Tag: switzerland

Corporate Blogging Talk Draft [en]

[fr] Je donne une conférence dans un peu plus d'un mois à des responsables de communication d'entreprises suisses. On m'a demandé de fournir une présentation de mon intervention, qui figurera sur l'invitation. Voici la version resultant de deux jours en sueur (oui je sais, c'est pas très impressionnant!) -- j'apprécierais votre feedback en la matière si vous lisez l'anglais.

A little over a month from now, I’ll be giving a talk on corporate blogging to leading communications executives of Swiss companies. I’ve been asked to provide an introduction to my talk, which will be included alongside some biographical information in the invitation to the event. Here’s my draft, based on examples of previous invitations I was given:

> Blogs are way more than teenage diaries, and it is now common knowledge that they can be a precious tool in corporate environments. Many companies today are interested in embracing social media, and some take the plunge — unfortunately, not always with the desired results.

> Blogging is not a magical solution. Though it requires little technical skill to exertblog (akin to sending an e-mail), it comes bundled with the culture of openness and real human dialogue described at the beginning of the decade in The Cluetrain Manifesto, which can be at odds with existing corporate communication practice.

> When a corporation starts blogging, whether behind the firewall or on the internet, it changes. Not all corporations are ready for that. Not all corporations can accommodate those sometimes unpredictable changes.

> Though one could just start blogging blindly, it is wiser in a corporate setting to identify some particular needs or problems which can be addressed with social media. Though social media is by nature error-tolerant, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of learning the “blogging culture”, or the time required to keep a blog alive.

> Stephanie Booth will share her insights on how blogs can find a place inside corporate culture, and how to go around introducing them in such a setting. The focus will be on blogging culture and practices, illustrated by real-world examples taken directly from the blogosphere.

I’ve been struggling with it for the last two days, and I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments (both on the language and the content).

Blog du Paléo [en]

[fr] A quick feedback I gave about the blog of a local (but very popular) festival.

Une fois n’est pas coutume, je vais essayer de faire court. (Je soutenais hier à mon examinatrice de demi-licence de philo 😉 qu’on pouvait faire très court sur un blog, qu’il suffisait d’aller regarder, par exemple, le mien… ahem. Oui je sais, je suis la reine de la tartine.)

J’étais au Paléo hier sur invitation de l’association CIAO (je suis leur partenaire pour le thème internet), ce qui tombait bien, car j’adore les feux d’artifices de ce festival. Bref, avant de partir, j’ai fait un petit tour sur le site du Paléo et j’ai découvert qu’ils avaient un blog. (Je l’ai appris plus tard, une expérience “assez à l’arrache” (sic), donc tout à fait pardonnable qu’il y ait des choses à redire.)

Vous me connaissez, je suis à peu près incapable de la fermer. J’ai donc laissé un petit feedback concernant ce blog dans leur forum, qui a d’ailleurs été fort bien reçu. Je le reproduis ici:

  • dans l’ensemble, le blog part dans la bonne direction. Infos un peu “coulisses”, je crois que c’est la direction à donner à un blog de festival.

  • côté ton, par contre, ça varie selon les rédacteurs. Nombre de billets sont trop “journalistiques” (pas un compliment en l’occurrence, les journalistes font parfois les pires blogueurs). Un bon truc pour trouver le ton: parler en “je” (ça aide à être un peu “personnel”, sans pour autant que ça doive faire “journal intime”) et choisir comme public-cible de ses écrits un group d’amis qui nous apprécie.

  • dommage que le blog ne soit pas plus mis en valeur ailleurs sur le site (e.g. intégrer à la page d’accueil un flux RSS avec titres des derniers billets, voire — au secours! — le blog entiter?) L’année prochaine peut-être?

  • les commentaires… quel dommage de les rediriger vers ce forum, où il faut s’inscrire, cliquer dans l’e-mail de confirmation, se connecter! Le plus gros risque avec un blog, c’est de ne pas avoir de commentaires — pas d’être débordé. Tout ce qui rend la conversation facile est bienvenu, et tout ce qui pourrait être un obstacle est à proscrire (jusqu’à preuve d’éléments nuisibles parmi le lectorat).

