So why do we need to talk about the future?

• bloggingportal.eu is a loose network of bloggers. The site has been developed and maintained by volunteers in their free time which is not the most sustainable structure…
• There is only a small core group of bloggers that is actively engaged.
• There is no permanent organisational structure.
• And you might have guessed it: no money, no funding, nothing
• The page is rather slow and could certainly be made more user-friendly.
• We don’t have  enough users – only a highly specialized group of EU geeks.
• The link to national blogospheres is missing.

What needs to be done?

• We need to think about whether we need bloggingportal at all? What is the niche for bloggingportal?
• We need more bloggers to be actively engaged in the project.
• We need  more users and more visibility.
• We have to think about what core functions should be developed? How to attract more users?
• How to organise permanent links to national blogospheres? How to get an overview of EU debates in different national blogospheres?
• What are possible incentives for bloggers that decide to  help bloggingportal?
• We might need a complete re-development of the page (new design, new user interface, new functions…). But what exactly are the functions we should focus on? (are categories or tags necessary? what about different languages?) And the underlying problem is how to finance a new version of bloggingportal? Or is there any volunteer out there who would like to develop a new version of bloggingportal?

The solutions?

• Where to get funding for a redesign of bloggingportal? I think the only agreement we have is that we should not seek EU funding for the site.
• Should bloggingportal become some sort of social media business? Is there a business model somewhere?
• Is sponsorship the solution? If yes who would be interested?
• Is there a chance to cooperate with NGOs or private foundations or other institutions?  Who would be interested?
• How to create a sustainable service that is a credible and independent source for EU content in social media?
• How to get more people interested in collaborating with bloggingportal?
• How to attract more editors and users?

As you can see: a huge list of problems and a lot of question marks!  We would like to hear from you – whatever your background is. Maybe you can help us to think a bit outside the box.  Are there any similar projects around that we could draw inspiration from (organizational structure and design/usability)? Do you know anyone that might be interested in getting involved? Do you have a good idea for the future of bloggingportal?

Just leave a comment here or start the debate on our editors’ blog.

The competition will bring together journalists, journalism students, academics and experts from 27 EU Member States, neighbourhood countries and beyond, to write about global cooperation in international development. TH!NK3: Developing World will run from 24 March, 2010 to 31 August, 2010.

If you want to participate, just apply here! Since I was involved in the project last year I can assure you that Th!nk  is a lot of fun and an amazing learning experience.  You can also have a look at the previous rounds that focused on the European Parliament elections and climate change.

Here is the official trailer for TH!NK3:

To mark this anniversary the European Journalism Centre (EJC) published a nice article about the project. In a way we reached the aim there:  Bloggingportal.eu as a “featured resource” for journalists all over Europe

Don’t forget to stay updated with bloggingportal.eu issues:  You can become a fan of bloggingportal on facebook and you can follow us on twitter! If you are a twitter addict you might want to check out our editors choice on twitter!

We are also looking for new editors and volunteers that would like to get involved. Just write us an email and we will get back to you!

Im Tagesanzeiger schreibt Tobias Moorstedt über die europäische politische Netzdebatte, mit vielen alten Bekannten wie zum Beispiel: Linkfluence, Bloggingportal.eu, Jon Worth, Cafe Babel, Eurotopics, Perlentaucher, La Quadrature du Net Aber auch inhaltlich auf den Punkt gebracht und sehr lesenswert:

Im Netz findet Europa noch nicht statt

The new group took the name European Conservatives and Reformists (a contradiction in terms even in the name) but no-one thought to register any domain name for the new group before its establishment. So on 22nd June I had a look around to see what I could find – ecrg.info was still available and I purchased it and registered it with Google. Now more than 3 months on there is still no official ECR Group website as far as I can see, and the single page of my website has risen slowly up the Google results, so much so that I’m starting to get mails via the website from all sorts of organisations asking for information about the ECR’s MEPs and positions and even asking for speakers for conferences.

I will be blogging here and there – but without too much cross-posting (ok, once in a while I might post the link to a new post here). But, don’t worry: I will not close down kosmopolito.org.

