I am more than happy to announce the beginning tomorrow of a whole week discussion around the art of blogging in old Europe . I'd like to thank you Don, for having inviting me to animate and organize this weekly discussion at the IAOC, it's a pleasure to share here with you our european blogosphere.

To let you know what the topic will be about, we are going to talk about the state of the blogosphere from various european countries, providing each time imputs from a national perspective on the same topics. If richness comes from diversity, we should have there some interesting things coming.

I've been inviting some of the main influent and recognize european bloggers in their country to participate and I am happy to announce already Tom Murphy from Ireland, Octavio Rojas from Spain, I am still waiting for an aswer to come from Germany and one from Denmark, we'll then be able to cover 5 countries. Each of the participant will provide some descriptions of themselves in case you don't know them, and the first topic will be "Blogs and journalism: how traditional media are embracing blogs, are there any competitions between bloggers and traditional journalists, etc..."

I will give the topic of the day each morning to launch the discussion, please feel free to participate also to share your thoughts with us.

Last thing, few words to introduce myself as animator of this weekly discussion: my name is Guillaume du Gardier, I am founder of PR Planet a PR boutique based in Paris and recently Blogging Planet,  the first european consultancy specialised on blogs, wikis, podcast, rss etc... I have launched the CEO Bloggers' Club in august 2004 and coproduced with Elizabeth Albrycht from Corporate PR the New Communication Forum in Napa at the end of January 2005. I blog daily (hmm...) at PR Thoughts.

See you tomorrow for our first stop at the IAOC's blog and let's see what Ireland, France, Spain, Germany and Denmark have to say about blogging.

Thank you again Don for inviting us here.
A bientôt

This week Guillaume du Gardier, Managing Director of PR Planet hosts "Blogging Europe" on IAOCblog Week. Guillaume has invited bloggers from France, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Germany and Sweden. Topics include:

• Blogs and journalists: a country-by-country view of how European media are embracing blogs, and who, if anyone is making money blogging
• Blogs and politics: how do Europe's political candidates use blogs for their campaigns, and do politicians and government officials treat political bloggers the same as the press
• Corporate blogging (external): case studies, who's leading the way, do European companies see blogs as an opportunity or a threat, are any small, nimble companies using blogs or is it only the big multi-national companies
• Corporate blogging (internal): do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language
• Blogs and brands: Tracking European and global brands in the blogosphere