  • quelques détails concernant la maquette: liens “haut” un peu désuets, pas de permaliens (si je veux faire un lien vers un article depuis mon blog, je fais comment?), pas de flux RSS pour s’abonner… etc. On dirait que le moteur de blog a été “fait sur mesure”, ce qui est une solution que je déconseille absolument, à moins d’avoir des moyens considérables à disposition et une bonne connaissance des outils de blog (on ne s’improvise pas créateur d’outil de blog, même si on a une grande expérience dans la fabrication des sites web). Histoire de ne pas réinventer la roue, WordPress est un excellent outil, gratuit, et facilement intégrable à d’autre composantes d’un site.

Voilà! J’ajouterai juste, à nouveau, que si faire un blog est facile (tant du point de vue de l’installation de l’outil que de son utilisation), les aspects stratégiques et rédactionnels de ce média ne vont pas de soi. J’en profite pour vous envoyer regarder la vidéo que j’ai enregistrée il y a quelque temps déjà, et qui tente d’expliquer cet apparent paradoxe: bloguer c’est super facile, mais se former pour le faire correctement n’est pas superflu.

Notes From San Francisco [en]

So, roughly half-way through my five-week trip to San Francisco, what’s going on? I haven’t been blogging much lately, that’s for sure.

For once, I took some photographs from the plane. Unfortunately my camera batteries ran out just as we were coming down on San Francisco, and my spare ones were in the luggage compartment above my head. Oh, well.

Flying to San Francisco 31

I got some first-level questioning at immigration coming in. No, not the sort where they take you to a separate room, become much less friendly, and have boxes of rubber gloves on the counter. This is how it went:

  • …And what is the duration of your stay?
  • Five weeks.
  • …And what do you do in… over in Switzerland?
  • I’m a freelance… internet consultant. OMG that sounds bad. …I’m actually here to work on a book project. Yeah I know I should never volunteer information.
  • What’s the book about?
  • Er… teenagers and the internet.
  • And…?
  • Er… Well, the situation with teenagers and the internet, and what we’re doing about it in Switzerland.
  • And what are you doing about it?
  • Well, not enough!
  • And? Come on, tell me more about it.
  • Er… OK. OMGOMG Well, see, teenagers are really comfortable with computers and the internet, and so they’re chatting, blogging, etc. — they’re digital natives, see? — and parents, well, they’re clueless or terrified about the internet, and they don’t always understand what’s going on in their kids lives online, so basically, we have teenagers who are spending a lot of time online and sometimes getting into trouble and parents don’t know or don’t care about what they’re doing there, so we have this… chasm between generations and…
  • Thank you. You can go.

The pick-up from the airport was wonderfully orchestrated and much appreciated. Being driven into town by somebody friendly rather than having to use unfamiliar public transportation really makes a difference. Thanks to all those involved (yes, it took that many people!)

Waiting on the Sidewalk

Then, through some freak breakdown of all modern forms of communication (partially documented on Twitter), I ended up waiting outside on the sidewalk for almost an hour while my kind host Tara waited for me inside her appartment. We worked it out finally, and I was introduced to my (nice and spacious) room before going to hang out at Citizen Space. A nice dinner out with Chris, Tara and Jimmy to end the day, and I happily collapsed in my bed at a respectable local hour. You will have taken note that I did not collapse at 4pm feeling like a zombie, thanks to having taken melatonin on the plane. (It doesn’t seem to work that well for Suw, but it works perfectly on me, and I’m never traveling between continents without it again.)

The four next days went by in a blur of Supernova madness: too many people, too many sessions, food with ups and downs, parties with cupcakes and others at the top of skyscapers. I took lots of photographs and even a video sequence that got some attention.

Supernova First Day 33

During the next week, I started settling down. Met and hung out with old friends, made new ones, unpacked my suitcases, went walking around in town, saw Dykes on Bikes, the Gay Pride Parade, and the iPhone launch, photographed skyscrapers in the night, ordered a new camera, got my MacBook (partly) repaired, and even dropped in at Google to take notes of Suw’s talk there.

