Loïc Le Meur blog

MT and WordPress meet :=)

Mena, Matt (who co-created WordPress) and Ben met last week at Six Apart's offices, nice picture, he ? I met Matt too, nice guy.

I always like to meet my competitors.

Apple rocks at WWDC

James is at the Apple Developers conference and reports a 30' Apple display (I just bought a 23...) and this amazing ichat AV video conferencing. Apple rocks, as always... I can't believe some PC users still ask me why I am on a Mac.

Bill Gates will apparently start his weblog soon

Here is the news on Bill Gates' weblog, coming soon.

Thanks for the link, Benoit

The new Linked In for Groups

I really like the new Linked In for Groups . It helps you connect with people who attended the same conference as you, are from the same alumni or association. If you want to add a group you belong to, you can ask Linked In.

Continuing to test new Typepad moblog templates

Yesterday I tested this new moblog template (beta)

Today I am testing this one (check my moblog)

What do you think, are these templates cool ?

IChat AV at 35,000 Feet

Amazing, I want to do the same during my next flight

Blog Spamers are far from being stupid

I had to close the comments on one of the most popular notes of my blog as spamers were enjoying it a bit too much.

I am wondering how they know it is one of the most popular notes ? They don't spam randomly, they spam on the most visible notes. Maybe by the number of trackbacks and comments the note already has ?

Nanopublishing

I have read this article about nanopublishing in the June edition of Wired. Interesting analysis on how Gawker and WeblogsInc explore new publishing ways using bloggers and blogs. Was I too jetlagged or does it not talk about Corante that edits about 30 weblogs ?

If these initiatives can pay about $2000 a month bloggers, they must start to make some revenues... Did I tell you I believed in weblogs ?

My new test moblog

I am testing my new moblog on new Typepad moblog templates (beta). The pictures are posted directly from my new Nokia 7610 with a small application that was specially designed for that purpose.

My gadgets weblog

I could not resist any longer to make my own gadgets weblog.

Who wants a gmail invite ?

I have two gmail invitations to give away so I do not resist to participate in the excellent viral marketing of Google.

Please use my email on the top left for this blog if you are interested, first asked, first served.

+++ update: none left, invitations gone in less than an hour... stay tuned for more if/when I get more +++

Back to Europe, was great to see you all at Supernova

Just landed in Paris, totally jetlagged. I really enjoyed meeting you all at Supernova, see you at the next conference.

Thank you, Kevin, for having invited me to join a panel.

Lots of people say "no time to blog and read the blogs", this is SO wrong

Many people who don't get it yet tell me "I don't have the time to read blogs and write one". Do you ask yourself if you have the time to write email, read newspapers and talk to your colleagues in the office ?

Remember when email started, remember how it was painful not to be able to send email to everybody. Many people were saying "I don't have the time" too.

I strongly believe that blogs will just find their way in our daily schedule, there is no reason why getting news of your network and friends would not be considered as part of our daily schedules we all want to spend time on.

My first Stealth Disco at Supernova

Of course as I pushed James to Stealth Disco the panel, I could not refuse his invitation to do my own SD during our panel about the backchannel. Elizabeth was also of course very cool about it. For my first panel in a US conference, I must say this was quite an experience !

Thanks for the picture, Andy !

Learn more about Stealth Disco and don't miss Joi's first Stealth Disco , in Video.

update: James has another picture of my SD.
update2: this picture is even more ridiculous :=)

James Seng Stealth Discoing the panel at Supernova

James, you rock :=)

Here is a real Supernova backchannel group achievement...

Blogging Supernova

I have been very bad at blogging Supernova, please read Heath Row's blog if you want to read a good coverage of what happens here.

My pictures of Supernova

Here are my pictures of Supernova, I will update the photo album during the conference. I am still learning how to use my Canon Rebel and generally how to shoot good pictures (!) so they are not all good quality...

"Email sucks and is like telegraph, it will disappear"

I am at the email panel at Supernova, here is what Stowe Boyd of Corante Research just expressed, you can also find Stowe's views on his email panel weblog.

"Email is great in the notion that you have an universal address. It is attractive but it is also the reason why there is so much spam. 90% of US email is Spam.

Email is not a conversational medium, it is really not designed to have conversations. It is really not based on a face to face communication.

