There it is, the first time that "The Week in Bloggingportal" has been published from Brussels.
It's also the first time under the new European President Barack Obama and the first time under the new British government.
That's kind of special, isn't it?
Showing posts with label bloggingportal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggingportal. Show all posts
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Sunday reading: The Week in Bloggingportal
It's worth flying with him!
Picture: © joachim_s_mueller / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
re:publica 10
As you may have noticed, the conference has kind of started already for me and my fellow Bloggingportal.eu editors with our collective translation experiment last week.
The little experiment was part of the preparations for a workshop eurosocialiste, Jon, Martin and I are organising under the modest title "How to reach one million Europeans" (which is a reference to the European Citizens' Initiative) at the conference on Thursday.
Today, I'll still have to do some organisational stuff in Berlin - my old home - and then tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock the conference will kick off. The organisers say that we will be 2,500 people which sounds pretty big. So hopefully I will find the time to write one or another blog post, sending live impressions from this crowd of "social mediatics".
I also hope to meet some of you who I just know virtually so far or who are interested in the eurosphere - so just comment on this post, send me an email or contact me on Twitter if you'd like to meet, even if it's at the sidelines of the conference in case you're not attending.
PS: You can also talk to me directly when you see me on the conference venue: I am young, male, white, and I use a laptop.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
The Week in Bloggingportal
This week it was my turn to write "The Week in Bloggingportal", the summary of Bloggingportal.eu activities and the euroblog posts we, the portal's editors, have promoted during the week.
Friday, 9 April 2010
Intermezzo
Begin intermezzo
Okay, I promised not to blog here for 2-3 weeks and so take this as a little intermezzo - but this successful experiment we have started at Bloggingportal.eu (where I am a co-editor) is just too nice not to be mentioned here.
End intermezzo
Okay, I promised not to blog here for 2-3 weeks and so take this as a little intermezzo - but this successful experiment we have started at Bloggingportal.eu (where I am a co-editor) is just too nice not to be mentioned here.
End intermezzo
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Well-thought posts - and a break
Well-thought blog posts rarely get the attention I have paid to them.
There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong because I do not write well-thought posts for the amount of attention they receive. Although it helps to get some attention. Yet, in principle, well-thought posts are just ways to focus my own attention.
In a well-thought blog post ideas are put into order. A well-thought blog post is holding ideas that would disappear otherwise. Explicit or implicit links in these posts are as much an expression of appreciation as they are a way of connecting with ideas and thoughts of others to make their reflections become part of my own reasoning.
Well-thought posts never get the amount of attention I have paid to them, but when I read them again I know why I wrote them. I remember how much attention I devoted to them. And the thoughts re-appear instantaneously. The thoughts I have linked in the past get re-linked to the present. My attention gets refocused.
All my blog posts are crystallised thoughts. But often they are just crystallised thoughts of laughter or anger. Sometimes they are just a way to handle insomnia. Sometimes they are procrastination. Yet, from time to time - though too rarely - they are solidified reflections that have been going around my mind for weeks.
These well-thought posts are long posts made shorter. A lot of what has been thought for these posts is not written down and a lot that was written down has been erased in the final version. Many words that were in these posts have gone because they did not fit. They have disappeared for good reason before being published. They did not belong where I first thought they could be.
Well-thought posts never get the attention I have paid to them because you cannot measure attention to words and links and pictures that have been erased. And well-thought posts may have also remained unwritten for a long time or unpublished though finalised for days, time spans you cannot see once the posts are made public.
In the end, any external attention - readership or comments or links - can only be directed towards those words that have been written down and published, not to the words that have not seen the daylight. And so external attention may even be a useless concept in the case of well-thought posts.
I believe that well-thought blog posts are not written to get external attention because the attention can hardly be appropriate. The attention well-thought posts receive while they are thought and written thus has to be self-sufficient - which is why not many of them get thought, written and published.
Well-thought posts may not even be good.
This is the last blog post for the next 2-3 weeks. I will continue commenting and tweeting moderately but the blog is having a definitive rest.
In the meantime, follow the latest posts of over 550 euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu. You will see that this blog is just a small part of an ever growing treasure - the eurosphere - so please enjoy all the other gems you find in our treasure chest!
There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong because I do not write well-thought posts for the amount of attention they receive. Although it helps to get some attention. Yet, in principle, well-thought posts are just ways to focus my own attention.