All this, actually, is documented in my Twitter stream — maybe I should add a whole lot of links? — be sure to keep an eye on it if you’re interested in a more day-by-day account of what I’m doing here.

Overall, things have been good. A small bout of homesickness a few days ago, but I’m feeling better now. I need to start focusing on the things I want to get done (blogging, writing, book, writing, fixing things for clients…) — holiday over now!

Downtown San Francisco By Night 9

I’ve been thinking about my “work career” a little, too. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing, but I’m not going to be doing “Blog 101” for ever — I can feel my interests shifting somewhat already. I’ve been interested in the “social tools at large” department for a long time, but unfortunately it seems to translated to “blogging” in most of the work I do, so I’d like to expand my horizons in that direction a little. I’ve had a couple of talks with people in startups recently, and I realize it’s a kind of environment I wouldn’t mind working in — at least part-time. We’ll see what happens.

I’m also realizing that there is more potential than I first thought around the two main things I care about these days: teenagers online and internet language issues. Hence, the book, and also a talk on the subject of languages on the internet which I’ll be giving at Google this coming Tuesday.

Also in the “work” department, two other things have been on my mind. First, the idea of opening up a coworking space in or around Lausanne (Ollie is having the same kind of thought — we’re talking). Second, trying to find a solution so that I don’t have to do maintenance on my clients’ WordPress installations once all is rolling, or spend hours swimming in HTML, CSS and WordPress theme PHP template tags. Not that I don’t know how to do it or don’t enjoy it once in a while, but it’s really not the kind of work I want to spend my time doing. So, I’ve been starting to ask around for names of people who might do this kind of thing (for a reasonable fee), and even thinking of recruiting some students in Lausanne that I could coach/train so that they can do most of the work, and call me up only for major problems. So, see, I’ve been thinking.

Some people have been asking me if I was planning to move here. Indeed, 5 weeks in the city looks suspiciously like a scouting operation. Actually, traveling has an interesting side-effect for me: I tend to come back home thinking “gee, Lausanne is such a great place to live! I’m never moving!” Sure, I have some underlying personal issues which contribute to making me overly attached to my hometown, and I know that someday I might end up living elsewhere. But really, for the moment, I don’t think I’d want that.

And even though I’m told San Francisco is very “European” compared to the rest of the US (which I have yet to see) I can’t help seeing how “horribly American” it is. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this city and am enjoying my time here. I know that what I say can give wrong impressions (for example, people — especially Indians — read the story of my year living in India and think that I hated the country; it’s not true, I really loved it, and can’t wait to go back). But I walk around San Francisco and see all the signs with rules and regulations and “stupid” warnings (like, God, the pineapple chunks I buy at Whole Foods haven’t been pasteurized and may contain harmful germs! or, don’t use the hairdryer in the bath tub!), the AT&T Park and other manifestations of what to me is “consumerism gone mad”, I hear about health care and “you’re expected to sue” horror stories, visa lotteries for non-renewal, the education system…

So, yes, I’m focusing on the negative. And Switzerland, even though it’s a wonderful country ;-), has its negatives too. Like many natives all over the world, I’ve developed a selective blindness to what is “wrong” in the land I come from, considering much of it “normal” as I have been brought up with it. I know that. But too much of what I see here makes my skin crawl. I’m really enjoying spending some weeks here, I love my friends, the food and the sunshine, but I don’t think I’d be happy living here.

Misty Skyscrapers in Downtown San Francisco 10

Well, this was one of these longer-than-expected posts, and it’s occupied most of my morning. My tasks for this afternoon are (in this order):

  • one WordPress install for a client
  • spending a little more time trying to see if there is hope for the aggravating Google Groups problem I bumped into, and if not, setting up a Yahoo! Group instead
  • writing a post for bub.blicio.us or working on my book — whichever I most feel like.