My hope is that people will walk away from email. In a few years we will look at email as a nice thing of the past still useful for little things, like fax has become when we really need to send a printed document and we are lazy to digitize it.

Some things should be done in IM, some other things on a blog, others on wikis. People will walk away from email."

Do you agree ? I am starting to agree more and more but not 100% yet... Part of the future of email is Syndication.

I am a furry.

Jason took a weird picture of me tonight at the Supernova pre-dinner, thanks Jason !

A little game: whose hat is this ? Here is a hint.

Loic is a furry.

Germans don't like German music

I bet we have the same statistics in France, Heiko ! "Germans don't like German music

Or: Germans don't like German music as much as the Japanese like Japanese music.

From A Dialog with Gracenote:

Access to the CDDB catalog varies a great deal by country. For example, in Germany, access is 30% local (German CDs) and 70% international, while in Japan and Korea it's 70% local and 30% international.

Or: German Internet users don't like German music.

I just love making broad statements. Maybe the DMC Weblog has some data to back this up?

[via Olivier Travers]"

[Heiko Hebig]

Start your own TV Channel on your blog

Jay Dedman works at a community TV Station in Manhattan. Jay has started his own TV Channel on his blog by posting a nice show every week, which takes him about 40 minutes from shooting the movie to uploading it on his blog.

Let's all create our TV Channels...

How can NetFlix ignore 30 000 loyal customers

Hackingnetflix is a blog with passion around Netflix, it gets 30 000 visits a month and the PR department of Netflix even disagrees to send the blogger their press releases, they are more interested to get into old media.

My take is that companies WILL NOT be able to ignore too long this growing audience of loyal customers that organize unofficially on blogs to talk about them.

Netflix ignores a blogger's request

HackingNetFlix: I think most companies don’t get blogs yet.

Agreed. Most people don't understand the power of word-of-mouth networks. They see that only 1000 people read a blog and write it off.

The funny thing is they don't see how many press people read blogs.

Via The Scobleizer Weblog

Let's go to space together

I thought private flights to space would not be possible during my lifetime but this is great news. The plane is $20M that could be a bit expensive to own one (!) but the trips should be priced around $100K which looks more accessible...

I like this quote of Michael Melvill, the 63 years old pilot who just came back: "Looking at the Earth from up there is almost a religious experience"

Here is what Dan says about it:

A New Frontier for Humanity

It's impossible to overstate the importance of this morning's privately funded space flight by Mike Melvill, who piloted SpaceShipOne into a suborbital flight 100 kilometers high. Neil Armstrong took a giant step in 1969, but this was just as important.

I have huge respect for NASA, the U.S. space agency. But NASA needs the help of private explorers and industry, and of people like Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founded who funded this mission. We need NASA for the giant endeavors, but we need privately funded space flight for everything else.

The first primary use of these ships will, no doubt, be tourism. A few years ago I reconciled myself to not living long enough to go into space. Now I think I have a shot at seeing my home from a distance that shows the curvature of the Earth.

Tourism is only the beginning, of course. Humanity must get off this planet, in part because we are an exploring, expansionist species but also in part because the survival of the species may depend on it. This is a great step toward the new frontier.

Congratulations to all.

Note: There's great coverage of this entire mission, and more, at Space.com

The average blogger may not be that 13 years old girl

"Exactly 61% of the blog readers that responded to the survey are over the age of 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year. In fact, nearly 30% of the respondents are between the ages of 31 and 40, and over 37% spanned the ages of 41 to 60. And nearly 40% have a household income of $90,000 or higher."

Read more in this eMarketer article about who are the Bloggers. Congrats Henry for the survey.

Pocketster, the portable social software server on your Pocket PC

This is exactly what the phones will become very shortly, they will have a public server that allow others to learn more about you, share your ideas with them, will do personal advertising and matchmaking.

Howard reviews the use of Pocketster, which does this on Pocket PC. Unfortunately having it available on a Pocket PC will result in Geek matchmaking only, the real social change will happen when it hits the phones.

For those of you who want to do Geek matchmaking now, Pocketster is available today for download.

The End of 20th Century Journalism

Thank you for your note about Ohmynews, Howard, thanks for pointing me to read more about OhmyNews founder and CEO Yeon Ho.

Yeon has adressed the 2004 World Association of Newspapers Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, with a very interesting case study of Ohmynews, here are some quotes:

"The traditional newspaper inherently has two limits: time and space. That's why only professional journalists can write articles for the papers.

