Comments on: How many eurobloggers can dance on the head of a pin?

By: Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil » Blog Archive » Lisbon and the Euroblogosphere: my first use of the “c”-word

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:47:40 +0000

[...] reason for linking these two issues together can be found in the recent discussions on the Euroblogospere, which has quietened down since Joe published the full minutes of the podcast. Unlike the last [...]

By: Christophe

Christophe — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:31:25 +0000

Bridging Euro & national blogospheres: in practice, re: enlargement

Congratulations to all for the lively debate.

Two large countries (and more) have a hard time imagining the EU enlarging again in any big way, while Brussels keeps negotiating further. Now, here is a real, substantial debate to be had!

You can join it in any language you wish… as long as you choose:
English:
http://english.blogactiv.eu/category/enlargement/
français:
http://french.blogactiv.eu/category/elargissement-et-pays-voisins/
deutsch:
http://german.blogactiv.eu/category/Erweiterung/

BTW, the blogosphere has a chance to make an impact if it manages to attract more ‘traditional’ (web 1.0) people like myself. Which will happen very soon… Now, you’ve been warned!

Happy Christmas,

Christophe

By: Spanish Reactions to the Euroblog Meet-up | Joe Litobarski

Spanish Reactions to the Euroblog Meet-up | Joe Litobarski — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:59:02 +0000

[...] here are prompted largely by a discussion taking place among English-language bloggers such as Matthew Lowry – who will be participating online tonight). As an advocate of a federal Europe and a pluralist, [...]

By: Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil » Blog Archive » No dazzling projects required

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:31:54 +0000

[...] I said in last week’s post, I gave up on that survey because we’re still too loose and unfunded, a sentiment echoed by [...]

By: Mathew

Mathew — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:20:03 +0000

Absolutely. It’s all about the network.

Imagine one blogger in Country X, regularly posting (and commenting elsewhere) on national affairs in the national language. The difference is that s/he often refers to the relevant EU policy developments, best practices in other countries, and the ideas being discussed in other countries. Presto, the EU enters the national debates, and people learn from experiences in other countries.

How does this happen over the language barrier? Because our blogger is using a pipe of content from bloggers who regularly gloss the debate in their country, using a lingua franca (English? Esperanto?) and/or machine translation.

Moreover, because they use some quite basic tagging/aggregation tools, all of this content is easily found, creating an irregularly updated, utterly distributed library of ‘views from across Europe’ that our blogger can tap into when composing his nationally-oriented posts.

Our blogger hasn’t got time to contribute to this library, but s/he does link to the relevant pieces, and some of his/her readers get interested, and start contributing to the cross-border exchange. It’s certainly good for their traffic…

By: jean-yveshuwart

jean-yveshuwart — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:23:49 +0000

I agree on the point regarding a European blogosphere growing along the “long tail”. For that to happen, though, usual blogger in Europe will have to think beyond a national audience, and write/comment accordingly. That”s a mind shift that hasn’t occured yet, but which be worth to foster.
People are intersted by themselves. But as exchanging experience and opinion with other internet users abroad gives them the feeling they learn something useful for their own understanding, we can imagine blogging with and for other Europeans could become obvious for them.

By: Mathew

Mathew — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:16:07 +0000

Agree totally – what you refer to is what I was talking about in one of my comments to your blog:

The minimum we need to tackle multilingualism in an online EU public space is the ability to gloss a text – to quickly get across what another post, in a language we don’t understand, is about.

… and is in fact what I’ve been talking about for over two years now

As you rightly say, some sort of structure is required to make this happen – and from some of the comments above, this may be difficult.

My point is that maybe Esperanto may be a better language for the glossing process than English. As I said, yesterday I didn’t feel that way, but today i’m glad you’re giving Esperanto a whirl, for the reasons in my comment.

By: Joe Litobarski

Joe Litobarski — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:09:16 +0000

Hehe – well, my thoughts on Esperanto are on my blog (I don’t think it’s really a serious option for Europe). But I’ve set myself the challenge of trying to learn it for a month next year – so then I’ll see for myself how easy or difficult it is to pick up.

I think a really important thing to keep in mind when we talk about creating bridges between the various national blogospheres is that we do not need to translate all the blogs in Europe to have a European public space. Nor do we need to get all Spanish bloggers talking to all the Italian bloggers, and so on.

What we need is just to select the “hot topics” and report them in the English speaking blogosphere. That could be done through a structured process (like a Bloggingportal.eu “editors choice” list that is translated into English by volunteers) – or it could be done in a decentralised, unstructured way (like Julien Frisch’s “German Blog Round-ups”).

By: Mathew

Mathew — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:35:01 +0000

PS The Esperanto debate continues here and here on Joe's blog. To my astonishment, I'm becoming a bit of a convert to the idea ...

By: Andreas Karsten

Andreas Karsten — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:10:16 +0000

“…but you must admit that any excuse to insert a Monty Python video into a post just cannot be denied!”

TOTALLY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE