9:30-10:00am  Registration & Coffee
Buzzing atmosphere. Some slightly hung-over, others ready for networking right from the start. The many suits blended in nicely with Spanish students and all the Google fellows, who – for most parts – could be recognised by their lazy t-shirts and comfortable shoes.

10:00-10:45am  Welcoming Remarks with Andrew Rasiej, Micah L. Sifry, Marc Lopez and Mayor Jordi Hereu
The organizers are charismatic figures. Good at captivating a crowd and getting every ones attention. Got excited about what’s to come.

10:45- 11:00am Keynote conversation: Charlie Leadbeater on Cloud Culture: How Cloud Computing Will Change Culture and Politics
Leadbeater made a side remark during his conversation with Micah Sifry: “Obama was Dean done right” – right because the Obama campaign was control and management. Right because he won. As Martin Sønderlev (aka @nowuseit) noted, it will be interesting to see if grass root-organizing will get so mainstream and structured that a chaotic reaction will be inevitable.

11:00-11:30am  Keynote: Mapping the Eurosphere with Anthony Hamelle
..! Great slides, but we never understood, what it was all about? Why did they make the slides showing the blogosphere for the different countries in the EU? What was the purpose of their study?

11:30-11:45am Coffee Break
Much needed!! The wifi isn’t working, our computers have used up all the power and you’re not allowed to bring coffee with you to the different halls. …I ended up missing the Danish Reeboot conference.

11:45-12:45pm Keynote: How Obama Won with Joe Rospars
Fun to se him. Nothing new. The downside about the Obama campaign is that most people here have been following the campaign closely, and read up on it as it became bigger and bigger. So there really wasn’t anything new to he presentation apart from this video.

Klik her for at se den indsatte video.

Joe Rospars told the audience, that towards the end of the campaign, they were starting to worry that people would stop volunteering for events because the polls indicated a win. Of all the different videos they tried, this video was the most successful one. After seeing it, you understand why.
Would have loved to hear more of that kind – the practical stuff – , or how the work with “Organizing for America” is doing – how do you turn a campaign in to e-governance?

12:45-2:00pm Learning from Obama with Joe Rospars, Kate Albright-Hanna, Benoit Thieulin, Dominique Piotet, and Diego Beas (moderator)
Hm.  French vs. Americans. The debate never seems to take off. It was like the question wasn’t right. Yes, you can learn to use all platforms and construct and organize. But from what I recon the biggest difference between McCain and Obama was McCain and Obama for starters, and secondly the ability to get people organized. And the Europeans do use the Internet for campaigning. As Benoit Thieulin pointed out, Segoyine Royals campaign was indeed digital.
What really struck most people after that session was how little we knew about what was going on in Europe. Everyone there – more or less – had paid close attention to everything that happens in America. Not just because the country has fostered some great campaigns, but simply because we could read the language. We could follow everything, and select our sources from the vast amount of people writing, tweeting and blogging about the campaigns. Ask me a question about Spain, and I know almost nothing. Even when it comes to my neighbouring countries, like Sweden, whose language I can understand, I don’t know where to start. There just isn’t that huge amount of attention, so it doesn’t land in my inbox who to follow, who’s feed to subscribe to – I mean, what’s Germany’s equivalent of Politico? Or the French version of Huffington? oh, but never mind answering, because I can’t really read any French or German… So back to square one.

To me that emphasized the need for PDF Europe - European style. Who’s done what, where, how, why and with what result? Who’s the Joe Rospars of Portugal or Italy? Or were they not at the conference, because there’s nothing to tell?

Networking Lunch
The lunch-concept was perfect! A brown paper bag with two sandwiches, snacks, fruits and drinks. Perfect for a picnic on the rooftop terrace on the Hotel together with Google Fellow and founder of FolketsTing.dk, Michael Friis.

How Political Parties are Reinventing Their Relationship with the Public – Sindre Fossum Beyer, Anna Ebbesen, Ghislaine Robinson, Rishi Saha, and Antoni Gutierrez Rubi (moderator)
Blog post about the presentation to come…
Looking forward to seeing how the Conservatives will play their campaign after having heard Rishi Saha’s talk. Hoping that he will share his details on the rumoured PDF UK, which Sifrey and Micah had post-meetings with Steve Osgood in the days after the Barcelona conference.

Missed the next session – the breakout I wanted to see with David All on the panel was full, so I ended up spending the hour chatting to Matt Scofied from Newt Gringricht office about working life, odd ones on Copenhagen and life in general.

