One of the podcasts I enjoyed the most, thank you Thomas Crampton and Michael Oreskes for this International Herald Tribune in Paris visit. See how the IHT is made ("how the sausage is made" as they say) and also very interesting conversations I think around user generated content, blogs and journalism.
Technorati Tags: IHT, thomas crampton
We had a very interesting conversation with a group of european entrepreneurs about how the Internet is changing politics, I thought I could give you a short summary in video:
1. more authenticity, transparency, fewer lies
2. new leaders
3. more participation
4. ease to raise funds
5. new way to govern, listen more, govern with the people
6. risk of acting short term rather than long term
7. groups, kids, can have a collective voice (positive: against war in Iraq, negative: terrorists hiring young muslims)
8. making current institutions and media history
9. more global versus more local, raising influence of private internet organisations such as Google, Gates investing more than the World bank
10. power shifting to the long tail ? will current organisations survive the Internet ? (new light organisations can touch tens of millions, such as Bebo few employees but 10s of millions of users)
President Nicolas Sarkozy finally organized his house warming party tonight at the Elysée Palace. I know, I know, but I could not help but post this picture. I am hopeless.
Technorati Tags: chez Nicolas, Elysée, sarkozy
As this campaign finishes, I congratulated Nicolas Sarkozy and his team, I learnt a lot and was proud to have the opportunity to be one of Sarkozy's advisors during this campaign. I was impressed by the professionalism and enthusiasm of team. The work accomplished has been huge. A good occasion for me to come back to how I got involved.
I had never been interested much in politics and as the presidential elections approached, I thought it was a good time for me, as I was 34, to try to understand it better. I started by trying to make a series of podcasts with most political parties, except the extremes, left or right, which I am not very interested in. Thanks to my blog in France and the help of my readers, I podcasted many policital figures from all parties, to get a sense of who were the leaders. In 2006, I podcasted the socialists Dominique Strauss-Khan, Jack Lang, Arnaud Montebourg (before he was spokesperson of Ségolène Royal), the centrists François Bayrou (I was behind the camera for this one) and several conservatist party political figures, the most important one being of course the podcast with Nicolas Sarkozy.
The two political figures who impressed me the most were Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique Strauss-Khan. After this series of podcasts, I started blogging about french politics and to be transparent with my blog readers, decided to tell them I decided early to vote for Nicolas Sarkozy and I said it on my blog in September 2006. It was for me a choice as a citizen and honesty I thought as a blogger, to say it.
Sarkozy's team contacted me and offered me to become an advisor on Internet topics, I gladly accepted to participate in an Internet committee every week, a couple of hours, but that was all, I did not even take any membership in the party, and this is still the case today.
I started preparing my conference LeWeb3 in november 2006 and had the crazy idea to invite the three main presidential candidates to talk to the bloggers, at the very last minute. It was not prepared and was not an attempt for me to help Sarkozy as many people thought afterwards, but rather I thought an interesting opportunity for the participants of the conference, coming from 37 countries. Two candidates came, the centrist François Bayrou, who was "the third man" during the elections, and Nicolas Sarkozy. I would have not had any if only one of them, including Sarkozy, had accepted, especially as I said in public I was backing him. Bayrou took questions, Sarkozy delivered a speech without taking any questions -the absence of questions being not very appropriate with a room full of bloggers- and Royal refused to show up. Far from understanding the reaction I would get when I took this decision, I made the mistake of not asking the room what they thought about it and the reaction was huge and I explained myself in a very detailed way.
Six months after the conference, I know that most participants do not blame me for this and were happy about the opportunity. There will be another LeWeb3 in 2007, but I learnt from my mistakes and will be closer to the participants to make decisions, I have heard them. If I regret the way I handled it, I do not regret having had two candidates now a President talking to us, I am proud of it, as I think the Web influencers, the bloggers and the political figures should start getting closer to each other, talk and collaborate, rather than stay in two different circles of society.