But Internet media can overcome these two barriers. In some ways, the Internet also has time and space limits, but in others the Internet has no time and space limits. That's why a citizen reporter can participate in the news reporting.

By means of the Internet, OhmyNews created a two-way journalism. The readers are no longer passive. They can be reporters anytime they want."

"We started OhmyNews with 727 citizen reporters, now we have about 33,000. "

"In March, there was a huge candlelight demonstration in the center of Seoul. Two hundred thousand people were gathered and demanded that President Roh not be impeached.

Twenty staff reporters and several citizen reporters were all there to cover the demonstration vividly with the combination text-photo-video and we published a special edition of the weekly paper.

We broadcast the event live on OhmyTV and updated text articles every 30 minutes during the six-hour demonstration.

About four hundred thousand OhmyNews readers participated in the demonstration online, and over 85,000 comments on the one issue were recorded on our site.

With this kind of coverage, OhmyNews is challenging and changing the traditional media formula of how to write, how to edit. "

"Yes, in the media market there has been a media power which says "this is standard, follow me". The standards of 20th century journalism have been created and controlled by professional newspaper journalists.

But these standards are challenged by the Internet: challenged by new journalists of the new space, they are called netizens or citizen reporters.

They challenged the traditional media logic of who is a reporter, what is news, what is the best news style, and what is newsworthy.

Because the old standards were challenged, the media power of traditional newspapers has declined. In Korea, we have seen a power shift in the media market, which was originally dominated by conservative newspapers."

Amazing. I stored this note in "Journalism and Blogging" even though Ohmynews is not a blog but I guess this is OK as people writing blogs are also "Citizens Reporters".

Off to San Francisco and speaking at Supernova

I am leaving for San Francisco tomorrow and I will be at Supernova next week.

The conference schedule is excellent and I am delighted to talk at the closing session with Dan Gillmor and Elizabeth Lane Lawley about "Closing the Back-Channel Loop".

I had written a note on the amazing E-tech back Channel and I will enjoy getting deep into Supernova's back Channel.

I don't see any back channel tool missing:

-the Supernova weblog
-the Supernova wiki
-a web conferencing tool, Convoq
-an IRC chat channel
-an audio feed
-and of course the "Hecklebot", "The revenge of the back-channel"

Of course, I will be at Joi's dinner even though he will be there only virtually.

Hope to see you all there !

What do you think of Nike's sponsored weblog "Art of Speed" ?

I have been following the launch of Nike's sponsored weblog, Art of Speed since its launch.

Are you reading it ? What do you think about the experiment and do you think it is going to be successful ? For the time being I think it is a good idea but the execution does not make it a weblog I want to read every day.

What is your opinion ?

French demonstrations actions shut off Prime Minister Raffarin's home power supply

"EDF-GDF, our French Electricity national company managed to shut off power supplies of homes of powerful politicians such as Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The government plans to partly privatize EDF-GDF and unions started shutting off power supply all around the country. A friend of Mine and entrepreneur, Pascal, got one of his Client stuck in a lift for hours (in French). He calls one of the main French Union, the CGT, terrorists. Many bloggers complain on his note, with nice words such as "Fucking Unionists".

France has a great future, believe us, we are French and we love our country...

The mass market is (still) dead :...

Jeff says (why don't you put more text in my news reader, Jeff, two lines is not enough !!!):

The mass market is (still) dead :...

The mass market is (still) dead : McDonald's has discovered that the mass market is dead.

The mass market gives way to a mass of niches.

The No. 1 hamburger chain has cut its spending on prime-time commercials from two-thirds of its advertising budget to one-third over the past four years and plans to move further away from a one-stop strategy to draw consumers. The money has gone to "all other media"

Pepsi agrees:

"We're looking at the landscape very differently," said Dave Burwick, chief marketing officer at beverage company PepsiCo . "Online will be bigger ... print and outdoor will benefit from where we're going. We're taking dollars directly out of television."

I love Jeff's battle against masses, it reminds me his post at Davos "There are no masses" if I remember well but could not find it in Google.

Yeah, TV and Newspapers lose more audience because they make people passive, the Internet wins because "We are the Media".

