Amsterdam selection process

Some folks have wondered about how/why certain bloggers were chosen for the BloggersinAmsterdam project. To clarify: there was more gut feel than science as we pulled together the list of bloggers. (Blogads staff decided who to invite, so any ill-feelings if you weren’t contacted should be directed at us.) We wanted a balance of perspectives and blog sizes, but the bottom line was “who might have fun on a trip to Amsterdam?” While the Netherlands Tourism Board was most interested in blogs focused on pop culture, they also wanted strong voices. I’ve seen some posts suggesting we’d pulled “lefties;” in fact, any political skew was a function of bloggers’ vacation schedules or self-selection. We pinged 10 politically focused bloggers, five from the left and five from the right. Only James Joyner said yes.