My first post on ‘Ideas on Europe’  is a blogging introduction for academics. I thought it as a first post in a little series that aims at convincing  (and teaching) academics how to blog. If you have any ideas what I should cover next time, let me know in the comments!

Ideas on Europe aims to invigorate current discussion on Europe by providing an impartial, unbiased online platform where individuals can engage in informed analysis, comment, dialogue and debate.

The organisation behind the projects is the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) a membership organisation with “over 1300 academics, practitioners and research students”. The aim is to get UACES members to contribute to the new platform.  At the moment the new page (beta!) is pretty basic and not much content can be found (except a post by nosemonkey), they are in the process of recruiting bloggers  (or better: motivating academics!) to open a blog on Ideas on Europe. So if you are interested, you can apply here.

In my opinion, the idea behind Ideas on Europe is quite good: Providing the (missing) link between academics working on EU topics and the public. However, working in (EU-) academia myself it could be quite difficult to get scholars to blog and read blogs regularly.

First obstacle: Among academics the knowledge of blogs and web 2.0 is not as widespread as one would assume. (= not worth trying)

Second obstacle: Blogs (not EU blogs – nobody knows them!) are often regarded as second class media. (= not worth reading)

Third obstacle is a sentence you will hear a lot in universities: “I only publish in peer reviewed journals – only this is useful for my academic career.” (= not useful)

It is really necessary to address these three (possibly more) obstacles in order to get an academic audience.  I hope UACES will also  manage to motivate enough scholars to blog regularly about their research (in a readable style!). Only if they manage to get a critical amount of (new) bloggers and a (new) audience the platform will be successful. Another danger is  academics who will only post the abstracts of their journal articles on the platform (or even the whole article…).  Publishing posts with ”call for papers’ and ‘conference announcements’ will also not do the trick…

As a bloggingportal editor (and a feedreader addict!) I hope cross-posting bloggers will be in the minority. (so, UACES please check babelblogs and blogactiv before admitting bloggers!).

The focus this time is much broader and goes beyond Europe, however,  from a European perspective it would be very interesting to have someone covering EU climate change policy and  looking at how the EU  approaches the COP 15 negotiations in Copenhagen…

Check out the details:

TH!NK2 Climate Change is a 3 month blogging competition with a focus on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December 2009. 81 bloggers from Europe with featured guests from India, China Brazil and the USA, representing the world’s biggest players in climate policy, will come together on the European Journalism Centre‘s thinkaboutit.eu platform, to exchange ideas and debate the issues of climate change.

Participants are encouraged to report about stories in their own back yards; to bring out the local side of a global issue. The aim is to create a portal into the minds of 81 people, to show how each one experiences the effects of Climate Change policies every day.

Go to the official website to find out more!

So, we are interested in two things:

1) Who are the likely candidates that are tipped to become European Commissioner? What are the rumours in your country?

2) Who would YOU like to nominate if you had a say? Who would you support as a candidate?

Use the comments on this blog or head over to Jon’s post that already attracted several comments!

Here is my contribution

Answer to 1) In the case of Germany we have seen rumours that Peter Hintze or Peter Altmeier might be the nominee. But also political figures like Wolfgang Schäuble , Roland Koch and Friedrich Merz were mentioned in the press. I think the race will be between Hintze and Almeier who both belong to the inner circle around chancellor Angela Merkel.

Answer to 2) Germany should nominate  Joschka Fischer to become External Relations  Commissioner and eventually the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy . (I am aware that this scenario is very unlikely!) The position will be created after the  successful ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty and will replace both, the High Rep for CFSP and the Commissioner for External Relations (another uncertain scenario..).

Francisco G. Basterra (El Pais)

Global Vote, local mindset.

Lykke Friis

The EU elections are like a European soccer championship played in each national league with aggregated results.

Evenimentul Zilei

Send in the Clowns.

NikOs

To the 57% of Europeans: Not voting and at the same time speaking about a democratic deficit in the EU is pure hypocrisy

Kainde Manji

Nick Griffin is now a migrant worker. I wonder if he appreciates the irony…

Senior Swedish diplomat (on enlargement)

…the EU integration process is a qualifying process not a negotiation

A diplomat

It is not a pretty sight to have prime ministers drafting texts

Jason O Mahony:

Could it be that it was impossible to negotiate such a document between such a diverse bunch of reformers, religious conservatives, and people who are, shall we say, a little too fond of the stiff right arm?