Shortly after the conference, in December 2006, the Sarkozy team invited me to get much more involved, they asked me to join the campaign team as one of the internet advisors, which I accepted. The most intense moment of the campaign for me was when they invited me to be on stage with Nicolas Sarkozy, in front of tens of thousands of French people in the audience, and many more on TV as it was broadcasted live. I liked my role, I was live on the web, took thousands of questions from the Internet, was on IM and monitoring blogs during the entire debates (three of them in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux). I selected the questions and asked them directly to Nicolas Sarkozy, who answered. When I thought the answer was unclear, I asked again several questions, until the people who asked them were happy about their answer, which was an interesting experience.
photo: Marco Pirrone
I finally joined the Sarkozy campaign as one of Internet advisors and took care about the conversation. That means anywhere on web, in a decentralized way. Based on the previous debates experience, I thought I should start by finding a way to sort the questions and launched a digg-like for Sarkozy, debat-sarkozy, people could ask their question, then vote for the most important one, and Nicolas Sarkozy committed to answer the questions: 1500 questions were answered and more than 8000 comments appeared on the site, a good start.
We started having a very close relationship with bloggers from all political areas of society, invited them to the campaign headquarters every week to meet a political figure, about a thousand bloggers showed support to Sarkozy, many others who would not vote for him were still happy to be in touch with us, and by the dialog that was created. We also created groups for Sarkozy in most social software sites (Flickr, YouTube, Netvibes, dailymotion...). About one hundred bloggers showed up every week at the campaign headquarters, and not all of them were supporting Sarkozy.
I also launched an island in Second Life, l'ile Sarkozy, which has been an amazing experience. The island has been managed by voluntaries who created the buildings and monitored it 24 hours a day, more than 400 avatars joined a Sarkozy group and many became residents of the island. We survived attacks from opponents which were interesting to see, bumbs, naked people, insults, mines dropped, weapons, demonstrations.... The island has been packed during the entire campaign, reaching the SL max avatars limit most of the time. The most interesting for me was when we started streaming the debates at the real headquarters in the virtual hearquarter on SL and had lots of interactivity, we took questions from SL and had the political figure answer them. The conversation and bridge between the virtual and the real life was fascinating. The voluntary work has been impressive.
This is one of the most striking difference between the business and the political world. How much voluntary there is and all so how much aggressivity. For the first time in four years of blogging, I had to start moderating my french blog. Criticism, rumors, out-of-law and insulting comments came by hundreds every day, most of them anonymous. The socialists recognized that they even asked their supporters to get easier on my blog as some of them were just dedicated to flooding me with fake and anonymous comments. My blog has been moderated 24 hours a day and thousands of comments deleted, I wrote a charter of behavior and managed to keep the conversation going, less comments, but better quality, of course criticism is still welcome: I banned mostly insults (we can use normal french language) and anything against the law.
But the most important reason for me to join forces with Sarkozy was because I thought France had to become more entrepreneurial. The Internet can become an entire economic sector in our Country, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs by bridging the economic ecosystem between entrepreneurs, business angels, venture capitalists and other players as it is happening in Silicon Valley. I was pleased to work with Sarkozy's team on the Internet program of the President and see that most of my proposals were added to the program. The first example is about helping entrepreneurs get funded: up to 50 000 € of wealth tax (that means millions of euros at an individual scale as the wealth tax is a few % of your net here) will be cancelled if the funds are invested in startups. Second example is tax free Internet activity at personal level to encourage people creating their own jobs such as selling on Ebay or blog revenues... The hope is to create thousands of people self employed by their own Internet activity, making them entrepreneurs. The entire economic program of Sarkozy is also very compatible to entrepreneurship: less taxes, more flexibility with hiring/firing, no 35 hours a week maximum, etc. There are many more measures planned and I trust Sarkozy will apply them.
As this Entrepreneur compatible program was seen good by many, I helped gather a list of hundreds of internet entrepreneurs, Internet users and bloggers to support Sarkozy and accept to say they would vote for him in a Country where it is not cultural to do so. Marc Simoncini, head and founder of Meetic the #2 dating site Worldwide, said in a podcast why he decided to back him despite the fact he had voted for the socialists all his life. Marc also wants to be able to create more easily in France and see the French more focused on work rather than complaining all the time. Pierre Chappaz, founder of several internet successes (amongst them Kelkoo, #1 in ecommerce, sold to Yahoo!), also joined as well as tens of other Internet figures in France. I cannot quote them all but thank them again.
The campaign has been a unique opportunity for me to discover the political world that I knew nothing about (and still don't know much about), and realize that despite the differences with the business world, most people involved are great professionals, impressive by their commitment and seriousness.
