In general there are two ways to approach big barcamps like this weekend’s PolitCamp in Berlin, a barcamp that in its second year is still designed to bring together politicians, political activists and average joe social media users. You can either follow as many sessions as possible. Or you simply take one or two sessions off, turn to the place where they hand out coffee and listen to the participants.

Last year’s discussions were all about the elections (US president, Bundestag and regional parliaments [1]) and the attempt to reach voters with the use of social media. It was like a first huge meeting of local politicians, scientists and activists. As far as I know it was the first time that a single barcamp was designated to the role politics in the internet and vice versa. Of course politics have always been part at the Germany’s barcamps, social media and bloggers conferences such as re-publica. With the rise of facebook, the German student equivalent StudiVZ and twitter here in Germany there was finally a momentum, a rising consciousness that politics must ignore our digital life.

Now approximately one year later, the discussions have diversified. With national legislation trying to push an offline agenda onto the netizens, they fought back, a new political movement (alongside the German Pirate Party) established and obtained quite some reactions in the Germany’s traditional media. Zensursula, SWIFT and ACTA helped to create a new generation of political conscious and active citizens. At this point we’re meeting again in Berlin.

My first expectations have been right so far. Looking at the sessions Germans still seem to lack an awareness that the challenges they face are shared all over the globe. Netzpolitik who was the among few to bring European discussions to Germany has of course helped to connect our actions to those arond the European parliament. Still, listening to the first discussions I feel that German first have to deal a lot with themselves when it comes to advocating civil rights, net neutrality, open access and censorship.

I hope, and will try me my best during the talks, people catch up. Many these questions are dealt with on the European level and we need people realise that to act.

[1] Unfortunately there wasn’t a single session dedicated to the elections of the European Parliament even though the first PolitCamp was help just shortly before it. In the end Kai Bojens and myself offered a small session to discussion exactly that but we only discussed (at least with around 20 others) why there is no European public sphere yet and what obstacles prevented us from having that.