The Federal Assembly address is a speech that the President of Russia gives every year to talk about things that worked in the previous year and the things that did not. The interesting thing about this year’s address is that one month prior to giving his speech, Medvedev wrote an article for an influential online newspaper called Gazeta.ru in which he asked Russians to send emails to kremlin@gov.ru suggesting topics for him to discuss during his address. The call for emails was an interesting twist on the annual address. In any case, it definitely did not go unnoticed. Medvedev’s article in Gazeta.ru now has almost 2,600 online comments - some of them supportive, some curious, some downright incredulous of the whole thing. Unfortunately, Medvedev never disclosed which of the issues that he raised during his November 13th address came straight from people’s emails, but it was interesting to see Medvedev pushing for more public dialogue to take place.

I was thinking about Canada in this respect too, wondering if I would be willing to email Stephen Harper to give him ideas of things to talk about in his speeches. I think here in North America we are so used to politics being a public matter that if you fire your PM an email, it might be looked upon by your friends ands colleagues as being over enthusiastic and keen, and just not a very cool thing to do.

But, what about you? Would you send an email to the leader of your country if you had a chance? Do you think it would reach the destination and serve its purpose, or would it be a waste of your time?

Of all the people on Earth, the last person I would expect to blog would be the President of Russia. Why? Because history has it that the leaders of Russia have never been known to be flexible thinkers, which imho is a "must" to be a blogger. Would not ya all agree, my fellow bloggers?

And yet, President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev does keep a blog – and from the looks of it, he blogs with a certain degree of interest and even enthusiasm. It looks like Medvedev’s blog is not just another promotional “about me” page put together by a bunch of government PR people. I can usually sense when a person actually spends some time on their blog and takes time to read the comments to revise their content accordingly. And, I can say Medvedev’s blog is not just a barrage of unconnected and wordy posts. Medvedev also seems to have a knack for videoblogging. Sometimes, he just seems to get that old webcam going, and records video messages for his online audience.

Russia’s TV Channel One reported just recently that the number of comments on Medvedev’s blog is approaching 110,000! In his video entry devoted to the one year anniversary of his blog’s existence (see below), Medvedev notes that he takes time to read all of the comments, saying he likes the fact that people do not just complain to him, but also offer viable solutions to some of the problems. He said he hoped that people would eventually stop thinking that blogging in not a "President's thing to do."

Medvedev can even be found on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ru_medvedev

Oh, and he uses a Mac. So, PC people, shriek!

But, is Mr. Medvedev the only political leader out there who blogs or engages in the social media one way or another?

Well, you would be surprised. Here is a list of political leaders who tapped their feet into the unfamiliar social media waters:

• the controversial President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to blog here http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/ but his last post dates to December 2007

• Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is big on blogging and is all-in-all quite a media type. He currently blogs here http://blog.planalto.gov.br/. What is more, de Silva hosts his own radio show - Café com o Presidente

• Australia’s Kevin Rudd blogs here http://www.kevinpm.com.au/

• Shimon Perez of Israel is here http://www.haaretz.com/peres

• British PM Gordon Brown can be found here http://gordon-brown.blogspot.com/ (**authenticity questionable)

• Queen Elizabeth II of the U.K. has a YouTube channel of her own -- The Royal Channel, offering some relatively fresh content and boasting over 2 million views

• Well, Queen Elizabeth is certainly not the only one with YouTube ambitions. The Vatican also has a channel with one million channel views

• Portuguese president Aníbal Cavaco Silva is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/presidencia

• Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has a radio show of his own -- Alo Presidente has produced a whopping 341 episodes

• Now, Queen Rania, the queen of Jordan, gets the #1 media guru title from me. She is all over platforms. She has a YouTube channel, a website and a Twitter account -- all of which seem to be rather current and worth a read.

What was really surprising to me is that some of the key political leaders are nowhere to be found on the Web. No Sarkozy, no Obama, no Merkel blogging or Tweeting. Instead, politicians with more-or-less visible web presence are in charge of the countries that are far from being political powerhouses on the international arena. Mr. Medvedev seems to be one of the few exceptions...

**Big thanks to my friend Luiz Brandao Jr for helping me assemble all this info.