Berlin

Call for journalists: BERLIN "EU crisis on the ground". 20 - 23 may 2010 (applications closed)

Editor-in-charge/ Roberto Lapia/ redazione@cafebabel.com

11 cities, 11 special city editions of feature reports, 11 local debates: We’re kicking off our yearly series of monthly reporting missions to a different city in our Europe-wide network

BERLIN, GERMANY: 20 to 23 MAY 2010

Step 1: what’s it about

WHAT IS IT: This year, we will continue our monthly editorial series, ‘EU Crisis on the ground’ (funded by the European commission).

TO DO WHAT: Valorising local, positive citizen initiatives that have emerged out of the crisis. Comparing this on a pan-European playing field. Finding young, positive angles on the crisis.

Step 2: recruiting you

WANTED: We need three journalists, one video maker and one photographer to join this mission - writing on aforesaid offbeat, crisis-related topics with the support of our local host team in Germany, and attending a local debate held by the team in Berlin.

It’s your proposals that will get you noticed for this mission: so be creative, do some research, flog your idea donkeys to me. Prepare yourself: read the Berlin local team blog

Step 3: you on EU crisis on the ground

LOGISTICS: Book your own flights/ trains to Berlin: up to 250 euro is reimbursed by cafebabel.com upon return from the trip, along with other travel, food expenses up to 25 euro every day (figures TBC). The team is hosted by the locals in Berlin.

EDITORIAL: the editor in Paris and the team in Berlin will help define your article, find you fixers, interviewees for your time in the city. The written piece is due in strictly one week later, when the relevant linguistic editor in Paris will edit your piece, which will be translated by our volunteer networks, and then published the following month.

Step 4: email Roberto at redazione@cafebabel.com with your CVs, three-line article proposals, link with the news and crisis, ideas of interviewees

42 comments

Tags:

Thursday, April 15 2010 By Roberto Lapia - What's On

Cafebabel Call for articles CULTURE February 2008

Babelians, come and find out what 2008 February’s CULTURE section will be about! To write or to propose different subjects for cafebabel’s CULTURE section you simply need to be a member of our community.

Nothing easier: go on the homepage just click on the red button “participate!” in the upper right to find out more about the conditions of being a writer for cafebabel.com.

If you’re interested in one of the topics below, do not hesitate to contact our cultural editor Katharina at redaktion@cafebabel.com. We’re looking forward to reading you in 7 languages!

1. DOSSIER: ARTS AND YHE CITY

a. Make arts from city dust: Romanian artist Nicolae Comanescu

b. Monsieur Chat: European tagging

c. Interview with young Paris architecture photographer

d. Eboy design: German-Norwegian pixelcity artists in Berlin

e. Lokstoff: when theatre discovers the city (author: Yvonne Pöppelbaum)

f. Photo-gallery: arts and the city

Monsieur Chat

2. Cultural Agenda for January

3. Literature Agenda for February

4. Culture projects panorama: “European Year of intercultural dialogue”

5. Sweet & Tender: European art project

6. Torino: World Capital of Design 2008

7. Film: Bianco e Nero - discrimination in European film business?

8. Beatles’ song as archi project in Stavanger (cultural capitals 2008)

9. Tokio Hotel phenomenon swaps Europe (author: Yvonne Pöppelbaum)

10. Expo “C’est notre histoire” + debate with Simone Veil (author: Graziella JOST)

11. Italian photographers without limits (author: Valeria Ibello)

12. Hong-Kong animation in Europe (author: Inga Pietrusinska)

13. “Tower of Babel” idies out without your help! THIS LANGUAGE SECTION REALLY NEEDS AUTHORS! I look forward to recieving your proposals and ideas. Think of any strange expression in your country and look up its origin, compare idiomatic expressions in the babelian languages, explain why a film title has been translated in a very bad way. Everything around you could be a Tower of Babel! Do not hesitate to contact me if you need help or hints! WE ARE THERE TO HELP YOU.

