Planblog

Check it out! The Dev House Cologne wiki just launched.

Inspired by DevHouse and Barcamp, this event aims to be a party for developers and designers to share and advance ideas, projects and visions.

No date has been set yet, but I’m pretty sure it will be super happy.

I’ve seen a need for more transatlantic bridging for quite some time now. Glad it is catching on.

LinkedIn just launched their new blog: Your window to LinkedIn

Via Jeremiah Owyang: Community Evangelism isn’t just about Marketing, and LinkedIn takes the second step

Ever heard of Twitter? Well, Twitter is now Twitter, Inc.

Via GigaOm: Twitter Leaves the Nest

Check it out: Jeremiah TV live from Web 2.0 Expo.

Hamburg, Germany-based business networking startup Xing, formerly known as OpenBC, is advertising to the US market:

It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know

XING is a business network for professionals that successfully combines know-how with know-who. Find deals, employees, colleagues and jobs through your own contacts. XING has more than 1.6 million members and is available in 16 languages.

…

Start networking - not just linkin’!
Offer! Join now and receive 1 month premium membership for free

Xing went public in December 2006 and recently acquired Spanish business networking site eConozco. Their first annual report is available for download here.

If you’re in the neighborhood, check out Barcamp Alsace 3 next week.

So many reasons why it’s probably a good idea to go:

• Location, location, location (ok, I’ve only been to Strasbourg and the surounding Alsace region once but would go back in an instant — great food, excellent wine, among other things!)
• World Cafe training (find out about World Cafe here, you’ll be hooked once you give it a try)
• There will be a planning session on a possible BarCampRhine — a cross-border, cross-country (France, Switzerland, Germany) barcamp to connect innovators from various fields.  I first heard about this idea at Barcamp Berlin last year.  Glad to see this is moving forward.

Now, I obviously very much like the idea of European collaboration, especially between France and Germany.  And without sounding too melodramatic, I think it is well worth remembering every now and then that not too long ago there was a time when instead of working together we used to shoot at each other.

So yes, Barcamp Alsace, BarCampRhein, WineCampFrance — come one, come all!

I was recently invited to blog at Welt.de (the online edition of Germany daily newspaper DIE WELT).

The blog is in German and is called San Jose 95128.

I’ll be covering people, events, startups and anything else that makes this place interesting. I’ll also try to pay special attention to any kind of transatlantic transfer of ideas between Germany and the US.

I’m always happy to hear from my readers. Comments are open. Feel free to let me know your thoughts or what topics you’re interested in.

If all goes well I’ll make it on tonight’s (Saturday) edition of Trackback. They plan to do a brief interview with me some time between 6pm and 8pm Berlin Time. We’ll be talking about Web Monday, Barcamp, pl0gbar, the upcoming re:publica conference (plus however many other unconferences, un-meetings or un-formats we can think of that have recently popped up in Germany).

Tune in, the Trackback blog should be open for comments. I might set up an IRC channel (if there isn’t one already). In addition, I’ll be available via Skype, Twitter etc. from about 5pm.

Going through my feeds today I come across another two new social networks for mothers:

• Mamily.de — Online community for mothers (Hamburg, Germany)
• PaulsMama.de — Social network for families (Hamburg, Germany)
• Netmoms.de — By mothers for mothers (Cologne, Germany)

PaulsMama I had heard of before. And there may be at least one more project based in Berlin that’s currently in the making that I’m aware of.

Not surprising to finally see this level of actvity. There must be a least half a dozen similar projects in the US already.

I admit my feelings towards sopranos can be a bit ambivalent at times, but Anna Netrebko’s Russian Album is true ear candy.

Maybe it’s a Russian singing Russians (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Glinka) in Russian that makes this a special recording.

Btw, San Francisco Symphony has some Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky next week. Anyone wanna go?