It is now that Nicolas Sarkozy is elected that the most important part begins. Change France. Make it more entrepreneurial. More focused on work rather than complaining. More focused on the future than the past. I trust Nicolas Sarkozy to do the job, time will tell. I also trust the Internet will be important for his team.
It's been lots of fun, learnt a lot, now I am back to business focusing in my next startup.
Being close to him and his team gave me the opportunity today to tell them immediately about the questions raised and get an answer in a matter of hours. My role ends here I do not answer for him, I took the messenger role, and will be happy to get more questions about this if needed. This is one of the reasons why I think it is good we have more bloggers with any political idea being plugged in the political process and having an access to them.
In my opinion, this is a tempest in a teapot because nobody (jounalists or bloggers) seem to have taken the time to verify what was the law saying in details. It is ok I also blog most of the time without doing a real investigation, but we should be careful about not looking like tabloid writers rather than citizen journalists about this law.
-the law aims at fighting "happy slapping" only (filming orchestrated violence and sharing the images on the web, the intention being to harm the victim)
-the law only applies to "severe violence", being defined in French law in a very detailed way (such as torture or barbarous acts, causing permanent injuries or death, rape, etc).
-the law precisely explains that it is NOT APPLICABLE when the recording or the broadcasting:
* results from the "normal exercise of a profession whose object is to inform the public". The journalist word is not quoted, and the law was probably designed a year or two ago when the citizen journalism movement was not that large.
* "it is done in order to be used as proof or evidence" - i.e., to alert the authorities
-the intent of the authors will be taken into account
-the Rodney King case in 1991, filmed by George Holliday was recorded and broadcasted to alert the public and the authorities of the authorities of the abuse, ie. to serve as a proof and would not be prohibited under the law
-severe violence reported by citizen journalism would not be prohibited under the law as long as the citizen journalist did it in order to alert the authorities. The law requests that he not only broadcasts the video but also alerts the authorities ie. it is ok to record and broadcast, but do also assist the victim by calling the police at the same time...
Thanks, Ethan, for the podcast.
I had interesting conversations on this quaestion with my friend Bo Y. Shao who created the equivalent of Ebay in China and sold it to them. Bo thinks France is more communist than China and of course posting it on on my french blog generated many reactions from my french readers. I decided to publish a short podcast below on why Bo thinks France is so "communist" and to organize a panel at Web3 between Bo and Pierre Haski (author of Five Years in China and journalist at the left wing close to bankruptcy Liberation newspaper) where we will discuss precisely this question. It is going to be quite interesting I think...
Thanks Kerry Capell for your quote in your article Europe's politicians embrace Web 2.0
David Cameron, UK leader of the Conservative Party, has started a very cool podcast series where he is totally natural in his kitchen with his daughter in the background... A new way to discover our politicians. Carry on, David ! via Laurent
picture: Paris-Match showing Nicolas Sarkozy surrounded by journalists and a few accredited bloggers at the last UMP university, where 12 bloggers had a press badge, a first ever in France, I'm on the left corner ;-)
Hundreds of comments and more than 20 000 page views a day currently on my french blog as I announced that I decided to vote for Nicolas Sarkozy at the next 2007 presidential elections.
The reason I did that is that Nicolas Sarkozy, currently #2 in Government and future candidate is the only politician in France to my knowledge to say he wants to transform France into a "nation of entrepreneurs" when entrepreneurs are often seen as "enemies of the State" these days, so I can only support him. Of course, many people disagree... The French AP AFP and Reuters published the news straight from my blog so it's also rock and rolling in the press... [-] Here the presidential race will probably be won with a very tiny portion of votes, so I anticipate blogs to play a big role in the elections.
A Financial Times article by Martin Arnold. There were 10 bloggers invited at this year's French political party UMP convention with the youth. I will post more later on the topic.
For the first time at its national convention, the "université d'été" in Marseille, right wing political party UMP lead by Nicolas Sarkozy will offer free blogs to all its members and train them to do so. Nicolas Sarkozy is the most active on the web, he has agreed a web budget of $130,000 per month and well known also for buying in volume Google adsense keywords, including the names of his political rivals. He was also the first political leader in France to accept a video podcast which was noticed.
There will be a video podcast competition and the party will offer a free TypePad blog for one year to any member of the party (yey !). There is a lot ot of press and buzz in France about it here are some examples in Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libé, 01Net, L'Express...