Katharina Kloss

56 comments

Tags:

Tuesday, January 15 2008 By Katha - Making of

The best way to run your Babel blog

When cafebabel.com embarked in the blogosphere adventure in 2007, and developed its own babelblog platform, none of us had really blogged before. We were mere spectators, at best punctual commentators of other blogs. 56 blogs later and lots of entries posted, the mysteries of blogging are gradually dissolving. In addition, communicating with each other is now easy. I'm only a click away from Istanbul or V ilnius, the Eurotik scene, or from Chris' thoughts on whether his girlfriend should keep in touch with her Ex or not.

But communicating with the outside world- non Babel World - will be the 2008 challenge. Each single blog on cafebabel.com has the means and opportunity to become a world class reporter or opinion-maker. Blogs are voices. Your babelblog is YOUR voice. Each voice has a different tone, a different accent and, most importantly, a different opinion. So make it your own.

Personalize your blog

Let's focus on the tone of your "voice". The minute we click on your blog, our eyes take a quick glance at the general design and the pictures that make it unique. If you keep the same cafebabel.com frame- which many of you still do (Barcelona, Football Province, les politiques linguistiques, just to name a few...)- you give the impression that your voice conforms to a single tune. Take a minute to choose a banner that fits your voice. Berlin, Bruxelles, Bucharest
Linéa or Mêlée ouverte, are great examples of creativity.

Nothing better than the real thing

Show yourself! Posting your profile on the blog, allows the reader to see who you are. You can also grab your video camera, your mp3 recorder, and show us where you live and what's going on in your area. If you don't have a camera, post videos from youtube that complement your editorial content. Conventional pictures will also do the trick- so use and abuse (see post on "Post pictures on Blogs!").

Organise your thoughts

Well-tagged posts enable your blog to be easily identified by our readership when using the search engine. Otherwise your blog will be forever lost in the babelblogosphere. It is also important that you customize your sections: "Who I am"/ "Who we are", "Best of My blog". You name it. This frame will give the reader easy access to your stream of thoughts or to your valuable information. By ticking the "selected entry" box, the entry you select will be posted in a sidebar section called "last entries". The reader can then easily identify your favourite entries. See the Budapest blog for instance, that has, in addition to the latest entries, the "calendar tool". The date where you published entries appear in red with a link to the posted item.

Reach to the outside world

Links, links and links. 2008, will be the year of the links! Publish links of other blogs or websites that appeal to you or are related to your blog's editorial content. Your blog has to become a gold mine of information to your readership. Create partnerships with other organisations who are inclined to support your blog. You can then have a special section for partner logos. Take a look at the Paris, Vilnius or Istanbul blog. Vilnius posted all the links of cafebabel.com city blogs as well as 3 partner logos. Reaching to the outside world will enable you to recruit new contributors or translators if your blog is run in several languages. This is how Nabeelah became a special guest on Lumière and the Darkness or how Eurogeneration, Poetry and Eurotik manage to be translated in several languages. Surfing on non-babelblogs will open new doors of opportunities in terms of readership and even inspiration. This being said, commenting on other babelblogs is also very welcomed. It allows you to get to know other Babelians, at least virtually for now, bringing a sense of community to babelbloggers. See for instance, the Athens blog, that attracts, on average, more than 20 comments per post. Or Blog-Europe-des-villages which has posted a reaction responding to a eumiro entry. If you want to entice us it's very simple: send an email to all the bloggers at bloggers@cafebabel.com.

http://wiki.cafebabel.com

Mark this page in your "favourites"! You can find and rediscover the tips mentioned in this post on this wiki page, regularly updated by all of you. Share your knowledge with the community by contributing to its content. For those who understand French, take a look at the dotclear information.

If you don't blog, go offline

I know this might sound cruel, but think about the rest of the babelbloggers! Readers who click on inactive blogs will be less inclined to come back. If you're too busy, if you have exams, or if you just don't feel like blogging, you can deactivate your blog temporarily. The same is true for the linguistic versions that still have no posts.

Best wishes for 2008, and may the babelforce be with you!

38 comments