Barcamp en terre francophone (WineCamp) [en]

[fr] [WineCamp](http://winecamp.pbwiki.com/WineCampGenevaLake) is a barcamp-like event which will take place June 15-17 just on the other side of the lake from Lausanne. If you watched [the Zurich BlogCamp](http://barcamp.ch/BlogCampSwitzerland) go by, yearning for something similar but closer to the beautiful French-speaking part of Switzerland, here's your chance. Add a slightly green colouring to the event and wine-tasting, and there you are!

Il n’y a pas longtemps, je me suis rendue à Zurich pour Blogcamp (où j’ai d’ailleurs fait une présentation sur le multilinguisme dans le monde des blogs).

Dans un billet qui est passé à la trappe (encore un! décidément, je crois qu’il y a plus de billets que je n’écris pas que le contraire) je comptais parler un peu du fait qu’un événement de type barcamp a inévitablement une couleur très locale, et que malgré ses ambitions européennes, la rencontre de Zurich était en fait toute suisse-allemande, avec quelques visiteurs “étrangers” en provenance de francophonie.

Donc, si vous déplorez qu’il n’y ait encore rien eu de ce type en Suisse Romande, faites un petit saut de l’autre côté du Lac Léman pour vous rendres à WineCamp, édition Léman. Voici ce que dit l’annonce de l’événement, qui aura lieu du 15-17 juin à Saint-Paul-en-Chablais:

Les passionnés de nouvelles technologies (geeks) et les acteurs du monde associatif (ONG et associations à but non lucratif) du monde entier sont bienvenus!
Toute personne qui veut partager, apprendre et contribuer à l’optimisation du potentiel que représente l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies pour le monde associatif et les acteurs humanitaires.
Tout activiste du mouvement open source (du monde du logiciel libre) qui pourra être présent.

Tout cela dans le but d’explorer comment la nouvelle vague des applications sociales qui sont si proches et si chères aux yeux des développeurs actuels peut aider à participer à une évolution des outils utilisés par les associations à but non lucratif. Et, idéalement, la plupart seront ou deviendront libres, open source…

En plus de fonctionner comme un barcamp (auto-géré, informel, très ouvert), vous pouvez y ajouter:

  • une focalisation sur les besoins des associations à but non lucratif et ONG
  • un environement loin-de-la-ville
  • un premier jour sans wifi
  • une ambiance de camping avec du bon vin, de la bonne nourriture et un feu de joie
  • un deuxième jour avec du wifi

Ça vous dit? Filez vite vous inscrire — ou mieux, proposer une présentation. Je ne pourrai malheureusement pas être de la partie à cause de mon départ imminent (le 18 juin) pour San Francisco.

Bloggy Friday, ce sera jeudi! [en]

[fr] This month (Easter's fault), the traditional Bloggy Friday will take place on Thursday, in Lausanne.

Primo, il y a Pâques, et comme vendredi-saint c’est méchamment férié, notre petite rencontre de blogueurs helvètes aura donc lieu (exceptionellement) un jeudi. Jeudi comme… après-demain, comme d’hab’, à 19h30 au Café de l’Evêché à Lausanne. Entrée gratuite (bon, faut quand même payer sa fondue) et ouverte à tous.

Deuxio, je suis confortablement installée chez mon amie Suw à Londres, et c’est donc Julien Henzelin qui a la gentillesse de servir de Gentil Organisateur ce mois-ci. Filez donc à toute vitesse vous inscrire chez lui!

Multilingual Proposals (Reboot, BlogCamp) [en]

The famous conference reboot will take place in Copenhagen on 31.05-01.06. I’ll be attending.

I’m also going to make a proposal for a talk (as the (un)conference format encourages this). I’m being a bit shy about putting it up on the reboot site before I’m happy with the title and description, so for the moment it’s a Google Doc tentatively titled While We Wait For The Babel Fish.

Those of you who know me won’t be very surprised to learn that it’s about multilingualism online. By “multilingualism” online, I’m not only talking about localisation or stupid default languages, but mainly about what happens when one wants to get off the various monolingual islands out there and use more than one language in one place, for example. How can we help multiple languages coexist in a given space or community, as they do at times in the offline world? Can the tools we have help make this easier?

