falklueke.com

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.

My virtual desk is aching and so do I. It turns out to be a little bit problematic that days are limited to 24 hours. I don’t feel that well, since I feel that some of the things I do are not of the quality I’d like to see them.

In fact, I’m working on 7 different projects at the same time right now, just one of them to be ending during the next week. I think that’s nothing you should try out yourself, it makes your head burst, sleep less than what’s acceptable.

On the other hand, a lot of what I’m doing right now makes me happy. Things are going in a good direction, some projects I had in mind for a while are most probably going to be realized. Need some vacation soon, anyway. Between articles, concepts, ideas and long lists of lovely stuff, my head gets heavier every day.

It turned out to be easier than I expected: I did not twitter for one week.

Here’s my protocol of not twittering in max 140chars per day.

Monday: Switched off IM notifications. 2 new followers. Not removing the mail notification.
Tuesday: Missing twitter when using public transport. Passive consumption, 2x.
Wednesday: Following a scene I would have twittered. But I did not do it.
Thursday: Taking a look at other ppl tweets due to may 1st clashes in Hamburg.
Friday: Being contacted by new people on skype. Didn’t happen for weeks.
Saturday: Switching off the laptop. Switched off my mobile, too.
Sunday: Switched on my mobile, again. Returning to twitter in the evening.

Twitter is a nice-to-have and very addictive platform. Since it’s available wherever you are (except some places without mobile connection), you are automatically trying to migrate as much of your communication as possible to this platform. Twitter is some relaxed chatterbox-tool, it’s something inbetween TV (you still remember? yer not young anymore…) with all it’s real life soap operas, and corridor talks with colleagues. Nice to have, but nonethelesse, it’s still dispensable.

Imagine you are a real conservative. You believe in principles such as law and order, you think everyone breaking laws should be arrested and some at least receive death penalty. And you think you found someone who shares the same ideas and values you do. He’s a politician at the GOP, a tough guy known for being a real conservative.

And then he turns out to be one of the founders of one of the most famous cracking group with more than 20 years history. This is the story of Tony Krvaric, as Rawstory reports. Swedish born Krvaric is said to be Strider, one of the founders of the Fairlight software cracking group. For some time, their slogan was: when dreams come true.

Some worlds have collapsed, I’m quite sure.

[via Torsten]

Facing a very stressful week, I decided not to use Twitter beginning with monday morning.

I integrated Twitter in my daily life during the last months. It became a powerful and easy-to-use-wherever-you-are communication interface to me, i. e. when using pub trans I usually read and wrote tweets on my mobile phone. So I stopped abruptly with this  behaviour on monday having two major goals: saving some time that I need other non-communicative tasks and the other one was of course to find out, how much influence on my life Twitter already gained.

The first thing worked quite well. Twitter is still a dispensable communication tool. It’s easy to use other devices / interfaces to talk to the people you need to talk to.

The second goal I already miserably failed. Twitter is an attention drawing service. First, I switched off the IM functions. Since then, my Jabber client seems to be dead - compared to the weeks before. Then, I tried not to go on m.twitter.com when waiting for a bus or the subway. In lieu thereof, I read newspapers online sites. And I was pretty bored, since not much happened there when I pressed »reload«.

On tuesday, I saw a scene at the tram I thought to be very funny. I could have told the other passengers of the tram that I think it’s funny. I could have screamed it out. I could have made some real noise. I did not do it.

But I would have done on twitter. I would have told people about it. But this time, I didn’t. Sometimes, I miss Twitter. But not twittering seems to save a lot of time.

I did not switch off email notifications. And during this week, some real new followers appeared. In a short period of mental derangement, I once even clicked on “follow this user”. I was so used to this procedure..

I think I will return to Twitter on Monday. Even though it’s a mess and waste of time. And I will write a follow-up, too.

“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

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 working on eCampaigning related stuff since 2002. This was the time when - during the Federal Election in Germany - many people believed we would see the internet to be the revolutionary power of campaigning. At that time, this was nonsense, of course. And it still is, since european politicians in general are offliners - mainly because of their age.

There is not much good literature on eCampaigning in a political context in Europe. At least, I do not know it and I strongly believe to be quite good informed on that. We have to read books like »Blog Wars«, like »The Revolution will not be televised« and to compare it to our political system and the background patterns of a very specific political culture in every single european country. To get a general understanding of what’s going on in terms of politica science, I usually recommend Pippa Norris «A Virtuous Circle», a truely great book on the change of campaign mechanism. Even though it’s not covering the last years of evolution of internet based political campaigning, it’s worth reading.