). Continue Reading »

Everything seems to be social. We have OpenSocial, CorporateSocialResponsibility, SocialNetworks, Social Democrats (diminishing) and Social Welfare (diminishing, too).

I’ve been to SocialCamp in Berlin this weekend (my now main employer newthinking communications was one of the co-hosts). Two days with the aim to find out which web 2.0 techniques may work for the purposes of nonprofits and non-governmental organisations. And two days full of talks, discussions and politics.

Some people from NGOs turned out to be great and very interested in using the web as their platform, from call-to-action to (in Germany still tough) web based fundraising solutions. Some so called social entrepreneurs were on stage and some of them were more or less deterrently in their concepts, behaviours and interests.

It’s always a bit tricky when it comes to politics. I’m convinced that you got to deal with reality when trying to change the world in the direction you’d like to see it more than with utopian visions. So I was a little bit undiplomatic sometimes, I guess, demanding people first to inform themselves and judging later. I’m sorry if I was rude.

All in all, it was a good weekend with a lot of nice people from different corners of the field of the more or less social anything. Hope to meet some of you guys again, soon. Thanks!

“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

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.)

Yesterday I attended the web monday in Berlin. For more than two years now, it’s a place where new startups, ideas and projects can be presented to a web crowd, from programmers to journalists to users to investors to…. Well, everyone.

Yesterday, two new software projects and a short introduction to an upcoming conference, the Re:Publica’08 were shown.

The first of the two projects was keiala. It’s a twitter-interacting social calendar tool, making you tell people what your are going to do next based on your entries at you keaiala-calendar. Smart stuff, the presenting guy Alex Lang did a good job. He even provided some “user” interaction: the audience should vote on a new designs main color. Of course there was no way of finding an absolute majority for one out of seven choices given, but pink seems to be out of the race at least.

The second project was vizeo.net. Company representative Jascha Vogel faced some tough questions on a Revver.com based platform which aims to provide new and more functions and especially a focus on the german market. It turned out to be a little bit unfair when the speaker does not have real time access to Twitter while the audience is live deconstructing his business approach.

Well, 40-something people attended and I had a nice evening there. Web monday Berlin obviously is alive.

After reading this story on Gawker.com, I feel like living in paradise a bit. Here in Berlin, you are not welcome as a smoking guest in public transport. But I think that’s the only thing you are not allowed to, with the exception of not having a ticket. Even seen weed smoking and puking people on late night trains, not jailed for anything. A bus driver told me once: “you are allowed to bring in your beer and drink it - as long as you keep the bottle with you when leaving.”

Right now, the public transport in Berlin is on strike. For the first time since communists and nazis striked in a joint effort in 1932.

I’m living here for several years now. Some intermezzo with Hamburg, just a flirt, nothing serious. And I really like this town, even though it’s dirty and full of remains by an armada of caninae.

I can’t describe what’s going on right now, but I think this city - which is continuously changing - it’s changing once more and maybe this time it’s a step I really don’t like.

Berlin Main Station in May 2005. // CC-BY-2.0-License / Ralf Schulze

Berlin is a decentralised complex, most of it’s public known life happens in the districts of Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Mitte. But the recent (during the past three years) developments are changing Berlin to a museum-like place. First the buildings at Potsdamer Platz, then the new Central Station and all those Idonknowtwhere-Arcaden shopping malls like at the Frankfurt Allee, they are some kind architeutonics. A lot of blue skinned glass, light grey concrete and some steel or wood is changing the face of the city. And not in a very good way.

I can already imagine how the buildings will suffer in 10 or 15 years, how they’ll look like some ruins, homes of the leftovers of a past without thinking of the future, a reminiscence of the post adolescence of the city of the young and the creatives, the once-place-to-be (if your primary goal is not to become rich but to become famous or inspired).

Since you always need about 30 mins in Berlin to get from one place to another, I think the most important thing to have here is a nicely working mobile device. Public transports availability is very good in Berlin, even though you got to learn it when arriving here for the first stime. But it’s still missing one important feature of a 21st century capital: plugs for free.