The blogger entrepreneurs dinner in Paris

from left to right: Bruno, Pascal, Rodrigo, Patrick, Mathieu, me, Jean-Michel and Pierre

Thanks, Pascal, for having organized this dinner in Paris

This dinner gathered 8 French entrepreneurs bloggers (some of them blog in English) and we decided we would launch a multi-authored blog where we would share our thoughts and ideas about entrepreneurship, open to any entrepreneur as an author.

Who is in to write on it ? I know Paulo is and a few others around Europe. Anybody else ?

The new Movable Type pricing is live

Please find the new Movable Type pricing here. There is also a post on Six Log that explains the changes, we hope they meet your needs better than last time.

The Industry Standard: The Blog

The Industry Standard brand means a lot to me and reminds me of this crazy period, the bad and the good stuff, but the good comes on the top, especially a conference called ib2b at the time: "iB2B: The Other 95% of Internet Business". I had great time there, everybody was only talking about how many Internet startups he was going to launch ! There is a summary of the conference still online here as a collector, where it is not the other 95% of Internet Business, it is the 99% of the companies that disappeared... via [evhead]: The Industry Standard: The Blog
Jimmy Guterman: "For all of us, this is a chance to remain associated with a brand that still means a great deal to us, in whatever form. None of us are getting paid for this (at least I'm not getting paid; compadres, let me know if I'm getting a raw deal). It's a hobby. Hey, it's either this or clean the kitchen."

I don't know where is Osama either

I don't know where is Osama either, but Saddam surely will stay there for a long time.

via Heiko Hebig:

Anyone remembers this Osama bin Laden guy? Supposedly he is hiding in some mountain range in a far-away country. The problem? It's a large territory. To remind everyone: Osama is the guy pictured on the right.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai puts it nicely:

I have not seen any such evidence to suggest definitely that we are getting closer to arresting Osama bin Laden. But we have gotten close to arresting him a number of times.

In other words: he has no idea.

By the way: is anyone still looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

First worm for mobile phones discovered

I think the last place where I want a virus is probably my phone... It already rings too much.

Want your MT3 blog in Portuguese ? Weblog.com.pt is here !

Paulo Querido, Journalist and founder of the largest blog platform in Portugal, Weblog.com.pt has chosen Movable Type 3.0 to power his blog platform, that hosts more than 1000 blogs in Portugal and growing.

Look forward to hosted MT3 blogs there very soon, right now it is still under version 2.661.

Thanks for your trust, Paulo, this is I believe our first MT hosting partnership in Europe [disclosure: we partner with portals and hosting companies to provide a full package of blogs, hosting and community, Paulo is doing all three of these]

Secret picture

This picture was embargoed until Andrew joined ze team. This was last month in California, not everybody in the team was there unfortunately.

Are you my friend yes or no ?

"The new social software turbo-charges friendships, sexual hookups and the business of human relationship -- and could turn our lives into an open book. Part 1 of a two-part series." Marc and Joi compete in this Salon.com article about social software (be warned if you are not a subscriber you can view the article but after a very long full page video ad... still it is worth it).

I have never even tried to compete with them with my 413 Linked In friends (which is the one I use the most, almost daily), I should use Orkut more, I only have 71 friends there :=)

The question is what is a friend ?

Good question. Both travel getting cheaper and the Internet of course gets us all closer. We used to have school friends (we still have) because it was the only way to find friends, the local way.

I like this new way of finding friends as I have met extraordinary people (more through my blog that is also social software of course) that I would have never met otherwise, but the first thing I want is of course to meet them in reality, and this is why I enjoy the blogger dinners.

I guess my new definition of a friend is somebody I share a lot of common interests or passions, they can be business or personal passions. Therefore many people with passion about blogging are my (new) friends. I probably have to blog about kite surfing (I don't have the time) to find new friends around but these friends I actually prefer to find them on the beach where I do kite surfing.

I guess social software is really helpful to gather people with the same business or personal interests that would not meet easily without it.

Now I am not sure I would change my orkut profile like Marc did to "open mariage" (I would not anyway, righ :=) even for fun. Of course it says something about you and if I had an open mariage which is not the case, I guess I would not show it to all my contacts...

What is your definition of a friend ?

Looks like Christian is doing nice demos at Nokia press conferences

Christian at Nokia moblogged from his phone into his Typepad account using "photoblog" and the ATOM API in front of an audience of journalists from all around the World.

I love his timeline moblog on his blog, and actually its whole blog design template.

