I remember Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder) very well. He came to BlogTalk only thru rather longish telephone calls of mine with the Austrian embassy in Ottawa. In the end they were very helpful in getting him a visa. We all enjoyed him & his presentation back then in Vienna. Once when I was in Toronto we missed each other. But who knows maybe he will submit a proposal for BlogTalk Reloaded.
Apart from that I’d recommend to really think about what you publish to the web and the authorities – it’s public after all.

E:M | Goodbye to America: “I had no idea googling people at the border had become a routine.”

Who is going to support us here in Austria (t d f) or Europe? AFAIK
- it’s impossible to blog anonymously
- I’m not sure that – as a blogger – you can keep your sources confidential
- I think you are responsible for what is in you comments
- As a blogger you cannot attend events like as if you were a journalist

To stand up for that somehow reminds me of the notion of Sousveillance (t d f).

EFF: EFF Needs Your Support in the Fight for Blogger’s Rights!: “EFF (t d f) Needs Your Support in the Fight for Bloggers’ Rights!”

Read this in “Cooperation in Business” (PDF, ~900kB), Elinor Ostrom (t d f)‘s design principles. I think here we have some very clear hints how to design and deploy social software.

– Clearly define group boundaries
– Match rules for resource use to local needs
– Allow those affected to modify the rules
– Support mutual monitoring on individuals
– Enforce graduated sanctions
– Provide low-cost conflict resolution
– Build multiple layers of governance

Rather late for me, just before going to Weblogs 2005 in Linz. I just finished the preliminary page for the new BlogTalk (t d f) Reloaded conference that will be held in Vienna (t d f) Oct 2-3, 2006.
We will go for broadening the scope towards social software (t d f) concepts, applications, and phenomenology.

If you go there you will see the formidable steering committee we established.

Expect the call for proposals within the next weeks from now.
We are thinking heavily about the format. Though it seems clear that we don’t want parallel sessions.