Martin Kotynek

Finde ein Problem, das nicht existiert. Mache einen Riesenwirbel darum. Gib vor, es gelöst zu haben. Lass Dich dafür feiern.

Christian Meier (kressreport)

Es gibt sehr, sehr wenig, sehr qualifizierte Berichterstattung über Europa.

Leonard Novy

All das ist nicht nur banal und inhaltsleer – das ist praktizierte Europaverachtung (…) es bleibt es im Wahlkampf bei pro-europäischen Lippenbekenntnissen, populistischer EU-Kritik oder nationalen Themen

Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti

Zu komplex, zu schwierig, nicht in zwei Sätzen zu erklären. (…) So lange die Relevanz von Europa nicht täglich deutlich wird, so lange nur die nationale Karte gespielt wird, so lange werden die Bürger sich auch nicht an die Urne bemühen.

… a critical look at the disappointing turnout figures and the reasons behind it.

… a sharp analysis of  the results in different countries preferably in a comparative manner. You know the typical post about whether the successful party is in government or not and whether a national election is on the horizon.

… criticising the national focus of the election. Trying to show that the EP elections should not be used as a  protest vote

… an analysis whether the left really lost and the right really won (+ mentioning the economic crisis) using some fancy tables with statistical figures

… an opinion about the eurosceptic parties and the right wing radicals. Maybe comparing the BNP with the various Freedom Parties and the Greater Romanian Party? ITS reloaded?

… something about the success of the Greens or whether the Pirate Party will have any impact in the Parliament.

… but also discussing strategies what should be done better next time, both at  European and National level, you know communicating the EU better bla bla bla

… reflecting on the campaigns and all the different online projects

… ranting about the ignorance of voters, the lack of political knowledge, or why the media fails to cover the EU with an example how different TV stations or newspapers covered the election night.

… writing something about the challenges of the next European Parliament.

… some general thoughts on Europe vs. the nation state. The typical article on European identity or the lack of it…

… I should mention the Lisbon Treaty and the proposed reforms and whether the election results make it more likely to get the treaty ratified:  Ireland, failure of Libertas, political survival possibilities of PM Brown in the UK and the referendum plans of Cameron. I should not forget Poland and Chech Republic.

… speculating about the political groups in the European Parliament and saying something about the new group led by Cameron

… I could also blame it on the weather, the economy, the Commission or the political elite.

I really should write something like that but somehow I cannot be bothered today. So I might postpone it  for a few days (or weeks…)!

In the meantime I will be reading blogs! But what are the blogs writing about the European Parliament elections and the results?

If you find any good analysis or a good rant about the European Parliament elections why not add it to the bloggingportal?  – It might give you bigger readership and, at the same time, you help generating an alternative source for EP election analysis from all over Europe covering as many languages as possible!

Feel free to add your own posts and/or posts you think are interesting to the list here! You can also add blogs that write about EU affairs on a regular basis!

Here is the link (there is also a fancy bookmarklet for your browser!): http://www.bloggingportal.eu/publish

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen:

I would have preferred the PES to have a candidate for the President of the European Commission, but we do not, and we will not before the elections.

Andrew Moravcsik:

Final anecdote: On my way back out to Heathrow I quizzed the cabby about the European elections. Exceptionally, he was not treating it as a “second-order election” on national politics but seemed really concerned about Europe. This meant–predictably–he was voting UKIP, consistent with the principle that extremists are disproportionately mobilized around Europe. Why UKIP? “We signed on for a free trade area,” he said, “and now Europe is taking over British politics, one issue at a time.” I asked him what issues concerned him most. “Not really sure,” he said. When I pressed him, he named human rights and criminal law (Council of Europe not the EU), and troops in Afghanistan (NATO), and third-country (Moslem) immigration (not a European competence at all). Only an anecdote, but multiply it by a million and you have the record of every West European EU election and referendum of which we have records. Need we say more about the prospects for meaningful deliberation on European politics?

