Tobias Escher at the OII

These days a number of PhD students from the Oxford Internet Institute are leaving behind the dreaming spires of Oxford to have a look at some other forms of life apparently out there. In short: We have organized a trip to Berlin. Making the most out of the diverse backgrounds of us doctoral students (by now a sizeable share of the OII) has been around as an idea for some time now so it was only consequent to organise a trip to one of our original home towns.

So what are we up to? It’s both a trip dedicated to work as well as, ahem, cultural exchange. We have been presenting at re:publica08, a conference that brings together about 800 (mostly German-speaking) bloggers, Net-activists and academics. It has been an exciting event so far and Alejandro has some more coverage on the conference.

Today we’ve also met with the people in charge of studiVZ, the largest social network in Germany with more than 5 million (mostly student) very active members (if you don’t know it, just think Facebook). It was a meeting between the ivory tower and the real-world business of running a large social network which has certainly inspired us greatly and we hope we could give something back. Oh, and they organised great breakfast

Speaking of food – we invest great energy into sampling as much food and drink as possible, certainly helped by the fact that being used to Oxford prices makes this place a cheap option. The weather hasn’t always been kind to us but it hasn’t dampened our spirits. See some more pictures on Ribo’s Flickr page.

PS: I managed to convince Christian Heise to re-use his nice logo created for the e-participation event Berlin in August.