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I am writing this from Joel Carner’s house in Heidelberg, and we are preparing for tomorrow’s VlogEurope sessions. Yes, this weekend is the weekend for the third VlogEurope gathering, and this time it takes place in south-western Germany.

I will take a lot of footage while here, and I look forward to the backchannel discussions on BlogTV - we are broadcasting live from the sessions tomorrow.

I will be in Heidelberg untill monday. More soon.

VlogEurope 2007 takes place in a bit over a month, and this will be a post with some of my own brainstorming for this event.

The co-organizers (basically Joel and myself so far) have thought about what to do at VlogEurope this year along with Andreas, and we think it’s about time to Really represent what videoblogs are made around Europe, as well as talking about what is happening in the different countries.

How would this be done?

Firstly, we would like to have “ambassadors” from different countries who could introduce their “national vlogosphere”. what projects are being done? which ones are interesting? what is “the vlog climate” like in their country?

Also, we would like to SHOW some videoblogs from around Europe. Currently, what I am imagining is 30 minute videos that are curated by people which shows videos from - for instance - Finland or Poland. What if you could sit down and enjoy a 30 minute videoblog with videos from Portugal? They had different videos shown at Pixelodeon, curated by people from around the world. I wasn’t there, but I think it would be interesting to have something like that.

Also, VlogEurope 2007 is mostly about the “meat-space”. Meeting other videobloggers. Discussion. Hanging out. Seeing nice things together. Heidelberg is a wonderful city that I have wanted to visit for a long time - all the way back from my 2000-02 years in Mosaic (old www). The University of Heidelberg was one of the shining institutions during the middle ages / renaissance. There are quite a few students in Heidelberg, but I am not sure if their semester has started in primo September.
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So, we need curators for VlogEurope 2007. The role of the curator is to pick an European country, search for videos from that country, and then edit together a collage of videos. We are not sure yet how long we want the collages to be - 30 minutes? 15? 60? But if you are interested in contributing as a curator, let me know by email (raymondmk at gmail.com).

I just read an interesting blog post from FactoryJoe, where he says this:

Promoting women when they’re doing great things in the tech community has to become a top priority. Providing and seeking out the women who are serving in backbone roles within our community and bringing the spotlight to them and supporting them must become a shared priority. Working with women’s groups to create both inviting events and interesting opportunities to draw out and inspire the reluctant or hidden female talent is something that conference and *camp organizers alike must attend to.

[source]

I remember the feeling when I looked around the people present at VlogEurope 06 in Milan. There were quite few women among us, even though I do not remember quite what the ratio was. I remember talking with Schlomo about this, and he told me that it really took a concentrated effort to get so many females to attend VloggerCon in SF. You simply cannot have a bunch of - well - white guys - sitting together planning an event where you basically invite mostly male voices to present. Female participation in tech conferences does not come by itself, I guess.

We are well into May now, and VlogEurope* 2007, which is the first weekend of September in Heidelberg, Germany, is only four months away. What kind of conference do we want this year? What will we do to include more females in the discussions, or more voices from the middle- and Eastern European countries?

What do you think? How can we include more voices into the discussion? What would make more women interested in these kinds of meet-ups?

* : Yes, we will update the VlogEurope website soon

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.