I can't tell more, but Christian sure will do soon :=)

Weblogs.com stops hosting free weblogs

All weblogs.com free weblogs are now replaced by this post, where Dave Winer explains the situation in details in this audio blog post.

The third political party in the UK is now an anti-Europe one

Just heard it on the late news: Robert Killroy Silk and his anti-Europe party the UKIP got huge success yesterday in the UK.

The Times online article says:

"Robert Kilroy-Silk said today that he was looking forward to "wrecking" the European Parliament after being elected as a UK Independence Party member in the European elections.

Eleven of the UKIP's new MEPs gathered in Westminster this morning to toast their party’s spectacular election success with English sparkling wine."

They never drink champaign in public because it is French !

Hey friends from the UK, what do you think about this anti-Europe raising movement in your country ?

I think it is really bad that we have such parties across Europe.

Record low European elections turnout

Europeans do not care about Europe.

The European elections gave 350m voters in 25 countries the chance to vote, but the mood of discontent was also reflected in a record low turnout of about 45 per cent - down from 49 per cent in 1999.

Yeah, this is marketing !

It reminds me of a car I had seen parked upside down in Brussels to advertise a brand. I looked at it and crashed in the car in front of me... How many people crash when they see something like this ? I guess insurance companies will not like it (how about BMW ?)

more guerilla marketing by nike:

Felix via q-bee

I hope no lawyer reads this

I hate to even think about my last twelve months lawyer bills, Hugh: we need them...

Update: Hugh, you could use clean paper when you draw, not your restaurant bill :=)

Do you use instant messenger for business ?

I use it a lot for business, I have all m y co-workers, some clients and suppliers too, but as always, it is catching up in Europe later than in the US.

Radicati Group projects 670 instant messaging users by 2008. Don't rush to invest in that custom IM development company yet, as up to 88% are predicted to use the freely available tools and networks for their daily communication. The market itself, however, will fetch a nice $413, but only in 2008. Globally only 20% of the corporate users think of IM as a valid communication tool for doing business. By 2008 this will quadruple to 80%, where it turns out that the United States is already ahead of the world - 85% of Americans consider instant messenger to be a viable business tool today... via Always on

Do you use it for business too ?

Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About

Ethan points us to a UN page ranging from AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa to chronic instability and insecurity in the Central African Republic.

Ethan has also some news from Central Africa, not very good I am afraid.

This reminds me of Joi's example in Naples about how traditional media are broken. Joi insisted on the fact that they are driven by profits of course and took the example of the press not talking enough about Africa "because nobody is interested and because we have no money to send anybody there". Let's hope more people blog about and from Africa, as on blogafrica.

I agree, and thanks to Ethan, I can read about Africa and my interest is growing, I hope I will be able to join a trip to Africa Ethan is organizing soon.

Ah... I forgot a nice quote from Joi: "Mass media created the public but also made it stupid. Wake up, you have a voice"

The naked smart mob

Ah I missed the bicyclists riding naked through 22 citities around the World the same day yesterday... Do you we have to thank the Internet for moments like these, I am wondering...

$665K for your Villa in Baghdad

Your dream house in Baghdad. Looks good but it needs renovating...

Via JLR

The Asia Roundtable begins in Seoul, updates on the WEF blog

Samantha and Rebecca are in Seoul and blog on the World Economic Forum weblog we started earlier this year in Warsaw. Here is an update on Japan: Japan's recovery: where next?

At a press conference before the Roundtable began, Heizo Takenaka, Japan's Minister of State for Financial Services, expressed optimism that Japan's economic recovery can continue. However he also said that further agressive reforms are necessary if Japan is to pull itself fully and completely out of its decade-long economic slump. He said that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is fully committed to such aggressive reform.

Joi talks about it here.

Finally I found a tool to plan international conference calls

I was exactly looking for this, when we do conference calls with Japan, US and Europe, we always end up doing it at 7 AM Europe time ouch !

Maybe MT 3.0 isn't such a bad idea after all

Glad to see that aripaparo is now seriously rethinking his initial skepticism regarding Movable Type 3.0 and the new licensing pricing.

But can't you just buy

a real mac ?

Eva Biaudet's blog

It is great, Joi, that you got our fellow GLT -that I met in Davos as well- Eva Biaudet, member of the Finnish Parliament to blog !

How does a strike look like in France

Well, at the beginning, it looks like this (EDF-GDF is the Electricity and Gas public company in France).

