MountEUlympus back in action

I've come home from China and will start blogging again. It's pretty exciting to come back just now, with the EU busy about the Hungarian Media Law, the Hungarian presidency, democracy in Italy and saving the Euro. Taken as a whole, 2010 has certainly been one of the EU's most challenging years since 1957.

The new year is always the time for new plans and new beginnings, so I will try to do some new things as well. First of all I'm honored to join the bloggingportal.eu editors. Hope that I can do some good things as an editor. To that effect, you can also add me on Twitter now. Secondly, I will give a new focus to my blogging. Sure, I'm still writing about institutional affairs and current EU events. But I want to pursue a few topical issues as well.

The most important one is China. We don't know anything about this new world power. And the way it is, we are headed into a clash of cultures between "the West" and China. In my blogging, I will take up issues that China talks about and take up EU-China questions, trying to avoid the conventional bias of our media. The question is, how can "the West" and China be reconciled? How can the faultlines be mended? Where does assimilation take place, in China or in "the West"? Obviously, talking about "the West" will not be limited to the EU but essentially incorporate the US as well...

The second aspect is the global economy. This will be a learning-by-doing experience, as my knowledge about international trade flow and finance only stems from a bachelor's degree. Together with the global economy, I also want to explore questions of sustainable development in the world.

The final aspect is event journalism. I will move into the Brussels bubble in a bit and try to cover some European Councils, press conferences and what else seems of interest to me and to you. Depending on the opportunities I get, I'm also going to play with my video camera and try to interview some of the people that keep the wheels spinning in Brussels.

At any rate, this is an exciting time to recommence blogging. After the #EUCO tweet wall event, I expect that we'll have to negotiate how blogging and bloggers can be incorporated into EU policy-shaping in the future.

Glad to start this new year together with you. I'm looking forward to a lot of fruitful interaction and debates.


P.S. if you're too busy to check this website for updates, how about copying its RSS feed into your feed reader?

Flip HD Camera and citizen journalism

For the Th!nk2 about it-competition on climate change, the European Journalism Center (EJC) gave every blogger a Flip Mino HD Camera to support the blogging. It's as big as a normal cell phone and produces videos of outstanding quality. The camera is especially good for interviews and picks up sound very well in a range of one meter, even if the environment is noisy. I recently used it on a trip to Trento (sorry Joe); have a look here to see the quality. Current market price for an HD cam (you want HD, not the regular one) is about 190 EUR in Europe, $160 in the US.

This camera offers new opportunities for euroblogging as well. Raymond Frenken of EUX TV has been using it for short reports in the car or from a train station. Furthermore, we've been at the election night in the European Parliament with a small webTV-team from Maastricht (even though we used a bigger camera then) and found a lot of interesting people to talk to. These people would normally never be heard. But through short interviews with the Flip Cam, the world of the grey suits in the EP or the Commission can be illuminated.

Some NGOs like the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) already use videos to enhance their communication. Some MEPs also use videos. The same is possible for a witty blogger attending a panel discussion in Brussels.

And if the quality of the video is decent and the message is interesting, the MSM might even take interest in your footage!


Update: My excuses for providing a wrong link to the "tricky situations"-video. The correct link has now been put in.