What's up, what's up. It's Sunday at 3:34am but I feel like I'm still on EST. I'm over in Berlin this weekend doing some analysis of the usage of email marketing in German small businesses and attending a pretty cool conference put together by the a group called the British Council.

They're calling it Transatlantic Network 2020. They're basically bringing together 100 people from N. America and Europe for each of the next 12 years until 2020 to build relationships among future world leaders from the NATO countries between 23 and 36 years old. 2008 is the first year of the program.

The attendees are off the heazy. The 15 or so U.S./Canandian participants got together tonight at 6 in the hotel bar and then we headed off for dinner at a biergarten and had the traditional bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

I met some mad smart people tonight--including social activist Jeff Johnson from BET, Washington Post "How the World Sees America" blogger Amar Bakshi, NASA public affairs specialist Stephanie Schierholz, Bethan Jenkins, a 26 year old Welsh Parliament member, and David Kirby from America's Future Foundation and KSG at Harvard where'd I'd love to be at in a few years.

It's wonderful to have a dinner in which we can get wide-ranging perspectives on topics like ice cap melting, microfinance, U.S. space program research, asteroid path projections, bilateral aid inefficiency, fuel cell physics, U.S. rural poverty, nationalism vs. internationalism, global health, genocide, the role of colonialism and Nation-State border creation in global poverty, Barack Obama's triangulation of internationalism, government efficiency, and social liberalism, and the degenerative devolution of hip hop since Dr. Dre's Chronic album in 1992.

I can't wait until the outlook and ideas of the participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Romania, The Netherlands, N. Ireland, England, and Turkey are added tomorrow.

The other cool thing that keeps happening is that I keep running into iContact customers wherever I go. I ran into three our four while speaking at Metro State College in Denver on Thursday and here at the conference David Kirby from America's Future Foundation uses iContact to send newsletters to the supporters of his non-profit. Word is spreading.

We just got back from a dance club called Tresor in a former communist-era power plant in East Berlin that seemed to just be getting started at 3am when we left. Man it's harder to dance to techno than hip-hop, especially with the unvarying/long beats of underground Berlin trance.

Tomorrow afternoon we'll be meeting the European participants and doing a guided walking tour of the city. The main conference runs from Mon-Wed.

If you are interested in being considered for the Dublin Transatlantic 2020 Conference in September check out their site and contact Jacqui Allan.

From their site:

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that span the Atlantic by engaging future leaders from North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe to collaboratively address global issues. Building on the history and shared values of the transatlantic relationship, the program aims to foster long-term relationships among future leaders and to incite grassroots action on important global issues. It is designed to run until 2020.

WHY FOCUS ON THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP?

North America and Europe share a common set of interests – in the advancement of fundamental rights and liberties, education, science and technology. Reports indicate that North America and Europe need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and work together more closely to best tackle global issues like climate change, immigration, and security. TN2020 will foster collaboration between the next generation of North American and European leader

HOW WILL THE PROGRAM WORK?

TN2020 will feature initiatives that give a voice to the next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to work together to explore common solutions to current and future global issues.