There was a RepRap printing 3D stuff, which always feels to me like watching the future. (Note: One piece on one of the two RepRaps broke during transport and the guys managed to print a replacement. How awesome is that?) There were mini lounge chairs. There were great talks. We had great dinner at BioMio and a fun afterparty, too. There was even a wifi bike. (Did I mention spectacular weather?)

David Weinberger, who I always love to see talk, spoke about the web being a morally charged tool, and about optimism:

Bruce Sterling talked about the challenges of the next decade, not acting like we (as a generation) were dead, why we shouldn’t try to beat our dead great-grand dads, and why it’s so important to get a decent bed & chair & other stuff we spend much time with. Sounds weird? Rather inspiring, really, because he nailed quite a lot of things. That’s something you get a lot at Reboot: Inspiration from unexpected places and areas of thought. Here’s Bruce Sterling in a post-talk interview:

To sum it up: It was a great bunch of people there and I think we all took home a lot of new brain food, and met a few new friends. Thanks to all of you, and particularly of course the orga team and Thomas for putting it all together.

I’m not sure I should be quoting from this email, but these lines feel so intense I think they better speak for themselves.

“Up to now, since election, most of us are talking and thinking about election results, street demonstrations, arresting people … we had a terrible shock and we got thrown among lies. We are still so sad and angry. We have to overcome our problems,” she said among many other things, “and we shall, but we need time.”

Around them, chaos is raging, and this young woman takes the time to reply to my email, to share her thoughts and to explain herself. The odd thing is - she’s an extremely brave young woman, but she’s like one of us, she could be a geek from around the corner. I don’t know what to say.

(Boingboing has a list of things to do for Iranians.)

It’s a sad day for Germany, and an infuriating one. The law hasn’t passed yet, but the major parties have agreed (Netzpolitik.org, in German) to introduce net censorship in Germany. It’s all under the pretense of protecting children against abuse, but the draft of the law clearly shows that it will neither protect children nor put a limit on the distribution on videos of child abuse. It also shows how badly an unhealthy mix of under-informed politicians and overly symbolic politics can go wrong.

The German government will censor the internet. What country am I living in?

I am seriously stunned as I’m writing this. How could this come about? Von der Leyen, the conservative Secretary of Family Affairs, pushed this piece of legislation hard and actually managed to get not just her party (CDU) but also a large chunk of the German Bundestag to agree to legislation that clearly they haven’t read don’t understand the scope of, mostly by using harsh rhetoric and fake statistics, pretending she knows how to fight child abuse. Never mind that even conservative newspaper Handelsblatt stated: It’s official, von der Leyen has lied. (Some conservative politicians as well as lobbyists have already stated that other content - copyright infringements, gambling, violent games - should also be considered for blocking.)

Personally, this troubles me on several levels. These laws clearly intrude my private life as someone whose private and business life revolves around the net to a large degree. Also, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had the chance to stop this madness by withdrawing support and didn’t - despite a wing within the party strongly opposing the whole censorship project.

I’m an adviser to the online youth election campaign of SPD. Panorama3000 and I organize the online campaign for Jusos, the SPD’s youth organization. (The Jusos oppose censorship plans; former head of Jusos Björn Böhning lead the intra-party stance to stop the censorship plans.) Both on a personal level and as a campaigner I must say agreeing to this legislation hurts democracy in Germany, and the ongoing election campaign.

To clarify, and as full disclosure: I will continue to support Jusos in the election campaign; I still think SPD is one of the very few sound choices in the upcoming elections (the Greens being the other), but that’s a personal choice. The thing is: We all need to make it clear that we oppose censorship. This is not something that just affects the geeks and nerds. This affects all of us.

How could we get to this point? This is ridiculous.

Update: Thomas Knüwer of German newspaper Handelsblatt has some comments on this issue: Dammbruch im Internet (de)

Jörn “Nero” Sieveneck shot, cut and uploaded a brief video while we were talking. By the end of our session it was live on the web - Berlinblase style.

BCC3 Session (Ausschnitt) über Co-Working from NERO on Vimeo.

Thanks, Nero!

Just coming back from Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum (GMF) - and on my way to Barcamp Cologne 3 - I’m in a little cafe in the middle of nowhere (sorry dotdean), where Cappuccino still tastes like early 90s cappuccino, and where laptop dwellers in cafes are still greeted with curious stares. It is, to be short, the opposite of GMF - a truly global, international, intercultural event, and a remarkable one at that.

Why the praise? It’s the people of course. I can hardly remember another conference where so many folks working on such courageous projects get together not to have themselves celebrated (like we occasionally do at all those web conferences), but to talk, on eye level, with each other, exchange ideas and experiences, and seemed to be humbled by each other’s presence. When I was sitting on the panel with four bloggers, activists and citizen journalists in the old German parliamentary buildings (full disclosure: I was invited as moderator by Deutsche Welle, paid gig), I couldn’t help but feeling awe in the face of what these folks pull off in their day-to-day lives. Who was on the panel? Nancy Watzman, investigative journalist, consultant to the Sunlight Foundation, and author of Political Party Time; Israel Yoroba who writes Le Blog de Yoro; Oliver Nyirugubara, Program Coordinator for Voices of Africa; and a blogger/activist from Iran who asked not to be named because it would put her under unnecessary risk.