So many politicians start video podcasting in France these days... This time it is former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin who started his first episode on China with a very creative setup, a big red book on China opened on his knees during the entire podcast ! It must have felt very heavy at the end... I imagine his team saying, "oh yeah the red China book for a podcast on China will do great, keep it up". Apart from this funny detail, I like to see so much political activity around blogs and podcasts in France in preparation for the 2007 presidential race...
Nicolas Sarkozy, number 2 in French Government and future presidential candidate has just launched his official blog today, coordinated by Claude Malhuret and Thierry Solère. As I advised them to launch a blog since my podcast with Nicolas Sarkozy, I am happy to see they finally did it.
Disclosure: I help Nicolas Sarkozy's team on a friendly basis without being a member of the political party myself.
Just for fun: Nicolas Sarkozy's team of the French political party UMP just bought the keyword "Le Meur", as you can see in Google France... I find it quite funny, it would be even more fun if now the socialist party does the same !
Nicolas Sarkozy, France Minister of Interior and future candidate for the 2007 French Presidential elections welcomed me yesterday in his office at the Ministery. It is the first time ever in France a politician of this rank or Minister is podcasted.
We talked about:
-the Web and blogs
-his way of doing politics
-his answers to recent criticism from French show-business stars regarding his words during the suburbs crisis
-I offer him to announce officially his candidature to the Presidency in 2007 on my blog and he... accepts ;-)
-presents a few wishes to the bloggers and to the French for 2006
Lots of fun meeting Nicolas Sarkozy and doing this podcast ! Sorry it is in French...
On the picture, I am showing a video podcast to Nicolas Sarkozy, on a video iPod of course !
update:
-thanks to Rodrigo and vpod.tv here is the streaming version
-thanks to Agoravox, there is also a transcript of the interview [fr]
The result is in my podcast feed (subscribe in iTunes, RSS2) a 20 minutes video (90 Mo mp4v) and audio podcast (9,2 Mo, mp3). Nicolas Sarkozy was the man who managed the so-called "Paris riots" crisis.
Business Week just wrote a nice article about it: "The Podcast shaking up French Politics"Technorati Tags: france, paris, podcast, podcasting, sarkozy, video, videoblog, vlog
I wonder where France is going sometimes, or at least its image seen from other Countries. Via Bouge [FR]
And for those of you still wondering there are still NO riots in Paris (and less than 100 seats left now)...
In this Figaro article [fr], Philippe Gordon tries to understand why the French are so much against economic globalization. He analyzes three main reasons that explain the French attitude:
1. Globalization threatens the French political and economical tradition towards a strong national governance and State. Our Governmental expenses continue to represent 54% of our GDP, a number way above that of most of industrialized Countries
2. The French are scared by the erosion of their culture and identity from the effects of globalization, that most of the French understand as "the American model"
3. Globalization threatens Equality, one of the founding principles of French Republic. Philippe Gordon insists on the strong social differences created by the American model, more individualistic. The French would rather protect Equality at the cost of a high unemployment rate and a lower level of living.
Our Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has even invented a concept in the last few weeks, the "Patriotisme Economique" to reassure the French and protect our champions. If I believe this concept is an illusion, I agree with Philippe Gordon on the fact that most of our French Champions are not really French anyway: Danone has most of its employees working outside of France and the company makes 70% of its profits outside of France.
The World is a village and the only way French culture and identity can be preserved is by focusing on the future rather than the past, by helping create World recognized leaders in all fields, business, arts, music and politics. As most of my international friends point out often when I meet them, France is slowly turning into a museum where foreigners like to come for holidays for our Culture, our way of life and our food...
We have to stop complaining about globalization and focus on the future rather than protecting our past and our comfort.
"The fact that Cisco clearly has no qualms about doing business with the Chinese Public Security Bureau is odious. We should change the law to make it illegal for companies like Cisco to sell networking and telecommunications equipment to police agencies in countries like China where the practice of law enforcement includes things like beating up little old ladies who demonstrate peacefully for their religious rights in Tiananmen Square, routine torture of people jailed without due process, and ongoing crackdowns against political dissent of all kinds."
Thomas Dahlgren, one of Rebecca's readers, says in comments:
"Apalling, but unsurprising. Cisco is engaged in business that is morally odious but potentially quite lucrative. Corporations do not have a conscience and it is unrealistic to expect them to limit their behavior in the absence of legal or financial consequences."
