“The Queen’s Speech is closest the UK has to some kind of State of the Union address. In the speech, delivered by the Queen in all her archaic royal splendor, the government of the day sets out its legislative agenda for the coming year. Press and politicians alike analyze every...
I’m at re-publica in Berlin, appearing at 1315 on a panel about the European public sphere online. You can follow the panel here (Stage 5). This morning we started debating these issues with a speech from Euroblogger Ronny Patz, whose ideas are summarized (in German) on Spiegel Online. Ron’s approach...
My presence on various social networks was getting rather out of hand, so I’ve had to work out a rule of thumb as to who to add on each network. Here are my conclusions – comments most welcome! Facebook – I’ll accept friend requests from anyone I’ve met and – if...
I’m on a bit of a Twitter high these days. On the weekend I passed 5000 followers (probably only to drop below the level again once Twitter eliminates some spam-bots), and today two political Twitter league tables have been published. I am the 10th most-followed person in UK think tanks...
Do we have transparency in European politics? Can every citizen have an active influence on the EU decision-making process? How is broad political awareness reflected in the media? These are some of the key questions of the rE:Unite track at this years re:publica. The conference focuses on bringing together European...
Yesterday current Mayor of London Boris Johnson renamed the Twitter account from @MayorofLondon to @BorisJohnson and kept more than 200000 followers. The URL listed with Twitter is now the website of Boris’s re-election site and not the GLA site as previously. There are posts at Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook...
Right, you want to get a campaign website up and running in no time. You have a little bit of tech knowledge and very little cash. What do you do? Here’s my personal guide to web campaigning on a shoestring. All of the tech mentioned is free unless otherwise stated....
I’ve amended the design of this blog a bit, simplifying things and moving away from a amended version of Twenty Eleven theme, and instead using a (lightly) adapted version of Busby. This theme incorporates some HTML 5 elements, and also is much neater on devices with small screens. One aspect...
The Independent has been creating a bit of a stir today with its “The Twitter 100: Britain’s titans of the Twittersphere“. Sunny Hundal was particularly happy that he ended up joint top of the Politics Top 10. The problem is that the methodology of this list is highly questionable. Indy journalists...
In the social media training work I do, there are some themes that I keep coming back to. This post summarises some of those things, and gives links to resources. Some of these things are behind my thinking, even if I do not always state them explicitly. 1. 10 things...
Today marks 3 years of our little blogging project – BloggingPortal.eu It started as a conversation between Stefan, Andreas and I, and all the coding work was done by Stefan. The inspiration for it came from this blog post I wrote, and I still own the domain name. Beyond that...
“Gary Speed is dead” I read on Twitter late morning today. What dreadful news, what can possibly have happened? I turn to BBC News; that carried just a ‘breaking news’ statement. I turn back to Twitter and I read all kinds of things about him taking his own life, and...