These are the prototypical bloggers and activists we read and talk about all the time, the ones who fight within or from the outside for freedom of expression in the repressive regimes in their countries (or in one case: corruption in their not-so-repressive regime). These are folks who take real risks every day to do what they’re doing. And I can’t overstate how much that demands our respect and support.

The Global Media Forum will be on again next year. If you get the chance, don’t miss out. It’s inspiring, and impressive.

For more impressions, Nancy Watzman also shares some of her thoughts on the conference, as does Kevin Anderson.

Photo by Deutsche Welle: Panel on Citizen Journalism and Freedom of Speech, with Gabriel Gonzalez (center) giving a brief introduction

Hope to see you there!

First up, I strongly recommend you check out TheSixtyOne, a great music discovery and sharing service. The service comes with a lot of built-in challenges, making music discovery even more playful than other services. (Yes, you can level up, too.) It’s as interactive as it could possible be, and therefor pretty much addictive. It’s worth it, too. Also, you can also choose to browse Creative Commons licensed music only, which I always find neat. Particularly, and despite the NSFW title, I recommend this song:

Also, Us Now is a great 60 min documentary about grassroots initiatives and social media. I haven’t yet managed to finish the whole movie, but I’ll definitively watch the rest this weekend:

Us Now and the next recommendation, Brain Pickings, via my buddy Johannes Kleske. Brain Pickings is a blog full of true brainteasers and awesome stuff. Somewhat along the same line, also more geared towards trends & design, is PicoCool by Emily Chang, which just was relaunched.

In other news:

• Thomas Praus and I will be taking sponsors for Likemind Berlin (the next month or two are covered, but afterwards it’s your chance - it’s the best, cheapest and most fun sponsorship you could wish for). Get in touch via Twitter (@thewavingcat) or email (peter at thewavingcat.com).
• Sunday, 7 June is election day for the European elections. This is important; if you live in the EU, please vote. If you don’t, stop reading this blog ;) On Youtube, you can find plenty of hilarious election campaign TV ads (German clips; it’s really unbelievable what kind of videos the parties produce.)
• Next week at Deutsche Welle’s Global Media Forum (GMF) I’ll be moderating a panel on Citizen Journalism and Freedom Of Speech with interesting and incredibly brave bloggers, activists and citizen journalists.
• Being around the corner for GMF anyway, I surely won’t miss out on BarcampCologne3 (hashtag #bcc3). If you’re there, say hi!

That said, have a great weekend.

A new pet project of mine is all about food: Berlin Munchies is a blog about food in Berlin. Not exactly haute cuisine, but down-to-earth, day-to-day food encounters. My collaborators Michelle and AlienTed and I take snapshots of food we encounter in places we like, and add a brief description. We focus on restaurants and snack bars, cafes and bars.

It’s all very beta, totally subjective, and low-key: We take the pics mostly with our cellphone cameras and have them posted automatically to the blog. (I really like the live character of posting straight from my phone, but the quality really is somewhat sad.)

So here’s what to expect: A (often blurry - cellphone camera, remember?) photo of a dish or a drink; a brief description of why we like the place; and an idea of where to find it. That’s it.

Inspiration came from two food blogs I recently encountered: New York based The Young & Hungry, and J’s Let’s Break Bread. Both are great; both look much better than ours; still, I think there’s a lot of yummy food to be had in Berlin. So if you’re in town and are looking for a snack or a drink, have a look.

Photo: Bagel at Goldmarie, Kreuzberg

Since I started working on the online campaign for the German federal elections, I haven’t blogged about it here. (Although I was interviewed twice, by American PoliticsMagazine and by German newspaper taz.de. Also, see my disclosure at the end of this post.) We’re way into the campaigning season by now. Between that and my time in the US, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on the online campaigns in Germany and the differences to the American presidential elections. It’s time, I think, to share a few thoughts - mostly on how useful the Obama campaign’s lessons are for German political campaigns.

We’ve all watched the US campaigns closely, and have ever since. I remember in 2004, working for the SPD’s online agency as a student, we watched the Dean campaign for their organizing online and micro donations. This time, all eyes were on Obama, for their organizing online and social media activities. Both times, the US elections came relatively briefly before their German counterparts, which makes them good material for analysis.

So can’t we just clone the Obama campaign and all is well? Now there’s a handful of problems with that. Besides the fact that it would be pretty boring to do that, of course.

There is no Obama in Germany. Obama is a very strong, charismatic character who symbolizes a time of change, who totally hits the zeitgeist. There is no German equivalent. (Although some might disagree on this one.)