This was just the start, somebody was saying on a loudspeaker "use your car horn as much as you can, it is made for that purpose", many many many more cars arrived and they created a big and noisy traffic jam of course. This was only a small strike.

I have no problems to understand that these people may have good reasons to complain, but I find it harder to understand how they consider it normal to disturb so many people that may take an awful lot of time to get back to their houses for example...

I guess they have not found another solution, disturbing others looks for them like the only way they can get their voices heard... If only they blogged...

Anyway, that is France...

Blogging and entrepreneurs discussions in Madrid

Entrepreneurship

Thank you again to Waya, the Instituto de Empresa for inviting me to talk about entrepreneurship yesterday in Madrid, of course, we had great discussions about blogging too. I went through some of the things I learned in my different experiences creating companies, which are online here.

I always complain about the fact that there are not enough entrepreneurs in Europe but I was actually very surprised that the majority of the students of IE told me that what they learned from their MBA is that they really wanted to start their business.

Congratulations and good luck for your future businesses !

Meeting the Madrid bloggers

Then we went to an incredible cider and Tapas bar in Madrid (and many students of IE joined us too) which was almost like a Theme Park as you had to learn how to serve cider (I tried too which was a disaster). Basically Javier explained me that serving Cider in Madrid was a very special skill to have and that it was a vicious circle because the more you serve it and drink it, the least you are capable of serving it without leaving most of it on the floor). I also learned how to cook the Tapas myself...

Thank you very much Javier and Victor for organizing it and thank you all bloggers, Julio, Alvaro, Ignacio, Alberto, Jose, Anne-Cecile, Anil, Hernan and Ivan for having joined the dinner (or tried to join it for some of you !).

I am so happy for having had the chance to meet you all yesterday as well as so frustrated we had such a few time to spend together.

Gracias, las Tapes "were incredible"...

All the pictures including the ones of Simon (thanks !) are here.

Naples last week, thanks again for the mozarella !

I had to take down my last post with the pictures as there was something wrong on my blog with it but here is a fantastic place we drove close to with Giuseppe (I believe it is Salerno)

and thank you so much again everybody for the conference, the fun and the mozarella there, many pictures were posted here and there.

Paolo posted an amazing picture of Joi and me talking in the ex-Church conference room in Naples

Off to Madrid

Many meetings in Madrid for the next two days, a speech at the Instituto de Empresa, and a blogger dinner. "It's a small Europe, after all" :=)

Can't find the time to blog, I am lost in my emails again...

Presence check the attendance of your Members of the European Parliament

Shame on the low attendance of certain Members of the European Parliament, check your country, here are three examples;

France
Germany
Italy

and all others are there, too ! Thanks Laurent for the link.

Buongiorno a tutti: "la rapidita della disfunzione della cultura digitale" in Naples

How do you like our conference room at Culture Digitali in Naples ?

Paolo is explaining the blog phenomenon

Franceska and Giuseppe listen carefully

Joi and me learning Italian

Just arrived in Naples, Italy

Naples is very nice, crazy traffic (people going left and right, burning red lights is just normal) and having nice pasta with Giuseppe, Paolo and Joi who just landed too. Tomorrow we talk at Culture Digitali, the first blogging conference in Italy I believe.

The bad news: the hotel does not have any Internet connection, so I am in GPRS, hence lazy with the links... Hope to find a broadband connection at the conference tomorrow.

Ah I forgot, the latest luxury in Naples is to have a house on the Vesuvio itself which has mmm some activity... Probably the last thing I want is a house on a volcano !

See ya later...

Talking about Entrepreneurship at the Forum Barcelona 2004, on July 20th

I will be on a panel on "The role of corporations in the 21st Century" at the Forum Barcelona 2004, a major European event and gathering in Spain. This session will be on July 20th.

Here is the session program:

Corporate practices and management styles have an impact on society, which is why a company’s responsibilities go well beyond its immediate business environment. We therefore need to create a dialogue which focuses on the company’s role as a “citizen”.

This dialogue will debate the issue of how companies, together with public institutions, civil organizations, etc. interact in the network they belong to. It will also examine power relations between governments and large corporations and multinationals.

