If you are Twittering from DNA200, please remember to add #DNA09 to all your Tweets.
In the meantime, here is a list of Twitterers we’ve clocked if you want to follow them individually. This list is by no means conclusive, so feel free to add your own Twitter handles in comments if you will be at the conference and have been missed out.
So, here we are in the land of waffles and fruity beer, live from DNA 2009 in Brussels. Have a look at the agenda here. It should be two days of varied, and if we’re lucky, heated discussion – just to keep things lively.
On Day Two, Journalism.co.uk’s very own Laura Oliver will be participating in a panel on Twitter: is it possible to tell the news in 140 characters?
The brainchild of the European Journalism Centre, we will all be blogging away until June, with the aim of throwing some much needed light on that most uncool of institutions, the European Union. Think of it as the blogging world’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Barber and Mardell confessed that their now successful blogs came into being not from an initial personal enthusiasm for blogging, but from above: “I was ordered to,” Barber admitted.
Using podcasts, vodcasts, photos and plain old fashioned text, representatives from all 27 EU member states, will be bringing their individual experiences to the new blogging fraternity.
The official site will be launched on February 1, when readers from across the globe will be able to get involved in the discussion, as well as vote for their favourite blogs. A high-tech bonanza of prizes, from Flip Cameras to iPhones, will be awarded throughout the competition.
For an event that involved bringing dozens of international competitors from all corners of the continent to one place, everything went sensationally smoothly. There was only one controversy.
“Why isn’t the wireless working in here?” a fellow blogger publicly demanded. “WE ARE BLOGGERS,” he exclaimed, as if it were the essence of his being, an article of faith.
I was worried it was all going get a bit heated when one candid British MEP said that he was proud to have a blog, but conceded (rather warily) that he has disabled the comments facility, therefore not allowing any discussion on the site: for fear of rival parties and political groups using it as a platform for their views.
“NO COMMENTS, NO BLOG!” a militant blogger boomed at him. And that was that.
Thankfully everything continued peacefully, though I sensed there were many who wanted to officially strip the gentleman of his self-appointed status as a ‘blogger.’
It was just left to Marjory van den Broeke, head of press at the Parliament, to wrap up the day by quoting one of the speakers who described us as:
“Lively, challenging, not too respectful, young, cool and attractive. Everything bloggers should be.”
And if that is not enough to convince you that the EU – for better or for worse – can be fun, then I urge you to visit my blog to see what Euro-bloggers get up to when they – just for a few minutes – prize themselves away from their beloved MacBooks.
Suffice to say: European relations at their most amusing.
A group of Belgian newspapers are seeking up to £39m (€49m) in damages from Google for the search giant publishing and storing their content without permission or offering payment.
Last year Google lost a case brought against it by the Copiepresse group – an organisation that represents the French language press in Belgium – forcing it to remove cached versions of newspaper articles and take down content from its Google News service
The organisation’s secretary-general told Bloomberg yesterday it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court so that it could decide on the damages. Copiepresse is seeking between €32.8 and 49.1m.
The damages would be in addition to the €25,000 (£20,000) daily fine imposed on Google by the court for each day it kept Copiepresse material on its site.
Google appealed the original court decision of February 2007, which ruled that it could not claim ‘fair use’ – acceptable under copyright law – for using a lines of text and linking to the original article.
A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that it was still awaiting the results of its appeal and that it had not received notification from Copiepresse of any new court dates.
Christian Van Thillo talks about the new forms of journalism publishers need to adopt to survive at the Digital News Affairs (DNA2008) conference in Brussels today.
A victory in a European court last year against Google has encouraged newspapers in Belgium to take action against the European Commission over links on two agency sites.
According to the Times, a Brussels court has been asked by a group of French- and German-language newspapers to examine its claim.
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Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
