Berlijn.
Hello Bert,
My name is Ingo Kottkamp. I am a radio author and -producer from Berlin.
When you took part in the Skype Bonanza with Flick Radio at the International Feature Conference in Varna lately, I was one of the 80 people listening to your explanations.
Now I would like to ask you for an interview.
I’m preparing a one-hour-profile on the blogosphere and its inhabitants for the German station www.swr2.de. I’m not so much interested in typical blog questions like ‘does it interfere with journalism’ or ‘is it suitable for commercial succes”; my focus is more on bloggers themselves.
How does sharing things online regularly affect their lives?
And what kind of online personalities inhabitate the blogosphere – can they be typified in some way?
This last question will be the issue of my own blog that will be launched next month. It shall serve to develop ‘web characters’ which will appear in the fictional part of the SWR-2-feature.
Out of budget reasons, it won’t be easy for me to come to Amsterdam. So I thought about sending you a question sheet – and have you record the answers.
The feature (no working title yet) will be aired in december this year.
So, that’s the plan – what do you think?
Kind regards, Ingo Kottkamp.
Here are the questions:
1. Can you introduce yourself.
(If you are able to, it would be great to also do this in German, but that’s a minor matter.)
2. „Blog“ – when did you hear of it for the first time?
3. Can you remember having aversions against posting of private stuff? Or, what concept did you have of ‘blogs’ when you knew already little or nothing about it.
4. Which were the first blogs you read and why?
5. And now, please tell how it came that you created one yourself. (When was that?)
6. What were the first difficulties?
7. What do you remember of the first reader comments?
8. There are a lot of guides on the net how to handle a weblog properly so one attracts many readers. Did you follow them?
9. Which blogs are you hosting now and for what purpose?
10. How frequently are you posting and how often do you check for new comments?
11. Does your blog need a lot of care – and is the time spent on it a burden for you sometimes?
12. Recollecting your time as an active blogger now – has the initial purpose why you started blogging changed?
13. Have you changed yourself – through blogging?
14. Can you say a few words about the contributors/ commentators to your blog(s)?
15. Are they basically the same people or does this change a lot?
16. Are there moments when you are irritated by them? Disturbed? Annoyed? Did you ever feel the need to exclude somebody?
And can you describe moments when they proved helpful? Inspiring?
17. Does it give you a thrill when a new comment pops up?
18. How active are you as a commentator of other blogs?
19. How private is your blog? Can you draw a general distinction between what you tell to the public and what you like to keep to yourself/ to your friends offline?
20. Have their been blog posts which you regretted afterwards?
21. Which are the qualities of self-expression that only a blog can offer (compared to email/ secret diary / book or paper publishing / direct conversation)?
22. The internet is said to be open for everyone – but isn’t it true that blogs (as well as podcasts, videocastst and other stuff) are often about gaining attentiveness and publicity?
23. Is it hard for a new blogger to be enlisted in the relevant blogrolls? To be noticed, read and commented by more than a handful of friends?
24. What are your general thoughts/observation on this struggle for attention? And how would you regard your own blog in terms of ‘public success’?
25. If bloggers can be typified: what type are you?
26. And now, the short version of all the previous answers: What does blogging mean to you?
Second part. Take us on a blog journey! Now that you’ve given your views on our issue there’s no more need to generalize. Please choose a day when you find some time to talk to the microphone while you are browsing through the internet. It doesn’t have to be a typical day (what is a typical day?). Which blogs are you reading? What is interesting to you? And at what point do you click or scroll further? What do you write? What do you comment? Can you read it loud? Describe your feelings while reading. What is funny/ interesting/ annoying/ odd/ special and so on. What’s going on on your blog(s) today? What do you write and read?
If you have more than one session of blogging and browsing: can you say what time it is?
Antwoorden volgen voor 26 augustus 2008. Meer correspondentie met Duitsland op www.flickradio.nl.
Bert Kommerij.
Media Me 