Another thing that interests me is this “all or nothing” assumption about knowing languages (when you have to check boxes): I wouldn’t check a box saying I “know” Italian, but I can understand some amount of it when it’s written, if it’s necessary. What are we capable of doing with that kind of information? Read the draft if you want more.

I’m also proposing a session at Saturday’s BlogCamp in Zürich which will be around similar issues, but which will focus precisely on the topic of multilingual blogging.

Feedback on these ideas (and anything here) is most welcome. Is this interesting?

Update 19.03.2007: proposal is now on the reboot site! Don’t hesitate to leave comments there.

Demain, Capsule de Pain [fr]

[en] On the radio early tomorrow morning. And the day after. Not live, thank goodness.

Un mot rapide pour vous dire que je serai dans la Capsule de Pain (RSR1) demain et après-demain matin (c’est tôt, vers 7h25 il paraît — nul souci cependant, nous avons enregistré ça il y a quelque temps déjà). Sujet: blogs, entreprises…

Addendum: vous pouvez écouter tout ça sur le blog de M. Pain lui-même.

Aussi, pendant qu’on y est, Femina du week-end prochain. Ah, et la Tribune de Genève de jeudi passé (quelqu’un l’a?), et le Quotidien Jurassien de mercredi dernier, et de vendredi (?). Et RougeFM/RadioLac je sais plus quand. Et… je dois en oublier.

Un peu le déluge de journalistes ces temps, de nouveau. Va falloir remettre la page Presse à jour.

CASH Cards and Cellphone Train Tickets [en]

[fr] En Suisse, on a la carte CASH (avec laquelle je paie parcomètres, billets de bus, et parkings souterrains), le numéro court 222/999 pour recevoir les horaires de train par SMS, et maintenant les billets de train par MMS (pour certains trajets, commandables en ligne ou par téléphone).

Near the end of the latest Cranky Geeks episode there is some talk about paying things through cellphones, general lack of quarters (change) in the world, and concert ticket barcodes sent by MMS.

Here are some of the things we already have in sometimes-backward Switzerland.

First, the CASH Card. It’s basically a chip which is added to nearly all the current debit cards banks provide their customers (people here use debit — Maestro — much more than credit). It’s specifically designed for the payment of small amounts. You “put cash” on your card at the ATM through your debit account (30-300CHF). Then, off you go, your pockets full of virtual change.

I use CASH to pay my bus fares, feed the parking meter, underground parking, payphones, and even small purchases in kiosks or the baker’s. It’s cheaper for the vendor than either debit or credit, and doesn’t require an authentification code. It’s fast.

Second, train tickets on your mobile. For certain trips, you can order the ticket online or by phone (I called them to make sure I’d understood things right, as the web page is a bit confusing), and receive the barcode for this ticket by MMS. This does require going through a somewhat cumbersome sign-up process, but hey, you only need to do it once (and I did manage to follow through to the end).

One very useful thing the SBB/CFF have been doing for sometime now is they allow you to query the train timetables by SMS. Send “Lausanne Geneva” (without quotes) to 222 or 999 (depends on carrier) and they’ll give you the timetable of the three next trains for that trip. It gets smarter, too: “Lausanne Geneva 1500” gives you the first three trains after 3pm, and “Lausanne Geneva 1800.ar” the three last trains to arrive before 6pm. If you want platform information, try “Lausanne Geneva 1700 g”. You can also ask for trains departing in 2 hours, for example: “Lausanne Morges 2”.

I’m waiting to see a merge between these two last services: ask for timetables via SMS, and then order the MMS ticket directly for that trip (when those will be available for all trips). But actually, it’s not too bad as it is: you can order your MMS ticket by calling the free number 0800222211. They answer fast and are friendly (I called them three times with nasty questions as I was writing this post).

When I was in Lisbon, I was totally impressed by the little black box that my host had under his windscreen, and which let him in and out of paid parkings, sending him a bill at the end of the month. That would be fun and practical to have.

What useful mobile/card services does your country have?

Not All Switzerland Speaks German, Dammit! [en]

Here we go, yet another misguided attempt at localisation: my MySpace page is now in German.