Obama was good on the web, but also offline. The Obama team had an excellent online strategy. They also had massive resources: Money, staff, volunteers. But we shouldn’t forget that the Obama campaign also featured the biggest ever budget for traditional media. (Those TV spots are still pretty costly, remember?) Also, the campaign was good about mobilizing offline by coordinating online. In Germany, we need to find the balance between online and offline, which traditionally is a tricky one.

A different political system. Germany has a profoundly different political system from the US. Example: We vote primarily for parties, not candidates - at least not on the federal level: The chancellor is elected by the parliament, not directly by the citizens. This makes it harder to focus a campaign on just one candidate. Also, privacy regulations in the EU make the kind of contact databases that the US campaigns maintained widely impossible. (Which isn’t bad, if you ask me.)

A different political culture. Germany is not America, and the political culture is a very different one. Volunteering, donations, even discussing politics works differently here. Cold-calling your friends to vote for one party? Forget it. Donations are nowhere as important as in the US. Politics are considered a very personal matter that’s discussed only with close friends. Just to name a few key differences, all of which have to be reflected in a successful campaign.

Smaller budgets. (Waaaay smaller.) Not the least important: budgets for election campaigns are way smaller than in the US. Consequently, the teams involved in the campaigns are smaller, too. This gives you a somewhat different framework to operate in.

Germany has a weak political blogosphere. This is a fascinating one, particularly since nobody seems to quite know the reasons: The German political blogosphere is strangely underdeveloped. (Speculations range from Germans being to focused on hierarchies to value non-expert bloggers’ opinions to a lack of need for alternative media because there is a strong and highly diverse media system in Germany.) For my M.A. thesis I interviewed journalists about the relevance of political blogs for political journalists in Germany, and the results were pretty clear: Although the journalists stated that they would love to have more political blogs around, the blogs were mostly irrelevant to their work. That was in 2007, so it has changed a bit. The upcoming elections also lead to an increased activity in the political blogosphere. Again, a different framework for a campaign.

So where does that leave us? We have to look at the Obama campaign, and others. But we cannot, should not, and will not try to clone it. Quite the contrary: A critical look at what was done online in the US will help us more than just using the same tools.

So a mix of a bit of cherry picking plus some genuinely freshly adapted or developed ideas is what we’re going for. And as I said to the editor of PoliticsMagazine: The youth campaign is “all about getting the basics right”. Website and blog need to be state of the art; a solid contact database; Social Media presence where needed; and of course a focus on giving the community the tools they need to organize themselves. So are we on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr? Of course, wherever it makes sense. But that can’t be all. After all, this isn’t about tools, it’s about a strategy, about issues, about the people who make up the community.

Full disclosure: I’m an adviser to the Online Youth Campaign for Jusos, the youth organization of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). All thoughts here, as always, are my personal points of view only, and they don’t necessarily represent my clients’ point of view.

Image: Obamalatte by Jason Permenter (some rights reserved)

So how much of your clients’ work should be mixed into your own social networks: Blog, Twitter, Facebook? I think we can all agree that full disclosure is the least all of us in the social media sphere need to do. (Here’s a list of my most relevant clients, and I’ll fully disclose wherever a conflict of interest may arise.) But that shouldn’t be all.

I’ve had situations where my business and private activity got mixed up. Partly that’s a good sign, as I often get hired to do stuff I love to do. At other times, there just wasn’t time to set up separate accounts. Sometimes, you forget to log out of your private account and into the campaigns account - it can happen. And frankly, it’s not the end of the world. After all, if I wouldn’t want to be associated with my clients, I wouldn’t work for them.

Still, it feels like all of us - together, or each of us individually - will need to negotiate best practices, guidelines, rules of thumb: Where do we draw the line? What’s ok, what’s annoying, what’s abuse of personal ties and friendships? How many invites to become fans of this new sneaker or that band or this party do we really want to find in our Facebook inbox? Using Overly abusing your personal friends for work will burn your social capital cost you friendships, and no job is worth that.

So here’s what I think I’ll go by, my personal rule of thumb:

• Facebook: My Facebook is mine, and mine alone. I might decide to post stuff there if I personally care about them. But I won’t run another campaign inside my own Facebook - everything beyond setting up a Facebook page and handing it over is just too socially awkward.
• Blog: I might blog my observations and thoughts on a campaign or project, mostly on a meta level.
• Twitter: I might post a link to a project or campaign, with disclosure. The higher frequency of posts per day allows more liberal handling. Where possible, I’ll opt for setting up a dedicated Twitter account.

For all of these, I’m the only person to decide what I run in my personal outlets, how I run them, and what not to run. I won’t ever post anything a client or third party tries to pressure me into.

All of this is in flux, and will have to evolve over time, but it’s a start. And I’m very curious about your take on all this: How do you go about it?