Jean Quatremer (via Julien Frish and Opinion Corner):

Our newspaper is convinced that [the European Parliament election] is an event that has to be covered – but in the same way a plane crash has to be covered. We don’t have a choice.

Fredrik Reinfeldt (Prime Minister of Sweden):

…the voters are rational, they realize that the EU election is not (as) decisive for their everyday life and for the future.” He continues to say that there is a “tremendous difference” between national parliamentary elections and elections to the EP since the EP “has no influence on formation of government or influence”

Libertas:

Libertas.eu, the website of the pan European people’s movement for more democracy, accountability and transparency in the EU, had more visitors mid-week than any other political party in the world. Figures from Alexa, the web tracking company, for Wednesday May 13th , show Libertas blazing ahead, leaving even the US Democratic party website trailing.

stefanhapper:

you can cheat with alexa stats, especially for smaller sites (as it depends on people having the alexa toolbar)

On David Cameron:

Former PR man is said to apply ‘Daily Mail test’, asking ask how a claim would look on front page of a brutal tabloid

Hmm, normal blogging should also resume shortly… I am kind of busy at the moment with some degree of blogging laziness. The other day I heard from a ‘fellow blogger’ that blog abstention apparently increases if one is involved in too many professional blogging projects. Moreover this correlates with some  kind of compensatory behaviour on twitter. Guess the diagnosis is correct..

Anyway, the big story for the EU blogosphere this week is the “successful hijacking” (in a positive sense!) of New Europe, a weekly newspaper that is seen as the main rival to European Voice. Your humble author played a little role in this and this blog was also mentioned in the editorial. The complete print version of New Europe can be found as an pdf file here.

The buzz around the EU blogosphere last week inspired New Europe to publish the editorial on The future of the EU blogosphere which is worth reading. Of course the launch of our bloggingportal was covered as well as with a full page article Political EU Blogs at your fingertips, Bloggingportal.eu launched. (with pictures in the print edition). And that is not all, Jon managed to get the strategically important last page of the paper with the Anyone but Barroso campaign and an article on David Cameron and the EPP issue.

On a different note: We are very pleased with the launch of bloggingportal.eu and we are looking forward to your suggestions how to improve the portal. We also have a facebook group, so feel free to join and make it even more popular by inviting your friends! Since it is quite a grassroot initative with only a handful of people involved and without any sponsers or institutions, things can take a bit longer but we try to be as efficient as possible. And of course we are still looking for editors in order to cover as many languages as possible! In case you have not noticed I also integrated the editors’ choice in the sidebar of this blog!

Th!nk about it has launched as well, the EJC powered EU blogging competition. The kick-off event in Brussels last week was quite a success and there was a lot of enthusiasm about blogging about the EU and the EP elections (sounds stange but it is true!). It is an interesting mix of new and experienced bloggers which should make it a good read. So make sure you check it regularly!

As some of you know, I am involved in the organisation/develpment of both projects (bloggingportal & thinkaboutit) so I am a bit biased here

We have been working on it for almost one year in our free time. At the moment we are aggregating almost 300 blogs and we are publishing a daily editors choice selection! Check it out!

It is beta, totally independent, without any sponsorship and we do welcome any comments and hints how to improve the site! So get in contact with us!

Thanks to Stefan for the excellent programming work and Jon Worth for starting the process! You can also follow us on twitter: @bloggingportal or join our facebook group!

Anyway it was fun, and I would like to welcome the new readers that found this blog through the competition. I hope you will enjoy reading our little blog. I also would like to thank everyone who voted for us and I also want to thank the blogs that endorsed Kosmopolito during the competition: here, here, here, here, here. Thanks a lot!

I suggest that next year the organisers should rethink the categories. “Best European Blog” should not be a category for different national blogs but for blogs with a European perspective since a few other EU blogs were competing in other categories. Moreover, the category also featured a very diverse bunch of blogs, from culture and food to politics and photos … Moreover, I still think the UK is part of Europe so the name of the category with the focus on “European but Non-UK” is quite baffling. Why does the UK have an own category but Germany, France and Italy not? Is it because of the US focus of the weblogawards?

