Matthew and I are in Bologna for the children’s book fair. Last week I briefly visited the London Book Fair and was overwhelmed by the enormity of it. Bologna is more friendly, and the publishers are really interested in the Storynory concept. They are looking for an internet component to their books, because this is what children expect these days. There are some clever people here who are thinking about putting together packages - and we do bring an interesting offering to the table. Anyway, no brush offs so far, and a feeling that our proposition in timely and along the right lines. You can hear their minds ticking - how can we add audio downloads into this particular concept? Some have come up with some great suggestions - we just have to see if they will come to fruition.

I’m glad to say that Blog Relations / Storynory is really quite busy at the moment. In fact, at times I don’t know if I am coming or going, and I’m not sure which country I’m in. I don’t know if it’s just that we have been around a bit longer now, or if it’s because blogs and podcasts are coming of age - all I can say is that there is a lot more work for us than there was a year ago, and the conversations with people are a lot easier.

In the brief space between my travels to Moscow and Italy,  I spent an intense few days redesigning the Storynory site.  We had a naive child-like design before - appropriate to children, as it was meant to be.  But now we want to build some relationships with serious people, so we thought we need something more slick.  It’s a hard balance to strike.

I went for a static front page - so as to give more explanation to new visitors as to what it is all about.   I still get a lot of emails from mums asking how they can download stories for their children - not to mention those who want to know how to subscribe to a podcast.

I wanted to use the latest Wordpress feature for a static home page - but I found that it’s incompatible with Extended Live Archives.  After the home page, the Stories Archive is the most visited page on Storynory.  Stories never go out of date, you see.

So the static home page is generated by HTML, copied and pasted into a WordPress template page with the slug “home.php”.  It’s crude but it works, and it loads fast too.  I actually generated the HTML with a WordPress Page, then clicked “view source” in the browser and copied it.

I was on an train from Paris to Bologna when the news came out that Boris Yeltsin had gone to the great vodka bar in the sky. Say what you like about Boris and the bottle, at least he respected freedom of speech - not how things are now. On my last day in Moscow I saw 9000 troops lining the streets to deter a handful of liberals trying to wave little flags. Convoys were military vehicles packed with conscripts cruised the streets - reminiscent of the regular coups of the early 90s - but no Yeltsin figure stood up on a tank - and nobody would have cheered him if  he had.  To put this in perspective, the British have fewer troops trying to control a large chunk of southern Afghanistan.

Meanwhile a rally of arm-band wearing Putin Youth were running a sponsored rally equipped with giant TV screens. Claes Fredrick of Exbiblio sent me this link about the latest clamp down on Russian radio. Now radio stations have been told that they must put out at least 50% “good news”. In the Yelstin era I went around Russian radio stations on an EU sponsored tour, promoting democracy and free reporting. What a waste of time! Of the domestics, only the noble Echo Moskvi continues to broadcast independent news, and their journalists like to blog too.

So my Russian blog adventure is more or less at a close - though I must do a little follow through. I’m still wondering if the Kremlin will clamp down on blogs before next year’s presidential elections - if and when they do, I don’t think it will be a Chinese style block - it will be more of a judicial hassle. It’s impossible to sneeze in Russia without breaking some law. This was one typical incident. I was in a car at a set of red traffic lights and a traffic cop pointed at my driver with a long baton. She was fined a paltry 50 roubles because her wheels were pointing at a slight angle, and he said she could not drive off in a straight line when the lights went green. There was a lot of form filling and she had to go to some distant bank to pay the $2 fine. Most people would have offered a $20 or $50 bribe to save the bother. Basically, if anyone in power says you have broken the law, then you have . This is the reality of Russia - it always has been - but under Yeltsin there was a brief hope of change. I can’t say that anyone minds. They are far too busy getting rich - or at least buying cars and holidays on credit. Nobody can blame them. It’s nice to enjoy a little prosperity - and they might as well do so so long as there is trouble in the Middle East and the Oil Price remains high. This one reason, of course, why Russia is selling nuclear reactors to Iran, or so I believe.

There is little hunger for free speech in Russia - but I admire the brave souls who keep the flame of hope alive. Russia is a place were blogging is really exclusive, fashionable, and vain - but also really important.

At this rate, our little enterprise should be up for a Queens Award for Export. Blog Relations took me to Seattle half a dozen times last year, and now, here I am in Moscow. Seattle is a lovely city, but just being in Moscow gives me so much more of a buzz. All the people milling around the kiosks outside the Metro gives it an entirely different feel from home. Sometimes I think it’s one giant oriental bazaar.

The costs are still reasonable, if you crouch down and speak through a tiny window in a kiosk, pointing to a baton of bread, but the prices in the supermarket are “ouch!” - 6 UK pounds for 300 grams of smoked cheese!  And the mozzarella and chocolate flavoured pitza in the restaurant reminds you that this is still a place where novelty is still quite usual. 

This is definitley a booming petro economy - even if some people are “living nearer to the pipeline” than others.

Okay, so what about blogging? Everybody says it is extremely “fashionable”. I’m not sure that it was ever “fashionable” in the west, but here it is chic and there’s no hint of gawky geek about it.  Moscow has its own fashions still - you can see that from what people wear. 

 I’m not sure yet if being fashionable is healthy.  “Fashion” and “Bubble” are words that go together in my mind.   While I think the prices in the shops are definately reflecting the oil price - and I can see them coming down as well as going up - at least blogging is cheap.  So perhaps it is crash and recession proof?  One day, we shall see, both here and back home.