Disclaimer first: We’ve swallowed the beta pill, meaning that we still fiddle with various parts of the site. We’ve got some things to improve and a few little features up our sleeves, but wanted to let people in and see what they came up with. We figured that we knew what had to be done, but that Urban’s new bloggers knew in particular.

So far it seems the site will be pretty lively; there’s a lot going on already — supporting our feeling that if you provide context (it’s about context providing, not content providing!), stories and thoughts will emerge.

These are just some of them:

• Laetitias verden, on heavy metal boyfriends and cats
• J.P. Thiede om bold, fans, humle & quinder, soccer, beer and women
• louise.urbanblog.dk, raging single — look out
• Squier JV Guitars, niche-style guitar blog
• WiFi Oversigt, wifi in Copenhagen
• Dansk Mikrobryg, beer brewing
• Ajasørensen.urbanblog.dk, Urbanblog meets MySpace — cool
• Spisesteder i København, where to eat
• Jeg elsker min kone, wife lover
• Madonnafan.dk, Madonna fan blog
• Velkommen til forstaden, surburban thoughts
• Jensens Jammerdal, early adopter — he might have done an exit
• 1001kop kaffe til hjemløse, project based

And from the crew:

• K’s kragetæer, on journalism and media
• Henriettes hoved, blog mama
• Info & FAQ, Blogtid crew

I can’t wait to see what people will do. So many things going on, so many stories waiting to be told. I’m sitting at a cafe, next to a guy reading Urban — I have the feeling he’s only getting half.…

Update: Jesper Balslev posts his thoughts (in Danish), outlining the proces.

Blogs giver nyt liv på nettet, originally uploaded by Jesper Balslev.

This just in: Blogs vigtigere end Michael Laudrup (vinkel tyvstjålet fra Thomas Kragh).

Urbanblog.dk rører på sig. Go check.

The 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) is a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology, IT-security, internet, cryptography and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.

I’ll be catching a bus from my christmas getaway on wonderful Lolland and flying back on December 30. Hopefully I’ll get time to think and find a balance between attenting the conference and hanging out with a laptop and some of the projects I’ve been neglecting for the past month.

In related news, we did a silent ‘launch’ over at blogtid.dk (link added to the mess that is my ‘involvement sidebar’) — the plan is to provide a decent alternative to avistid.dk which shouldn’t be too hard.

If you’re in Berlin between christmas and new year for one reason or another, ping me.

Anyway. A lot of bloggers have written about Avistid (can’t be arsed to link to it all, just search for it — you won’t be bothered with any other hits ;-), most of it being about the cluelessness with regards to the reason the campaign is even launched. Which is, by the way, where it connects to my previous post about online marketing.

So just a few thoughts on the claims Jon is making:

Top-“dogme” directors: True. But this isn’t the same as their films are any good or support the aim of the campaign in any way. Actually, I’ve found them pretty boring so far, the first by Søren Kragh-Jakobsen definenately being the worst.

Web-only: Yup, all other media is trying to drive traffic to the (horrible) website, trying to get people to watch the films. For what reason I ask? Please keep in mind that the Danish newspapers aren’t trying to sell just any product, they are actually trying to sell newspapers — and could benefit a great deal if they would please explain us what they are good at.

Cutting-edge: Bullshit. Being cutting-edge for the reason of being cutting-edge.…is not cutting-edge.…

As BMW before them: Mmm..no! BMW’s films were semi-viral pieces being linked because of the quality of the films. Which I haven’t experienced with the films from Avistid. Also, Selling cars and selling newspapers isn’t the same. At all. It’s obvious, however, that they’re trying to get it to be the same; going ‘lifestyle’ on the consumers poor asses.

The link to my DIA06 comments is this: If you want to respect your customers and not stuff whatever down their throats, you should take a good, hard look at the context in which you’re ‘communicating’. Noone gets offended if people selling jeans, soft drinks or cars pull the ‘lifestyle’ card on them. After all, this is a lot of what you buy. When you are a newspaper, however, sell less newspapers due to — among other things — the internet with its user empowerment, conversations and free niche-content and then

decide to market your product as if nothing has happened and you just need some flashy advertising and some promises about ‘being cool when you take the time to read a paper’ — you are taking the piss.

I’m willing to talk shop anytime, focusing solely on craftmanship, techniques and what have we. But in cases like this where the message you’re trying to convey so clearly goes against everything what’s right while wasting a lot of money and treating your (former) customers like stupid sheep — especially when you’re in a business who should have no trouble managing communication and hightlight what’s good about the product (and not the lifestyle sorrounding it) — then I think it’s time to take a step back and look at what it is you’re trying to do. And admit you’ve failed miserably.

Men fat mod.

PÃ¥ plussiden: Ekstra Bladet linker ud.
PÃ¥ minussiden: Well…

Seems like asking for trouble…