Some time ago ((In the order of 1000000 seconds ago, that is.)), I was at a brainstorming meeting at Brainport. Aside from some of the crazier suggestions ((Changing the Dutch weather was not mentioned but is saner than some of the suggestions.)), one of the topics were whether there is interest in an English-language magazine for Expats. The discussion went on and on ((…and on and on and on…)) without anybody reaching an agreement. Basically, somebody wanted a dead-wood magazine, and some even thought it would be economically viable to translate entire newspapers on a daily basis.
I, instead had a more pragmatic view. How about having people submit and translate the stories themselves. A bit like how thew Danish “newspaper” 180grader works: users submit and rate stories. The best are at the front and moved down after 1-2 days. The rest are available for everybody to go thru or ignore. All stories are just links to original sources, typically with a summary.
For the Expat Newspaper, my idea is that users submit stories of interest. They can provide a brief summary or an entire translation in English. Voters decide what goes on front. Voters — or my administrative pen ((Ensuring plenty of Britney-related stories on the front page ;-)…)) ;-).
Realizing that talk is cheap and so is bandwidth, I now present you Holland Expat News. Let me know what you think! In the comments here or on the site. If people are interested, I’ll look into registering a more readable domain and look into Facebook integration (neither are free and I’ve learned from the best ((Dutch.)) not to waste money). The theme is the default one, and finding and installing new ones seem to be a royal PITA as well, so that has to wait until I get a feeling for the interest.
Note: For now, mails from Holland Expat News will come from my GMail address (klafbang _at_ gmail.com). This will be fixed once I get a proper domain I can send mail from which doesn’t get killed in all (reasonable) spam filters.