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Another new toy I have discovered is twitter. So feel free to follow my musings here. I think the tool has potential for politics, journalism and public debate, although regarding EU issues twitter seems not to be mainstream yet…

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I am also looking for a good tool to track comments on different blog posts. What tools do you use to keep updated with discussions and comment threads? Feel free to share your strategies and suggestions in the comments!

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Some readers might be wondering what happened to the Kosmolinks. Problem is that diigo is not supporting self hosted blogs (?) and I am still looking for a tool that publishes weekly (and not daily!) linkrolls. Again, please share your suggestions in the comments.

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And here is a “happy new year” link treat for you: The quite hard to find EU calendar and searcheuropa, a search engine for the europa.eu page.

If you like this blog, we would be delighted if you considered voting for us! Polls open for 7 days and you can vote once every 24 hours from every computer you have access to. So feel free to vote on a daily basis

As you will see the “Best European Blog (Non UK)” category is very diverse and includes quite different  and also some rather big blogs which will make it difficult to win the category. And it is interesting to note that “European” actually means everything “non-UK”, so the finalists cannot really be compared. But to be a finalist (and the only one with a European/EU perspective!) is already a huge achievement for our little blog which back in 2007 won an award as the most underappreciated weblog in Europe…

There are some more EU focused blogs hidden in other categories: Nosemonkey is nominated for Best UK Blog and A Fistful of Euros is nominated for Best Business blog (I wonder how they ended up there).

Think about it! – The (first!) European Blogging Competition 2009 is a new blogging competition (some nice gadgets up for grabs) organised by the European Journalism Centre! The competition will start in February and will last until the EP elections. The exciting thing is that there will be a training component for all participants (after all it is run by a professional journalism organisation;-) You do not necessarily be a journalist or blogger, however you should be interested in EU affairs and the EP elections and you should feel enthusiastic about tryinig out blogging for a few months! If that sounds like a good idea to you can join the official facebook group and you can sign up here:

A dynamic community of bloggers, journalists and journalism students, a forum alive with debate and discussion, a creative portal to inspire youth involvement with the 2009 Parliamentary Elections, brought to you by the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The goal is to get Europeans to THINK ABOUT IT and to express their views on Europe through an online blogging competition. The invited bloggers will cover, report, critique and debate on campaign issues and candidates. EJC editors will give feedback on the journalistic standards of the blog posts.

The EJC invites three bloggers from each EU member state for a two-day THINK ABOUT IT launch event in Brussels 25-27.1.2009. At the kick-off invitees are briefed on the European blogsphere, European Parliament, elections and on understanding the EU from a journalist’s perspective. The event also launches the blog contest, which invitees participate in throughout the official campaign season.

For more information just click here. Some fancy banners for your website/blog in various sizes can be found here.

Disclaimer: The author of this blog has been involved in the development of the project.

The “Anyone but Barroso” – Campaign calls for a new Commission President in 2009:

We don’t care who but the Commission needs a new President in 2009

1) 3 countries have voted No in recent referendums about European matters.

2) The EU has a crisis of confidence, a crisis of identity

3) Under these circumstances, the head of the EU’s executive, Commission president Barroso, must NOT be reappointed.

And since it is a typical online campaign, you can get involved! You can sign the petition and join and invite others on facebook. And make sure to read the campaign blog. Although not much content is provided at the moment, this will surely change soon!

It is an interesting idea especially because there is a real possibility of a second term for José Manuel Barroso. He has been rather active to lobby member states about the necessity for his second term. And member states so far have been reluctant to actually make the case for another candidate. The danger is that there will be another four years “muddling through”… Obviously the campaign has to be seen as a first step towards a debate on who actually should become Commission President as pure negative campaigning is not always the way to go.

I think it is also important to get people to think about the performance of the present Commission as an act of politicizing EU affairs! Actually it is quite a good example for what’s wrong with the EU at the moment: Basically the most powerful position in EU politics is decided on the “Justus Lipsius carpet market” as Graham Watson (MEP) once said.  There is another campaign out there that calls for a democratic election of the Commission President: Who’s your candidate? wants to get the main European parties to nominate  their candidate for Commission President before the 2009 EP elections in order to give the position a greater democratic mandate!