MySpace now joins PayPal, eBay, Amazon, Google in defaulting to German for Swiss people.

Switzerland is a multilingual country. The linguistic majority speaks Swiss-German (reasonably close to German but quite un-understandable for native German-speakers who have not been exposed to it). Second language in the country is French. Third is Italian, and fourth is… (no, not English) …Romansh.

You know how linguistic minorities are. Touchy. Oh yeah.

As a French speaker with rather less-than-functional German, I do find it quite irritating that these big “multinational” web services assume that I speak German because I’m Swiss. I’d rather have English, and so would many of my non-bilingual fellow-cititzens (particularly amongst web-going people, we tend to be better at English than German).

Yes, I’ve said that English-only is a barrier to adoption. But getting the language wrong is just as bad, if not worse (most people have come to accept the fact that English is the “default” language on the internet, even if they don’t understand it). If I want my Amazon books to be shipped here free of charge, I have to use Amazon.de, which is in German, and doesn’t have a very wide choice of French books. My wishlist is therefore on Amazon.de too, which maybe explains why I never get anything from it.

Paypal is almost worse. I can’t really suggest it to clients as a solution for “selling stuff over the internet”, because all it offers in its Swiss version is a choice between German (default) and English. You can’t sell a book in French with a payment interface in German or English.

So please, remember that country != language, and that there is a little place called Switzerland scrunched up in the middle of Europe, caught between France, Italy, Germany and Austria (Liechtenstein is even worse off than us I suppose), and that not everyone in that little country speaks German.

Thank you.

Que d'anglais [en]

[fr] Just an explanation to my French readers about the amount of English here recently. Has to do with a post-LIFT'07 effect and the hard time I have coming back to "where we are with blogs and stuff in Switzerland". (Answer: frustratingly behind. Yeah, I'm grumpy and certainly a little unfair.)

Oui, je sais, je néglige à nouveau mes lecteurs francophones et j’écris des tartines en anglais. Je reviens de la conférence LIFT’07 (l’année dernière, LIFT’06 avait quelque peu changé ma vie), des rencontres plein les yeux et des idées qui résonnent encore dans les oreilles.

La langue que j’utilise ici dépend de l’humeur, du contenu du billet, du public imaginé. Là, j’avoue, je suis un peu coincée en anglophonie. Un peu difficile, après un workshop magistral donné par Stowe Boyd et toute une série d’intervenants fascinants de remettre les deux pieds en terre vaudoise, où les journalistes tentant de se mettre au blog essaient d’épingler les blogueurs pour une tournure malheureuse (ah oui, c’est Stephanie sans accent si jamais, puisque vous tenez à la précision), les cours d’initiation aux blogs sont annulés de façon répétée par manque d’inscriptions alors que la demande est là, pourtant (appels, interviews, cartes de visite, demandes… et j’en passe), les gens veulent des blogs mais quand même pas trop “blog” (mais parlez en “je”, bon sang, ça veut pas dire que vous devez “raconter vos vies”), où internet fait peur et où les journaux, en passe d’épuiser le filon, tentent de faire les gros titres avec la fin des blogs.

Donc, vous me pardonnerez, mais juste là, je retourne explorer Facebook, garder un oeil sur l’évolution des blogs d’Intel qui ont profité de mes services plus tôt cette année, parler boutique avec Headshift, lire Stowe, Bruno Giussani et David Galipeau, rester en contact avec ma tribu de LIFT, commencer à travailler à mon futur livre sur les ados et internet (surtout: sur quel blog l’écrire), mettre mon nez un peu dans ce que fait Derek Powazek avec JPG Magazine, guetter les dates de reboot et planifier ma prochaine expédition à San Francisco…

Un peu grinche, la Mère Denis, et probablement un peu injuste aussi, du coup. C’était le coup de gueule du jeudi après-midi. Vous en faites pas, amis romands — je vous aime quand même.


Merci à noneck pour la photo.

Pour me faire pardonner, allez, quelques photos-souvenirs (de moi et d’autrui) de LIFT’07.