Help spread the word about tonight’s #Tweetup!

LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.

As the week motors on, the evening planned for our Liberal Drinks / Tweetup night approaches.

We’ll be in the Baltic Fleet pub from 7.30pm onwards tonight having a friendly drink in a real ale pub and getting ready for Glee Club.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

More on Nick Clegg Q&A

Yesterday saw the first Q&A of the Lib Dem leader since entering government. We covered it on Lib Dem Voice with a live tweeting session, Stephen Tall’s excellent live-blog and we also recorded it for posterity.

Because quite a lot of what was said might be useful for campaigning purposes, and because in the fullness of time we will want to hold Nick Clegg to account for his answers, I asked BOTY-nominee and Total Politics List star Caron Lindsay to mobilise an army of volunteers to transcribe it from our slightly ropey recording.

Caron and her volunteers have done a fabulous job, and their transcription is available here on Google Docs.

Q&As from past conferences

It is of course, not the first time that Nick Clegg has made himself available to delegates to answer questions and reassure conference members that all is well with the parliamentary party. Here are two more occasions from the archive when LDV recorded a Q&A for posterity:

March 2010: defending his remarks to a newspaper about Thatcher. Helen Duffett reports for the Voice.

September 2009: a recording of a Nick Clegg Q&A from conference.

Worth a second outing: historical BOTYs

With the success of the most recent Blog of the Year still ringing in our ears, I thought I’d dig through the archive and bring you the tapes from the previous incarnations of the event.

Marvel at our clipped accents and the comical costumes we wore as we take this trip down memory lane.

Firstly, Jonathan Calder unearthed some footage of the very first BOTY ceremony with guest speaker Alex Wilcock. This was way back in 2006 when the world was as a younger, kinder place.

I’m not aware of any recordings from 2007 – if you can help fill the gap in our archives, do please let me know.

So, flying forward to 2008, in March, the Campaign for Gender Balance had their own, never to be repeated CGB Blog awards.

In September that year, the fabled Zoom H2 made its first appearance at conference and captured this piece of historic footage.

2009, and another year of BOTYs can be found here.

And of course last night’s ceremony is still here.

PODCAST: Fairer? For whom?

"Coalition: Fairer for whom?" Susan Kramer and Will Straw at LDV's conference fringe

This lunchtime, Lib Dem conference representatives gathered in the staggeringly poorly signposted Hall 1B to hear a stellar lineup of Susan Kramer, Evan Harris and interloper Will Straw from Left Foot Forward hold forth on the subject of “Fairer? For whom?” – excellently wrangled by the chairman, our own Stephen Tall.

As with all Lib Dem Voice fringe events, we were there with our trusty recording equipment for posterity, and for the readers of Lib Dem Voice at home who were not able to join us at conference. I’m sure it will also be helpful to those LibDemVoice editors who carelessly agreed to deliver training at the same time as one of our fringes.

Left Foot Forward also have their own write-up of the event.

Help spread the word about LDV’s event today

LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.

It was brave of us to have events on two consecutive days, particularly as many of us are nursing hangovers after the display of the BOTYs last night.

And yet, our next event featuring the lovely Dr Evan Harris and the erudite Will Straw takes place this lunchtime.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

PODCAST: Blog of the Year Awards 2010

Earlier tonight, the Blog of the Year Awards reached their fiery climax.

Helen Duffett has already brought you the stunning results, congratulated the winners and commiserated with the runners up.

All that remains is my duty to bring you, the loyal listener at home who maybe can’t be at conference this year, the recording of the proceedings.

And, technology permitting, you should find that below.

Happy listening!

Final details for our Fringe tomorrow

Many many thanks to Lib Dem Voice editor Helen Duffett for organising our major fringe event tomorrow. She’s been hunting around the country for the best talent to speak to us, and has overcome many seemingly insurmountable obstacles to bring a stellar event to the conference.

Hall 1B is a lovely room with a giant set of seats sitting on an enormous turntable, for reasons that will probably become clear if you come and see the fringe.

Without further ado, our speaker lineup is:

Evan Harris
Susan Kramer
Will Straw

The title is:

Fairer? For Whom?

As will all our fringe events, we are planning to record the event using our trusty Zoom H2 and make the recording available as a podcast right here on the Voice.

Tonight of course, the BOTYs reach their glittering climax, and the tape of that should be with you before daybreak, flakey hotel wifi permitting. A full list of the shortlisted bloggers can be found here, and mere hours from now the new winners will be revealed.

EDIT: Dates and times:
Fairer? for whom?
Sunday, 19th September 2010
13.00 – 14.00
ACC Liverpool, Hall 1B

Blog of the Year awards
Saturday, 18th September 2010
22.00 – 00.00
Hilton, Grace Suite 1

Call for contributors: day of multilingual blogging

A long time ago, I did a degree in modern languages. To try and keep my skills from fading, I follow a few French and German language users on Twitter. And one of these, the French-speaking arm of the FCO let me know a few weeks ago of a planned event at the end of September.

The UK arm of the European Commission is hoping to celebrate European Day of Languages with a day of multi-lingual blogging. The date is 26th September, and you can read all about it on the EC Facebook page for the event.

We’d like to take part with a series of blog posts in a variety of languages, but to be honest, there are relatively few of us on the LDV team who remain fluent in Foreign. So we’d like to recruit writers from amongst our readers.

The parameters are these: we need short blog posts in non-English languages, with an English translation provided as well. You can choose almost any topic, but remember your audience will be predominantly Liberals from the UK. Please send your post to me <!–
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Il y a beaucoup des années, j’ai suivi des études des langues étrangères. Pour pas perdre mes pouvoirs linguistiques, je suis au Twitter quelques gens qui parlent en français et en allemand, dont une est la branche francophone du bureau de l’exterieur du gouvernement Britannique. C’est ce bureau qui m’a fait apprecier une journée prévue pour la fin de septembre.

Le bureau du Comission Européen dans le Royaume-Uni a l’intention de fêter la journée de langue avec un évenement de blogging multi-lingue qui aura lieu le 26 septembre. Vous pouvez-vous en enseigner sur ce site Facebook (en anglais)

Ici sur Lib Dem Voice, nous voulons prendre partis, mais entre nous, puisque nous ne parlons assez peu de langues étrangères c’est à vous de proposer des articles vous-mêmes.

Les paramètres sont ainsi: il nous faut des articles blog dans des langues à part de l’anglais, qui contient une traduction anglaise avec. Vous pouvez choisir n’importe quel sujet, mais il vous faut se souvenier que ceux qui lisent vos mots seront des Liberaux d’origine anglaise. Vous êtes invités d’envoyer votre article sur <!–
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//–>alex – alex.hat.libdemvoice.org.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one) avant 0.01 du 25 septembre pourque je puisse les verifier en avance. Si vous avez l’intention d’écrire dans une langue qui exige des lettres non-latin, veuillez me contacter en avance de ce date et je préparerai les technicalities de faire apparaître vos mots. Et – svp – si j’ai fais des erreurs de français – soyez gentil quand vous me les expliques!