I remember Nestlé's CEO, Peter Brabeck, saying in Davos a few years ago that "the only goal of a company is to increase value for its stockholders".
Rebecca, what do you think then of Philip Morris killing millions every year ? Probably worse than Cisco selling routers to the Chinese Governement, as a company, they just do their job: increase sales and drive growth.
It is the business based model that is flawed, not Cisco. However, I have no suggestions for a better one at that time, being myself a business person...
Update: the post was dated before the bombings, so I agree my title was a bit misleading (just changed it), but I think Gibson's intentions are confirmed by the note he posted the day after his post, check this one:
"The bombings in London: This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics - let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."
What kind of journalist are you, Mr Gibson ? I see your article, Missed Opportunity, as racism and defamation to the French. Actually you could have replaced Paris and the French by any other city and people, I would have thought exactly the same of your words, you are dangerous and I wonder how any media can give you a tribune with such an article. Too bad you don't have a blog, Mr Gibson, too bad you don't have comments on your article, I really wish I would see the reactions of your readers. It is with the kind of words you have that hate and racism like yours spread around the world.
John Gibson:
"Paris was exactly the right place to pick and the Olympic committee screwed up.
Why? Simple. It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn't have had to worry about terrorism.
First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm. Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris.
So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already."
more:
"It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch.
But, alas, they picked London. I like the Brits. I like London. I hate to see them going through all this garbage when it would have been just fine in Paris."
Dear Mr Gibson, we have dealt many times with terrorism in France, and I can tell you as well that Parisians and the French are worried about security. Your words are just impossible for me to qualify. Shame on you. Actually I found a few words: articles like this one generate hate and terrorism, you are just like them.
Update: the readers of my french blog want your apologies, Mr Gibson. and another one tells me that Gibson posts anonymously to FuckFrance.com. Just added "nofollow" to the Fox links.
Lots of reactions already, thanks: Robert Scoble, Dennis Howlett, the Gadget Guy, Joi, Neville, Doc, and many others.
I had missed this one, thanks Jeff for pointing me to it:
"An astonishing diplomatic blunder by Jacques Chirac soured relations with the UK after it emerged that he had mocked Britain’s cooking and reputation for trustworthiness.
His comments, made during a private conversation with President Putin of Russia and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, were overheard and printed in the Libération newspaper yesterday.
“The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is ‘mad cow’ disease,” M Chirac said of the British. “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland,” he told amused colleagues during a meeting in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on Sunday.
M Chirac’s remarks are being seized upon as evidence of “Old Europe’s” true feelings towards Britain when relations have been severely strained by the budget row at last month’s European Union summit. "
Chirac has lost the French's trust (and vote) on the European constitution, lost the Olymics, and has now the lowest ever trust polls of the French as a President, I wonder how he allows himself to do such bad jokes. We need a new President.
"The rail strike was called by four trade unions at SNCF, representing 70 percent of the railway operator's workers. It started at 8 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Wednesday and was due to continue until 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Friday.
The rail workers' worries about job cuts reflect broader concerns in France about unemployment, the number one concern of voters. The jobless rate held at 10.2 percent in April, its highest level in more than five years."
You can feel it in Paris, less traffic, less emails, many employees stayed home, less phone calls, cancelled meetings...
What's interesting is that the Eurostar and Thalys traffic to the UK, Belgium and Netherlands has been maintained. The French are stuck home but the French public service of SNCF is very careful about foreigners.
France is really going through a crisis these days, saying no to the European Constitution and multiplying strikes.
How do you see these events ?
After 50 years of european integration, France said NO yesterday to the E.U. Charter. The first reason according to polls is fears from the French to lose their jobs on account of lower labor cost countries in the E.U.
What did you hear about it in your countries ? What do you think about this major event in Europe ? Has your image of France changed ?
Thanks very much in advance for your comments, I am very interested to have your perspective (don't forget to mention where you are).
F. Bolkestein, who created the Bolkenstein EU directive, got his electricity cut in his second home in France by French Union CGT. This is the way some people France see public service unfortunately, independently from what people (and I) think about this directive, wether it is good or bad, I don't see why he would get his electricity cut. What's next ?
