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In the spring and summer of 2005, we were a few people on the videoblogging yahoogroups and regulars at the “flash-meetings” where videobloggers from around the world meet, that wanted to have a meet-up in Europe. So, mid july I registered www.vlogeurope.com and slowly looked with others towards finding a venue and a time to meet. We ended up being about 25 people in Amsterdam for a wonderful weekend in September that year. The event was very low-tech, without any internet access or flashy widescreen tv’s, yet the discussions were, at least in my opinion, stimulating and engaging. The crowd included Peter van Dijck, founder of Mefeedia.com, Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson, Jan from fauxpress, Duncan Speakman, Richard Bluestein and several other great people from around Europe as well as from the U.S.

VlogEurope 2006 took place on the weekend of November 18th-19th in Milan, Italy. While I helped with the organizing of the first VlogEurope, I did practically nothing the next year, and it was masterfully hosted by Deirdre Straughan, and co-organized by Andreas Haugstrup and Joel from Joelart.tv. The crowd this time was a bit bigger, it included more international guests including Schlomo Rabinowitz and Richard Hall, and the Sunday trip to Lake Como is a memory I will keep for life.

Next year – VlogEurope 2007 – will take place in Heidelberg, Germany sometime in the fall, and this time I really want to help organize it (if they will let me!). Two things that really struck me at the last VlogEurope was 1) The small amount of female participants (we were Really a boy’s club it seems) and 2) The lack of eastern european participants. Richard Bluestein suggested that we do more to include people from Eastern Europe, and I think that is important.

Basically, I think I want to start thinking about VlogEurope 2007 already now. Not because I suddenly want it to be a 400-person, $300-per-head Conference, but because I want to really work on diversifying the event, while keeping what I guess can be said to be the spirit of VlogEurope. A few things are set: It will take place in Heidelberg, Germany, and Joel, who is an American ex-pat living and working in Germany, will be the host of the event. Joel participated in VlogEurope 05 and 06, and I am sure that he will be a perfect main organizer for the event.

But there are a few questions that I wonder about, and one of them is: What is happening within videoblogging / video podcasting / “tv-on-the-internet” in Europe today? I am sure that with all the exposure that Youtube has received around the world, there are thousands of individuals and quite a few companies and organizations, who have hacked the logical piece: “Video + internet = Interesting communication format”. But where are they? Who are they? And how do they see this fit in to the larger issues?

There are quite a few people who point fingers at “the old school of videobloggers” who are deemed to be purists who, for instance, say that a videoblog without an rss feed (with media enclosures) is no videoblog. I wonder how that relationship will develop. In a world where new media networks like myheavy.com will pop up every week – how will the paradigms of these sites limit or free the creativity of videobloggers or people interested in the medium?

I do not know what VlogEurope 2007 will look like, but I am excited to think about where we could take it. Hopefully, this year, at least we will have all the sessions on-line like they did at both VloggerCons.