Thank you, Angel, for inviting me to talk there !
Angel Cabrera was the Dean of the Instituto de Empresa, Angel just moved to the US

10 reasons why should a politician blog

I will be talking with Joi at Culture Digitali in Naples about politics and blogs, so I used as a basis what I wrote on the tentative wiki page on Emergent Democracy in Europe, where many other people helped me.

Here is a modified version for Naples (I mainly added the story of Christophe Grébert, who got nearly arrested in France for his blogging):

Why politicians should have blogs ?

1. To get closer to their audience, their supporters

There are not many ways you can currently talk to a politician leader. You can probably listen to him doing a speech somewhere or on mainstream media, on TV, but interacting with him is difficult. He is usually not accessible, his diary looks terrible, when he walks in a market place he is always surrounded by many people. Difficult to get your message to him and even more difficult to start a discussion with him. When he starts blogging and of course if he leaves his comments open, anybody can post a note on his blog, react to his ideas, start their own discussions.

2. To create a permanent open debate with them

The reason why discussions on blogs are different is that they are public. It is like in a political meeting, if you can finally manage to get your voice heard and the politician is on stage, your question is public. It makes a big difference. If there are many people in the room, he has to answer. Here is another big difference to stay on this policital conference questions analogy. Most of the time, there are so many people in the room that you are lucky to get the right to ask one question, he has to answer, but then it stops there, they move to another question and for sure, you had more things to say, many people in the room had also probably comments to make on the question you raised. You had an opportunity to start a discussion not only with the politician, but with the whole room, but it will not start because mainly of time. On blogs, there are no space or time issues, the discussion can run for ever and remains always public, so it gets more interesting. If the debate gets hot, the leader will have to come back on the comments and say something, otherwise just saying nothing can be seen as not having any answer or comment about it.

André Santini, one of the leaders of the central-right UDF party in France, has been using Emergent Democracy tools for a long time in France, forums, chats a chat example, sms and wikis with his team. Of course, André Santini also has a weblog André Santini's blog but looking at his Internet website and regional campaign website that I are quite institutional, the weblog is hidden in a submenu and André Santini does not post very regularly yet on it, without asking many questions to bloggers and readers. The result is a weblog with few comments for the time being and few discussions starting on it.

3. To test their ideas easily and quickly, to enrich them and get new ones

Blogging an idea for a political leader is a very fast way to get feedback. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Ministery of Finance in France and one of the key leaders of the French Socialist Party (PS), posted a note on Arnold Schwarzenegger banning gay weddings in California recently and asked the French readers of his blog what they thought about it. DSK as we call him got more than one hundred comments on his blog bost from people in favor of gay weddings and people against it. They suggested him to read good press articles about it, expressed their views, started a discussion. By reading this for sure DSK's own ideas about it got richer, the feedback was immediate without any logistics involved. Of course one may argue that only the people using the Internet can react. That is right, but fortunately the penetration is getting higher and higher, we have more than twenty people on-line in France and France is one of the least Internet connected country in Europe (-Internet penetration in Nordic countries, anybody ?)

Nobody can pretend that they know everything one hundred people know about a subject, to get back to DSK's note example. The ideas get richer through permanent conversations and written comments even if these are against the original thoughts.

4. To switch the way they talk to people usually from institutional to more personal

Jean-François Copé who is the current French Government's spokesperson and right wing (UMP) candidate to the regional elections, started his blog by posting press releases. I could convince him to open the comments field and leave it open. He got flamed in the beginning quite strongly by bloggers and blog readers telling him he should not communicate this way. People do not want press releases on blogs. They want the politician's voice, exactly as if they were meeting him in person. They want his ideas, his feelings, his humour, his "Etats d'âme". It took some time, but Jean-François Copé and his team got it more and more, they started posting personal feelings, personal comments, and stopped posting institutional communication. This is very new. This is not about a political speech that has been reviewed by ten people, it is about what Jean-François Copé can actually write himself, directly, to the people who want to read him and start talking to him. You have to blog like you talk, otherwise it looks fake and bloggers notice it immediately. The worse thing that happened was that just one day before the regional elections Jean-François Copé abandoned his blog, the last note is a cemetery of the blog, with more than 160 comments from visitors making fun of him. This is of course terrible as his blog is still number one in Google for his name...