Markot Wallström. Too bad there are no comments (yet ?) activated
Alain Juppé, former French Prime Minister has a blog (comments are filtered though) and makes the news in the UK Times (article only available for free for a week).
All started on blogs and spreading fast. Rebecca McKinnon:
" 1) we believe in free speech – and act to defend it and extend it
2) we believe in direct connection between people in ways which allow us to consider ourselves part of a bigger here and wider us – and we act to bring flows of tools, money and attention to bear on creating channels for those connections to develop
3) we believe in planetary citizenship along international norms – and we act to empower campaigns to make the world fairer, freer, more prosperous and more sustainable."
Check the Global Voices blog.
The Ukraine revolution blog covers it also with many pictures in real time. As Dan Gillmor says, "News by the people, for the people", and live.
Ukraine events can be followed on this Ukraine Revolution weblog, written from there.
PoliticsMatters is a collective blog in Italian and English that just launched. Of course, the US elections and its Worldwide effects is one of the main topics, seen from Italia.
This year the 5th worldwide forum on electronic democracywill happen on September 30th in Issy les Moulineaux. Online registration is available and it is open to all.
André Santini hosts a round table on net campaigns. Joe Trippi, who was behind Howard Dean's campaign will be one of the main speakers.
I was invited to speak on another conference about "the new tools and electronic means of expression", organised by the Club de l'Hyper République, a big thanks to Eric Legale.
Our friend Joi Ito was selected amongst the top 25 worldwide who change the world of Internet and politics, you can support him if you like by voting for him here.
This article of the WSJ today reminds me of Internet startups growing fast enough so that their VCs fire the CEOs to get going. France and Germany started it and they have just been fired, probably they are too slow now with the 10 new members.
"Since the European Union's birth almost 50 years ago, the Franco-German axis has been driving its agenda. So when the new president of the European Commission announced the composition of his Commission late last week, it marked the end of an era.
As Jose Manuel Barroso read the names of the Commissioners he had chosen for the key portfolios, it became clear that the center of gravity has shifted. France and Germany are no longer calling the shots. Almost none of the duo's central demands were met while all important economic positions went to avowed free-marketers.
It all began when 10 new members, mostly from the former Communist East, joined the EU in May. In contrast to Paris and Berlin, the newcomers pursue largely free-market policies and support the U.S. war in Iraq. Heralding that tectonic shift in the balance of power was Mr. Barroso's own nomination in June. France and Germany had pushed for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Particularly in foreign policy, Belgium had been toeing the Franco-German line.
But in this new Europe, Portugal's Prime Minister was chosen instead. With his free-market credentials and support of the U.S. war in Iraq, it was hard to imagine a greater setback for the Franco-German ambitions in Europe than Mr. Barroso's nomination. But last week it got even worse for Berlin and Paris."
This article will improve again France's image abroad.
"Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt her strategy of "active disengagement" - calculated loafing - to escape the horrors of disinterested endeavor."
"But she works just 20 hours a week writing dry economic reports at the state electric utility, Électricité de France, for which she is paid about $2,000 a month"
Great.
"Her employer of 12 years was not amused. Irritated that she identified herself as an Électricité de France employee on the back cover of her book, company officials wrote her a stern letter accusing her of inattention at meetings, leaving work early and "spreading gangrene from within," just as her book advocates. They demanded that she appear for a disciplinary hearing, though the original Aug. 17 date has been pushed back to September. That's because Ms. Maier is going on vacation."
Shame on you, Ms Corinne Maier. No, all French people are not like Corinne, some work hard and pay taxes to pay your salary, I swear.
Boing BoingFahrenheit 911 factchecksHere are Michael Moore's extensive factchecking notes on Fahrenheit 911. Link (via Kottke via Joi)
Let's fact check everything.
"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...
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.
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.
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.
I have just played with Blogpulse, interesting toy that helps you compare trends for any search word.
Here is Bush versus Kerry:
Interested in observing the US Presidential Fund Race a little closer to home ?
Here is a map of the funding by US cities and also how much and to whom Barbara Streisand has donated (you can search on anybody's name). Quite transparent, the US politics...
Thanks, Bjoern !
Excellent article of George Packer on blogs, journalism and politics, thanks Doc for the pointer.
"All of this meta-comment by very bright young men who never leave their rooms is the latest, somewhat debased, manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering, a lost form in this country through much of the 20th century."
