Future Challenges seeks bloggers in Brazil!

Future Challenges and the ZBW Leibniz Information Centre for Economics seek bloggers for the Global Economic Symposium (GES) 2012 in Rio de Janeiro!

Click here for a preview of the conference (PDF).

Whom are we looking for?
We’re looking for bloggers who are living in Brazil – ideally in Rio, but elsewhere is fine – and who can speak and write well in English. You should have a global perspective, and you should be interested in major economic and social issues. You should be a regular blogger, and you should also be active in social media.

When and where is the event?

The Global Economic Symposium will take place on the 16th and 17th of October in Rio de Janeiro. The exact location has not yet been determined. Proximity to Rio de Janeiro is definitely an advantage, but your travel and lodging costs for two nights and economy travel from other locations within Brazil will be reimbursed.

What do I have to do?

We want you to be an “investigative journalist” for the GES. Starting in June/July, we need you to begin tracking some of the major topics we’ll be covering at the GES. Let’s say you’ve chosen renewable energy. You would begin tracking, and writing about, renewable energy in a global context – the most interesting technologies, innovative policies about renewable energy, the political debate around it. You would integrate some of the research and policy thinking being done by the GES representatives who are in charge of this issue.

We would expect you to write a minimum of two posts per month on your issues. We would also expect you to use social media tools (your choice – use what you like best) to build awareness of the issue, the GES, and our ongoing research. We want you to start a debate online, if you can, and get as many people engaged as possible.

In addition, if you like to produce photos, videos or audio recordings, we invite you to use this as an excuse to practice those skills. We’d be thrilled to post your multimedia content!

Put simply, you will be writing an ongoing briefing via your blog and via social media to prepare for the debate at the Global Economic Symposium in October.

What do I get in return?

We do pay our contributors. But that absolutely does not mean that you should write to please us. We are working with you because we want your own, genuine thoughts and your own, genuine writing. We’re paying you to take time out of your life to focus on our issues, we are not paying you to write corporate boilerplate that we could produce ourselves much more easily.

What are the guidelines for writing?

We genuinely do want to see your original thought and your original work. Press
releases and neutered, bland corporate language are really easy to produce and bring no
value to anybody. Our goal is to produce writing that a reader who had nothing to do
with the event would find interesting.
Please keep your posts as concise as possible. No extra points for extra length.
Please make reference as frequently as possible to news of the day, and link to other
stories, web sites or ideas that occur to you as you are writing.
Please write well, but personably. That is to say: no spelling errors, no grammar
blunders, but do not write in a formal, academic style. Let us hear your voice.

The team in Germany will also function as editors for posts. We won’t be doing detailed editing, for the most part, but we will plan to spot-check the posts that come through. If we find something that moves beyond thoughtful dialogue to rude, hateful or needlessly profane speech, we’ll delete it. There are no hard-and-fast guidelines for this; it is a matter of our judgment.

Whom do I talk to when I have questions?

There are several people here in Germany to whom you should reach out if you have questions. You might want to just copy the list below and paste it into the “To:” field of your email.
lisa.henke@bertelsmann-stiftung.de; mario.sorgalla@googlemail.com; ole.wintermann@bertelsmann-stiftung.de; eike.leonhardt@global-economic-symposium.org; tom.fries@bertelsmann-stiftung.de