In a well-thought blog post ideas are put into order. A well-thought blog post is holding ideas that would disappear otherwise. Explicit or implicit links in these posts are as much an expression of appreciation as they are a way of connecting with ideas and thoughts of others to make their reflections become part of my own reasoning.
Well-thought posts never get the amount of attention I have paid to them, but when I read them again I know why I wrote them. I remember how much attention I devoted to them. And the thoughts re-appear instantaneously. The thoughts I have linked in the past get re-linked to the present. My attention gets refocused.
All my blog posts are crystallised thoughts. But often they are just crystallised thoughts of laughter or anger. Sometimes they are just a way to handle insomnia. Sometimes they are procrastination. Yet, from time to time - though too rarely - they are solidified reflections that have been going around my mind for weeks.
These well-thought posts are long posts made shorter. A lot of what has been thought for these posts is not written down and a lot that was written down has been erased in the final version. Many words that were in these posts have gone because they did not fit. They have disappeared for good reason before being published. They did not belong where I first thought they could be.
Well-thought posts never get the attention I have paid to them because you cannot measure attention to words and links and pictures that have been erased. And well-thought posts may have also remained unwritten for a long time or unpublished though finalised for days, time spans you cannot see once the posts are made public.
In the end, any external attention - readership or comments or links - can only be directed towards those words that have been written down and published, not to the words that have not seen the daylight. And so external attention may even be a useless concept in the case of well-thought posts.
I believe that well-thought blog posts are not written to get external attention because the attention can hardly be appropriate. The attention well-thought posts receive while they are thought and written thus has to be self-sufficient - which is why not many of them get thought, written and published.
Well-thought posts may not even be good.
This is the last blog post for the next 2-3 weeks. I will continue commenting and tweeting moderately but the blog is having a definitive rest.
In the meantime, follow the latest posts of over 550 euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu. You will see that this blog is just a small part of an ever growing treasure - the eurosphere - so please enjoy all the other gems you find in our treasure chest!
Saturday, 27 March 2010
My petition for full RSS-feeds in euroblogs (updated)
Update (29 March): The European Parliament webeditors have reacted promptly and their blog that I used as an example below now has a full RSS-feed that you should follow here if you aren't following them already now.
They are impressing - and if you think you don't have time to follow so many blogs, just stop following this blog and follow them!
First, for those not at all familiar with the subject of RSS, I recommend reading Jon Worth's post on why RSS is great.
Second, I should remind those who already have a clue what RSS is that you can either have a full RSS-feed, one that translates whole blog posts into RSS content, and partial RSS-feeds that just send the first lines or a special summary so that you have to click into the feed to read the full post on the original blog website.
Third, you can find a bunch of good arguments for and against full feeds on the web, but for me it kind of boils down to the question whether I want readers or visitors.
So here are my personal arguments:
I only read every third or fourth blog post from feeds that don't show the full article because I don't take the time to click on every article that might be interesting although with a full feed I would actually know whether it is interesting.
Blogs that have only partial RSS-feeds
Take for example the blog of the EP-webeditors:
It is a blog with great posts written by great people, but I only read them about once a week because they don't provide me with a full feed. I get their partial feed every day, but I mostly don't click on the articles. Which means that they spend time writing good blog posts that I don't read although I would love to.
One could say that this doesn't matter because if it is about visitors I'd still come more often on their blog than I do when I am just a reader. But now, because I don't have a full feed, I am a just-slightly-more-frequent visitor but a much-less-frequent reader.
This means that I will comment less frequently, link their articles less frequently and promote them less frequently on bloggingportal.eu. I might also miss important information or interesting discussions that I don't anticipate from first lines (the ones I see in the partial feed) that didn't attract my attention (Update: like this wonderful article on Klaus Welle that I had almost missed hadn't I written this post).
And there is another important problem with partial RSS:
In full feeds I scroll though semi-interesting articles to see whether there are at least parts of the text that I find interesting or links to more interesting blog posts that I didn't read so far. I then might click on a link to these blog posts in the full feed, something I wouldn't have done in a partial feed.
So having only a partial feed reduces overall traffic to blogs that are linked in articles of these blogs because I will miss these links whenever I don't click on an article in a partial feed. So the interest to get more visitors to one's own blog or the usage of partial feeds for other reasons [update] reduces the chances of other blogs or websites to be noticed, which reduces the overall online conversation and readership.
So in short: Please use full RSS-feeds!
PS.: I have twice as many people who follow my feed than I have unique visitors.
