This Friday we have a special "Scandinavian edition" of the Europe roundup, brought to you by PDF friend Bente Kalsnes.
If you want you can send us stories or interesting links to look into. And don't forget to check our twitter account!

• Norway | The Prime Minister is in the playground
  The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is inviting bloggers to his office this week to discuss about the government's new website, Samarbeid for Arbeid (which means, more or less, "working for collaboration"). The website is made of a blog and a Twitter aggregator, sorted by four topics. If bloggers or Twitter users want the Prime Minister to read their posts, they can register the blog or tag tweets with predefined keywords.

• Ireland | Your country, your call... to move Ireland forward
  Ireland government recently launched "Your country, your call", a competition whose goal is "to pick two truly transformational proposals so big that, when implemented, could secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Proposals that could help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish". The ambitious iniative has the backing of a wide range of companies and individuals and will offer two winners a cash prize of €100,000 each and up to €500,000 for implementation of their ideas.
  GovFresh explains in depth how the 'inspirational competition' works.

Newark's Mayor Cory Booker shares President Obama's deep understanding of the power of digital media as a means for community organizing. As of yesterday, Mayor Booker has 833,779 Twitter followers, and 14,768 Facebook supporters.

According to the US Census Bureau the Population of Newark is 281,402 (2006 estimate) which means that Booker has more than 3 times the population of Newark following him on Twitter and the equivalent of 5% of the population of Newark as Facebook supporters.

When he post to his Facebook page, you can see by the volume of "comments" and "likes" that his Facebook supporters are actually engaged in conversation with him. So, what is he doing that fosters engagement?

Authenticity and humor are powerful tools when it comes to getting your audience to engage with you, and Mayor Booker understands this. He, jokingly, used Facebook and Twitter as a platform to challenge Obama. He asked his Facebook supporters and Twitter followers if they thought his jump shot is better than Obama's.

He uses Twitter to warn the citizen's of Newark should they litter, they are in danger of getting pulled over by him.

And he shares words of wisdom that inspire him.

So Mayor Booker--I am not sure if you jump shot is better than Obama's, and I promise you that I won't litter in Newark-or anywhere else for that matter. I thank you for your words of wisdom and I applaud you for your understanding of social media engagement.

Paul Rieckhoff founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, asks, "What can we do to bring internet based technology to the war zone? New media consultant Eric Kuhn responds.

At PdF 2009 in New York we asked "If you could ask the PdF audience one question, what would you ask?" We would like to hear your answers to the insightful questions that were asked at our 2009 conference. Please post your comments below.

It's almost flu season, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ready with a social media outreach strategy: embeddable widgets, Twitter feeds, email and SMS updates, blogger outreach, and even a virtual world. The CDC wants the public to know about the flu, its symptoms, and how to treat it. If you spend time online, their message will be hard to miss.

The education aspect is important, because the hyper-awareness of this past year led to panic and hospitals crowded with false-positives. The goal has to go beyond awareness; awareness counts for nothing if it doesn't engender a desired behavior.

In the tumultuous days after the Iranian election, we turned to the internet for a moment-by-moment account of events on the ground -- and wondered how all of this would affect the ultimate outcome.

Supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi used the internet to campaign and organize -- but the Iranian government also used technology to its advantage.

For all of the potential of the internet to change political communications, is technology changing the fundamental nature of power?

Can the keyboard ever win against the barrel of a gun?

Fresh off her lunchtime session on the topic at PdF 2009, Katrin Verclas, co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, will share share insights of Iranians' and our experience of this and other controversial elections through social media.

Thursday, July 9th at the PdF Network
Social Media in Crisis: Lessons from the Iran Election Aftermath

RSVP here.

And we’ve added a whole slew of upcoming calls:

July 23 | Forging Alliances Online: How MomsRising Built a Versatile Activist Force | Rosalyn Lemieux, Fission Strategy

Aug 6 | Journalists and Bloggers: Navigating the Changing Media Landscape | Scott Rosenberg, co-founder Salon.com & author of "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters"

Sept 10 | How to Harness Changes in African American Participation Online | Cheryl Contee, Fission Strategy & JackandJillPolitics.com

Sept 24 | Measuring Online Advocacy & Fundraising: Learnings from the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study | Marc Ruben & Karen Matheson, M+R Strategic Services

Oct 8 | Thirty Staffers and No Office: How to Make the Virtual Organization Work, the MoveOn Model | Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn.org

Oct 22 | Mobile Volunteers: How to Harness Microvolunteering for Your Cause | Jacob Colker, The Extraordinaries

Dec 3 | A $10 Challenge Turns into $25 Million: The "Nothing But Nets" Case Study | Shannon Raybold, UN Foundation

Missed a call? Listen to a podcast of any one of our previous calls and learn about how to Google for votes, fundraising and organizing through Twitter, evaluating returns on investment in social media, how to pitch (and not pitch) a political blogger, building a social network, longtail nanotargeting, and more.

Time for a quick update about next week's Personal Democracy Forum.

So you've finally planned and launched your social media strategy -- what now? How do you know if it's delivering the kinds of returns you need? This Thursday, we’re excited to share with you the latest thinking to help you evaluate your social media strategy all the way up the ladder of engagement. From 1-2pm EST on May 14th at the PdF Network, award-winning author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, Allison Fine, will be discussing how to track and measure your “Return on Investment from Adopting Social Media.”

When a big earthquake hit Abruzzo, Italy, earlier this week, the debate there over whether blogs and social media could be sources of real news got a jolt of reality. Surprisingly, it took one hour and a half for the news to be reported by national television and more than three hours before the main newspapers did the same in their online edition. People awakened by the quake used Twitter to spread the news even before news agencies. For a couple of hours Twitter was the only source available to Italian people to share news and information and, most of all, try to contact friends and relatives living in Abruzzo.