In September 2007 I launched TechCrunch UK & Ireland. But within three months I realised the tech story that needed to be written was across Europe. So I went on tour to find contacts and companies. This year we’ve re-launched as TechCrunch Europe and I’ve begun running events across the continent to bring the European tech scene together, along with our first ever day-long conference. Today I’m opening up TechCrunch Europe to new contributors from across Europe so that we can really tell the European tech story the way it is.
We’re looking for guest contributing writers for TC Europe. Contributors will get a log-in and password to the back-end WordPress publishing system of TCE. But in order to apply the same editorial standards as we have across all the TC blogs, we’ll be running a slightly different system to ‘normal’ blogging. To save anyone wasting their time writing something that we can’t publish, the blog posts will need to be pitched first as ideas to TC Europe editorial. This is not going to be a free-for-all where anyone can post anything. The posts will require our approval to go live on the site and will almost certainly be copy-edited by TC Editorial staff prior to release. Some may not like that approach, but that’s the way it will run. At least for now.
But posts that do go live on TC Europe will have the byline of the writer and will also get Tweeted by our @TCEurope account with the Twitter name of the writer, e.g. “Headline http://tcrn.ch/xyz by @person”. That Twitter account has over 3,000 followers right now, and obviously this will grow. If there is a post we really like then the post would get “cross-posted” to TechCrunch.com (but that’s up to us).
Content-wise we are looking mainly for breaking news, exclusive stories and other types of content, like interviews. Unfortunately we don’t have a budget for European contributors as yet, but we hope that this would be a good way of promoting yourself in the scene. Plus, it will almost certainly bring you more Twitter followers. Of course, it goes without saying that our preference is for contributors to be independent of the things they are writing about, and where they have an interest, that is declared.
In order to apply to be a TechCrunch Europe guest contributor you must send an email to me, Mike Butcher, marked “TC Europe contributor”. Please include links to previous blog posts you’re proud of and stories you’ve broken. In particular we’ll be looking for people who have contributed to country-based blogs that cover the tech scene in the local language.
We’ll be running this contributor model for the next few months. Assuming it works OK we’ll make it a permanent arrangement, but it will be reviewed periodically.
We are looking for contributors from the countries that, coincidentally and conveniently, also make up the Eurovision Song Contest catchment area, as well as wider Europe. Anyway, These are, in alphabetical order:
Albania
Andorra
Armenia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
FYR Macedonia
Georgia
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxemburg
Malta
Moldova
Monaco
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
San Marino
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom (we have that covered)