"blogs are a new way of doing politics"
Bjoern Ognibeni sent me an email after our blogger meet up there about True Majority. Probably most of you know about it but sorting out my emails I watched the flash animation and the initiative is very interesting (and the flash very good !).
One of the founders of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Ben Cohen, launched this initiative to "Take Action": "give us two minutes a month, we'll give you a better world. I share Bjoern's views that we would need something like this in Europe. More than 300 000 people signed up and they send thousands of faxes to Congresspeople on action points, such as support affordable housing, support a real peace plan, censure Bush, tell the FCC Democracy needs quality news, etc.
Each time someone signs up to "take action", they send a fax to Congresspeople. I may be the last one to discover this, but I like the idea... I agree with Bjoern, we need something like this in Europe !
I wish it would be the same in Paris, I had two fines in the same day in Paris last week, because you have to buy there a street car park paying card available only in certain shops, then get a paper ticket, put it on the car and it is only good for two hours, so if you don't come back, you get a fine. Paying by mobile phone would be really cool.
Micah Sifry pinged me after my speech on the Future of Business in Europe at the WEF, as I quoted some numbers that really impressed me in Estonia.
Here are some hard facts I got from this document on E-Estonia, really interesting.
Ministers peruse draft bills and regulations, make comments and suggestions, and vote entirely online at computer terminals. The system, coupled with the use of digital signatures, eliminates the need to send mountains of papers between ministries for consultation. It gives ministers a possibility to participate in the session from any location. The system, created by Estonian IT companies, saves approximately three million Estonian kroons (192 000 EUR) per year in paper and copying costs.
In the summer of 2001, the Government created a web page Täna Otsustan Mina ("I Decide Today"). Ministries upload all their draft bills and amendments there, allowing people to review, comment on and make proposals on the legislative process as well as propose amendments to existing legislation. Ideas that gain substantial support will be reviewed by competent bodies. Approximately 5% of all ideas are used as amendments to bills.
In April 2002 the Look @ World Foundation started an ambitious training project – the goal being that by spring 2004, 100,000 Estonians will have been taught basic computer and Internet skills. In October 2003 more than 75 500 people have passed the training. Primary feedback indicated that 59 per cent of the participants have become regular internet users.
Since January 2002, the Citizenship and Migration Board (www.pass.ee) has been issuing a new primary domestic identification document - the ID card. In addition to many advanced security features, the card has a machine-readable code and a microchip containing the visual data on the card and two security certificates (long number series), to verify the individual and supply digital signatures. Possible future uses of the card include integration of ID cards and banking cards and various access cards. By the end of 2003, 350,000 ID-cards were issued.
By 2004, all state and local government agencies should be providing services through the Internet, 60 per cent of the population are everyday Internet users.
People all over the country can access the Internet from over 700 Public Internet Access Points (PIAP), 51 PIAPs per 100 000 people (autumn 2003). The PIAP has a special traffic sign, with the @ symbol, showing its location. Most of PIAPs are located in libraries and other municipal buildings across the country.
A survey conducted in the Autumn of 2003 by TNS EMOR indicated that 47 per cent of the Estonian population aged between 15 and 74 regard themselves as active Internet users. Almost all public employees have computerized workplaces. 38 per cent of the population have computers at home and 71 per cent of home computers are connected to the Internet. Most home Internet users have high-speed Internet connections.
Is Estonia leading the way in E-government ? Ross, may be some thoughts ?
So, after a session to prepare for my first Plenary at the World Economic Forum, I asked for your suggestions on how to prepare it and I thank you for your ideas, for those of you who just want the summary I wrote one 20 minutes before my speech and I have read my blog post in front of the European leaders (and gave your comments to them in print - quite fun !), I was quite scared but I think it went Ok, but please please please let me have your comments about my speech (streaming Real Audio and Windows Media player) which is available on the World Economic Forum Website.
The questions I had were very interesting:
Antiglobalization and Social Entrepreneurs: how do feel about that ? Excellent questions, I talked about my good old and close Social Entrepreneurs friends, Ethan Zuckerman (blog Africa and Geek Corp), Daniel Lubetzky (One Voice) and Mel Young (The Homeless World Soccer Cup).
Tax issues in the EU: we (the 15 Old Europe countries) should really adapt to the new 10 ones "hunger to succeed" and not the opposite. I even said "I feel more Eu