Plenary on Crossnational Collaboration: Case Studies and Lessons for the Future with Markus Beckedahl, Jeremie Zimmerman, Paul Hilder, Jack Thurston, and Javier Cremades with Micah Sifry (moderator)
Too tired. We had to leave. Astrid needed to get her panel organized for the next day, and we both needed some silence, wifi and power for the computers.

Cocktail party.
More like a reception and mainly the place for finding out who to have dinner with. Meetups at 8:15 attracted 13 – 2 Danes, 2 Americans, 2 Irish, 2 Germans, 4 brits and one French. Drinks and beer down town later on, where a few of the people travelling in transparency joined us. The Sunlight Foundation had invited many of the attending bloggers and hackers to a networking dinner – nice treat – and many of them found their way back to the rest of us later on.

At 4:45 I leave the brits and the Americans at the Hotel Bar. Great people, great company but a full day of constant conversations in a foreign language does wear you down!

Continue to Day 2

Pre-ramble
Wednesday evening came and went as I re-did my presentation for Fridays panel over and over. 8 minutes is not a lot of time. Especially when you spend a quarter of that trying to find the English word for the articulated Danish sentence you were thinking of….

Sitting in the plane to Barcelona, we realized that none of us had brought a map, or thought at all about practicalities: how do you say “hi” in Spanish? Where are we actually staying? Did you get any Euros with you?

It’s been such a hectic year for us, that this break is truly welcomed. Plus, this will be our celebration of having published our book. Even though it came out early October, we just haven’t found the time to celebrate.

Cocktails and chatter
Thursday evening we joined the rest of the speakers for a pre-conference speakers cocktail party at our hotel. Great fun to meet people from all over Europe and the states, who has risen the bar when it comes to using the digital tools to promote a cause, reconnect with the public or just securing everyone a place to leak information, politicians are trying to stop.

At the general introduction, Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej had everyone saying name, occupation, country and 3 words that describe them. Quite a good icebreaker and interesting to listen to.

Looking forward to some good conversations over the next two days. Almost sad that we re leaving on Saturday already!

We’ll try to blog and tweet as we go, but you can tune in online for the real thing via http://civicolive.com/pdfeu/ where everything is livestreamed.

For the program go to the Pdf website.

“I think that you’re a worthless piece of s**t and I wouldn’t p**s on you if you were on fire (my opinion). You’re a poor, lonely, jealous, old man with aspirations of being a writer.”

Sagen om Kaleb vs. Robert Forrey er et godt eksempel på, hvordan verden er en anden med de nye mediers fremkomst: Hvordan alt er forandret og alligevel helt det samme. Et lille oprids af fejlslutninger begået i sagen:

1) Man sviner ikke sine borgere
Bloggeren er en borger, og dermed også en af dem, man som borgmester regerer på vegne af. Borgere skal man derfor ikke tilsvine, det siger sig selv.

1.a) Man sviner aldrig på skrift!
Skulle man endelig miste sit temperament, så gør det da aldrig på skrift. Det lader til, at James D. Kaleb burde få sine medarbejdere til at indstallere en lille google-tester, hvor man skal svare på et simpelt matematisk spørgsmål, før man får lov til at trykke send.

2) Bloggere udgiver på egen medieplatform = journalist
Bloggeren opfører sig som en journalist og beder om aktindsigt, fordi bloggeren publicerer nyheder som alle de andre borgere, der har adgang til en mediekanal. Derfor skal han behandles som alle andre journalister og imødekommes. Bare fordi han ikke udgiver sine artikler på print i et gammelt dagblad, er han ikke ligegyldig.

3) Lad pressefolkene om journalisterne
Journalister kan borgmesteren lade sine pressefolk om at håndtere. Når bloggerens ønske netop er professionelt, bør han lade sine folk om at besvare henvendelsen. Og besvare den rigtigt, vel at mærke. Hvis det vitterligt er en personlig hetz, som borgmesteren siger, at det er, så bør han stadig behandle henvendelsen professionelt.

4) Forvent at alt altid bliver publiceret alle steder
Adspurgt om borgmesteren fortryder, at han skrev mailen, svarede han: “I regret that he made it public. That was between him and me. It’s a bit harsh, but it was between him and me.“. Den udtalelse burde diskvalificere ham fra nogensinde at få opstilling igen. Der er INTET, der er privat vedr. ens virke som politiker. INTET. Igen: Bare fordi bloggeren er en borger, der ikke udgiver på print i et gammelt medie, gør ikke hans henvendelse til privat.

Hvis du er i tvivl om effekten af borgmesterens handlinger, så tjek Google. De tre højest placerede links i søgeresultatet omhandler mailen. Dermed placerer James D. Kaleb sig muligvis i tvivlsomt selskab, som endnu en politiker der bliver fældet af nye medier.