5. To better understand the criticism of the people against their ideas

Jean-François Copé's blog is the blog that got the highest number of opponents commenting. My take is that he is both a candidate at the Regional elections and the Government spokesperson which does not help him much. He has been very courageous to leave the comments of the sharper criticisms online. I cannot quote any other experiment that is close to this. Wait a second, Jean-François Copé is a well known political leader and he helps his opponents by leaving their notes on his own blog ! This is courageous, but it would actually be better if he would answer them more, I guess this is a question of investing more time into the weblog and it will come. This is all very new in France. Reading the opponents' voice is actually very interesting, to understand them and better reply.

6. To spread their ideas easily if they are supported by many people, in a decentralized way

André Santini has a section on his campaign site called "Your Weblogs" and André Santini points to blogging solutions to encourage his readers to start their own. This is of course a good way of having supporters blog appearing and talking about his campaign, linking to his blog notes. Unfortunately, listing the friends blogs in a list we call blogrolling is not yet used very much and there are very few people in France for the time being that dare to expose in public their ideas to support a candidate. It will change. We will probably see hundreds of supporters weblogs like Howard Dean had for his campaign, but we are not quite there yet. The politician leaders blogs will link into them and get a lot of audience from them.

7. To raise funds for their cause, party or campaign

I do not know of any experience in Europe of successful political funds raising on the Internet. André Santini has a page where he asks for donations but there is no online payment, it has to be done by paper cheque which is far from being online donations of course, mainly due to French law. This will change in the future.

Unfortunately, I do not know any major political funds raising that happened in Europe, very different to what happened with Howard Dean in the US.

8. To reach a younger audience and help young people get more interested in politics

The Internet is the medium of the young, not only of course, but it is mostly used in Europe by less than 35 years old people. The trend in politics is that less and less young people are actually interested by politics just looking at the higher abstention rate. Giving them an opportunity to start discussions and participate rather than listen to a speech or a TV show gets them more interested into politics. I believe the future candidates who will get it will gather many new votes from them.

9. To create around them network effects

Blogs spread the word bottom-up, not top-down like traditional media. Information spreads fast only if it is interesting, otherwise it stays dead. Information spreads by bloggers linking into it (and standard Internet sites of course) and sending their audience where it originated. The tools that measure these network effects are new kind of search engines that measure the number of links either to a page or to a site. I have been watching on a permanent manner what Technorati, one of these search engines, calls the cosmos of the French politicians blogs. Anybody can measure very fast how authoritative a politician is through his blog and how fast his ideas spread.

Another way of measuring network effects of a politician of course is his rankings in Google on some search words (his name, his ideas, his political party, etc). I am not going to give a ranking here but what is interesting is that in a search on these politicians names, the blogs of their most authoritative supporters or opponents appear very often on the first page, sometimes before their own site or blog.

10. To become famous if you are an unkown politician, or to start a political action, even locally

Christophe Grébert blogs on monputeaux.com. He is a citizen of the city Puteaux, close to Paris.

Christophe does not like the way the city mayor manages the city, spends the public money and says it on his blog, every day. He has been very successful doing that, with hundreds of inhabitants of Puteaux reading and commenting his blog everyday and many national newspapers that talked about his blog.

Christophe criticizes the city management so much that they have tried to stop him for months, the city mayor has even sent him threats over the phone that he recorded and blogged, of course.

He has recently been stopped in the street by the Police Municipale (the local French Police) who tried to arrest him for his blogging. Fortunately for Christophe, the National Police arrived immediately as they found what was happening weird, and let him go.

Christophe was also finally sued by the City Mayor for his blogging, we do not know the outcome yet but I see no reason why he would lose this battle, he just expresses his views. His blogs gets more and more popular and I would not be surprised if Christophe would start getting more involved in local politics thanks to the audience and support his blog provided him with.

I am sure we will continue to see unknown people appear from nowhere, starting playing a significant role in local and one day national politics, as blogs get more and more popular. Blogs give a voice to people, to anybody, and the best news is that the Young people get more and more interested in Politics with them.

1.3 million text messages sent to the French Prime Minister last tuesday

So, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, when will you start your blog ?!

via [Howard Rheingold]:

On Tuesday June 1st, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin answered questions online on several Web sites (at premier-ministre.gouv.fr, TF1, Wanadoo, www.e-1789.com and by SMS, via mobile community Freever's website.

The tally is in, 1.3 million text message questions were sent to the Prime minister, reports Le Parisien, beating previous 2002 record held by Jean-Marie Lepen with 250'000 SMS questions. cf previous post.