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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 »

With Markus Beckedahl of netzpolitik.org, one of Germanys leading bloggers, I published a short study on Politics and the Web 2.0 in Germany (PDF, german) today.

Our key findings were: German politicians and parties are yet unable to adapt online campaigning techniques such as established in the US or France for example. Some hope seems to lie in YouTube activities, but neither none of the parties nor the leading politicians has a MySpace profile. Some party groups do exist on StudiVZ, the leading german facebook copycat, and on Facebook itself.

If you are interested, I could translate some more of the findings. Leave a comment and I will try.

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!

The german Chaos Computer Club got some very benevolent media coverage during the last days. The Hackers club with more than quarter of a century of history is going popular while topics like data retention, fingerprints, cctv and other surveillance technics as well as voting computers are earning increasing attentiveness. It’s been a long debate among german hackers whether they should do public lobbying for or against anything.

During the past two years the CCC was appearing in the media, in the constitutional court, in the parliaments committees. The hackers have, while a lot of them still prefers to stay in the dark nevertheless, made a decision to use the system which is using the technology hackers strongly believe to be the better experts in. Well, expertise is nothing bad. But it will be very interesting for how long their public engagement will last.

You can’t imagine how a paragraph like this feels in Germany:

We recently got an alert from the Frank Lautenberg Senate campaign announcing the creation of an “Action Center” on their website, but were disappointed to see that it’s the same web 1.0 approach: tell-a-friend, sign-a-petition, make-a-donation (while we collect your email addresses). (Techpresident.com)

I do not know any german politicians web site having those three elements implemented in a way it works. Even though you won’t believe it. Feeling least developed.

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.

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.)

I’m a little surprised by the overboarding creativity of German entrepreneurs. For example, take a look at a typical german breakfast.

It’s called Frühstück (by word, it’s translation is “early piece”). After I wake up and some time is left, I visit the bakery and buy some scones (”Brötchen”) or cut some slices of bread, butter it and put some jam or chocolate hazelnut cream, some cold meat or cheese on it. I drink a hot chocolate, tea or coffee, which is the most popular choice for breakfast in Germany. Sometimes I really like to have some variation in my breakfast, so I boil an egg or make some Müsli.

Of all the things eatable in the paragraph above, there is one thing to start with: the latest. Müsli. Last year a German startup went online with a nice web shop: MyMuesli.com. You can mix your very own Müsli by choosing from a list of ingredients. The company delivers your preferred mixture by mail.

Then, a few days ago, another startup went online. It’s a service called Sonntagmorgen, means sunday morning. And it’s all about your favourite taste of coffee. You are a real expert in coffee beans, in espresso, cappuccino and coffee grinders? You can mix your very own Coffee by choosing from… Well, you already know.

Now there is another service: MyCornflakes.com. And I’m quite sure we are going to see MyEgg, MyHotChocolate, MyButter… sooner than later Oh well, and not to forget MyCopyCat.com. If I sound like a cynic, you are right. They don’t use APIs, so I can’t mix my very own breakfast in widgets. Need some coffee, now.

Commentaries on the german Social Democrats Party (SPD) are going nuts these days. Since losing the majority in the 2005 federal election, the oldest german party with more than 140 years of history is troubled. Most elections went down the drain, and the last one the SPD can claim to have won in the state of Hessen (Hesse) is leading into new trouble.

The former state party of the German Democratic Republic SED, later called PDS, has survived and can rely on some kind of trust especially of older people in the five eastern german states which formerly were the GDR. The SPD and the Green Party are more or less center-leftist parties, with a clear attitude towards the center of the system and partly even conservative. When some unionists and left wing politicians of the SPD left the party in 2005 to form a new party called WASG, the SPD was in deep trouble: the WASG was going to breed the ground in the western states of Germany. When former-communists of PDS and the still post-natal WASG joined forces and renamed to “The Left”, they clearly targeted at the west german parliaments: with 5%+ of the popular vote, you grab seats there

The voting in Hesse set up a new scenario for the SPD: before the election, they strictly denied the possibility of a coalition with the Leftists. After the vote turned out to be not very helping in setting up a ruling coalition, the party faced a public and internal discussion on how to deal with the Leftists. In eastern states, coalitions of both parties are nothing special. But the western states always were kind of taboo.

After some discussion, the leader of the Hesse SPD  Andrea Ypsilanti and the chairman of the federal party Kurt Beck agreed to some strange appearing model: the “Linke” should not be included in a coalition. But tolerating an SPD-led government built on a coalition with the Green party.

But despite all power games on highter party levels, some elected member of the parliament of Hesse is not willing to follow the party leaders choice, as turned out in the last days. Now Andrea Ypsilanti will not try to become elected in the beginning of April, the federal chairman of the SPD Kurt Beck is facing loads of criticism (he is said to have influenced the Hamburg elections in a very unprofessional way when announcing the then-expected Hesse deal).

So the oldest german party is in very troubled times now, behaving like a pile of chicken when facing a fox. Probably Kurt Beck will have to go, the foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is one of the speculated successors. But what’s already obvious now: bringing the SPD back on the right (or maybe left or centrist) track won’t be easy. And the former mighty working class partys influence will further decline.