* Please don't overestimate the formulation, that was more a spontanious formulation after I went through the fifth partial feed.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Happy birthday, bloggingportal.eu!!!
One year ago, the most important innovation of the Euroblogosphere was born: Bloggingportal.eu
Thus, exactly one year ago, I wrote in a post about the newly established Bloggingportal.eu:
But for now, happy first birthday, Bloggingportal.eu - and be assured we'll continue our work to make you better every day!
Other congratulators: The EP web editors (even on Facebook!), Kosmopolit, Eurosocialiste in English & French, Europaeum, The European Citizen, Un Européen jamais content, Matiz Andrea, Grahnlaw
Thus, exactly one year ago, I wrote in a post about the newly established Bloggingportal.eu:
I hope that through this tool, the interest in the EUropean blogosphere will raise, especially ahead of the European Parliament Elections this year!And at the end of 2009 I could actually conclude in another post, now as an editor:
Altogether, Bloggingportal.eu is a great example of a living Euroblogosphere that will hopefully become part of a pan-European blogosphere in the very near future - and we hope that the portal motivates you to contribute by writing your own blog or blog posts on European affairs and to become part of the family!This looks like an excellent development, although I wish that the platform will see even more success in the future, serving as a real catalyst for the emergence of a true European public sphere.
But for now, happy first birthday, Bloggingportal.eu - and be assured we'll continue our work to make you better every day!
Other congratulators: The EP web editors (even on Facebook!), Kosmopolit, Eurosocialiste in English & French, Europaeum, The European Citizen, Un Européen jamais content, Matiz Andrea, Grahnlaw
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
2009 - a summary
2009 has been the year the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, and as usual almost nobody outside Brussels has noticed.
What everybody noticed were the European Parliament elections 2009 that have dominated this blog for the first half of 2009. The last election day and the Monday after the elections were the most successful days (in terms of visitors and hits) of this blog in the first semester. I should also remind you of the Th!nk About it! blogging competition where I was invited to moderate a discussion at the final event in Rotterdam.
The second semester was much more quiet with the summer break - until my visits to Hungary where I spoke to local and regional journalists and to the "Brussels bubble" in October. This visit was extremely fruitful, meeting people I only new through blogging and Twitter, and discussing issues that are very relevant to my own research as a political scientist. These days in Brussels have been covered in a four-part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.
On 3 November 2009, we finally saw the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty that has put the EU on a new constitutional basis on 1 December 2009 - probably the last "major" reform for at least a decade.
And over the year, we got many new and renewed faces for the top EU posts: Jerzy Buzek as European Parliament President (my comment), José Manuel Barroso as European Commission President (see the very first Chasing Brussels Podcast episode), Hermann van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton for European Council President and "Foreign Minister" (Eurobloggers' comment) as well as Pierre de Boissieu as EU Council Secretary General (comment by Grahnlaw) and his successor Uwe Corsepius (my portrait. Not to forget the new European Commission as proposed by Barroso at the end of November that is awaiting confirmation in January.
Well, and we have seen the amazing evolution of Bloggingportal.eu that has become the point of reference for the Euroblogosphere that I expect to continue to mature in 2010, where we will have to move to more policy-related issues after a year dominated by institutional and personality issues.
I myself am looking forward to 2010, not least since I know my own life will change again as I might move to Brussels for some time in Spring, and I will continue blogging as I did in 2009 - although I don't think I will be able to repeat the amount of almost 600 posts published over the year...
PS: My special thanks this year go to the Swedish Presidency Twitterers and blogging Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt for their work in making the Council Presidency the most transparent ever, serving as examples to build upon in the future!
What everybody noticed were the European Parliament elections 2009 that have dominated this blog for the first half of 2009. The last election day and the Monday after the elections were the most successful days (in terms of visitors and hits) of this blog in the first semester. I should also remind you of the Th!nk About it! blogging competition where I was invited to moderate a discussion at the final event in Rotterdam.
The second semester was much more quiet with the summer break - until my visits to Hungary where I spoke to local and regional journalists and to the "Brussels bubble" in October. This visit was extremely fruitful, meeting people I only new through blogging and Twitter, and discussing issues that are very relevant to my own research as a political scientist. These days in Brussels have been covered in a four-part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.
On 3 November 2009, we finally saw the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty that has put the EU on a new constitutional basis on 1 December 2009 - probably the last "major" reform for at least a decade.
And over the year, we got many new and renewed faces for the top EU posts: Jerzy Buzek as European Parliament President (my comment), José Manuel Barroso as European Commission President (see the very first Chasing Brussels Podcast episode), Hermann van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton for European Council President and "Foreign Minister" (Eurobloggers' comment) as well as Pierre de Boissieu as EU Council Secretary General (comment by Grahnlaw) and his successor Uwe Corsepius (my portrait. Not to forget the new European Commission as proposed by Barroso at the end of November that is awaiting confirmation in January.
Well, and we have seen the amazing evolution of Bloggingportal.eu that has become the point of reference for the Euroblogosphere that I expect to continue to mature in 2010, where we will have to move to more policy-related issues after a year dominated by institutional and personality issues.
I myself am looking forward to 2010, not least since I know my own life will change again as I might move to Brussels for some time in Spring, and I will continue blogging as I did in 2009 - although I don't think I will be able to repeat the amount of almost 600 posts published over the year...
PS: My special thanks this year go to the Swedish Presidency Twitterers and blogging Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt for their work in making the Council Presidency the most transparent ever, serving as examples to build upon in the future!
Friday, 18 December 2009
Bloggingportal.eu
Many of you will be heading into the holiday season now and when you come back to life in 2010, you should become a fan of Bloggingportal.eu - if you haven't been a fan until now!
The Bloggingportal is the most comprehensive and most useful compilation of blogs and blog posts focused on EU and pan-European topics and we are close to 500 blogs by now, in many European languages (although English is still dominating), including hundreds of topics and a diverse mix of bloggers.
"Who is 'We' in the last sentence?", you may ask.
We are the editors of Bloggingportal.eu, about a dozen Eurobloggers so far. We are EU officials, communication experts, students and scholars or political activists from different EU countries, and we are tagging (almost) all posts that can be read through the full RSS-feed of the Bloggingportal.
In addition, we are choosing our preferred posts for the front page, mirrored in the Editors' Choice RSS-feed as well as in the Editors' Choice Twitter feed. And we add Europe-related posts from blogs not focused on European affairs to the feed whenever we find them.
But since we are doing this for no money just because we think it is worth promoting discussions about European and EU topics, we are also looking forward to your contribution in order to share some of the work. You can propose interesting blog post or full blogs that should be added to our feed(s).
You can also become an editor. We are especially looking for those of you who can help with less common European languages (since we are pretty much focused on English, French, Spanish, German and only a few other languages so far) or with programming and designing the interface of the platform to make it more user-friendly. So if you want to help to promote good European blog content, feel free to contact us and join the team!
Altogether, Bloggingportal.eu is a great example of a living Euroblogosphere that will hopefully become part of a pan-European blogosphere in the very near future - and we hope that the portal motivates you to contribute by writing your own blog or blog posts on European affairs and to become part of the family!
PS.: And yes, you can also become a fan of the Bloggingportal on Facebook!
The Bloggingportal is the most comprehensive and most useful compilation of blogs and blog posts focused on EU and pan-European topics and we are close to 500 blogs by now, in many European languages (although English is still dominating), including hundreds of topics and a diverse mix of bloggers.
"Who is 'We' in the last sentence?", you may ask.
We are the editors of Bloggingportal.eu, about a dozen Eurobloggers so far. We are EU officials, communication experts, students and scholars or political activists from different EU countries, and we are tagging (almost) all posts that can be read through the full RSS-feed of the Bloggingportal.
In addition, we are choosing our preferred posts for the front page, mirrored in the Editors' Choice RSS-feed as well as in the Editors' Choice Twitter feed. And we add Europe-related posts from blogs not focused on European affairs to the feed whenever we find them.
But since we are doing this for no money just because we think it is worth promoting discussions about European and EU topics, we are also looking forward to your contribution in order to share some of the work. You can propose interesting blog post or full blogs that should be added to our feed(s).
You can also become an editor. We are especially looking for those of you who can help with less common European languages (since we are pretty much focused on English, French, Spanish, German and only a few other languages so far) or with programming and designing the interface of the platform to make it more user-friendly. So if you want to help to promote good European blog content, feel free to contact us and join the team!
Altogether, Bloggingportal.eu is a great example of a living Euroblogosphere that will hopefully become part of a pan-European blogosphere in the very near future - and we hope that the portal motivates you to contribute by writing your own blog or blog posts on European affairs and to become part of the family!
PS.: And yes, you can also become a fan of the Bloggingportal on Facebook!
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