One thing which comes up in the job now and then is attendance of conferences, seminars and so on. They take a lot of time and can make it difficult to keep up with the day-to-day editorial business, but very often turn out to be well worth it and repay the effort of cobbling together yet another powerpoint presentation. In this job at these things I’ve been meeting people who don’t wear ties: geeky types and media types who – at least at first sight – seem so far away from the EU bubble that they seem to be from another planet. While, on closer examination, it often turns out that these people are very much of this world and live in their own bubbles which actually resemble ours to a disconcerting extent, it is nevertheless extremely salutary to meet people whose lives do not revolve around EU institutions and procedures. At the very least, it’s a handy reminder of what we’re up against in communications terms: there are many interesting things going on out there, and we have to retain a degree of humility about our place in this busy media marketplace.

Barack Obama's Facebook profile (www.facebook.com)

Today, I find myself in downtown Brussels in a hotel, surrounded by people without ties but all sporting the inevitable conference badges, where in a moment I am participating in a panel discussion entitled “What won it for Obama?”, alongside journalists, broadcasters and someone from the Obama campaign team (of whom we are all duly in awe). It is difficult to approach such a discussion without a feeling of deep inadequacy. The Obama campaign has set standards which online communicators across the entire world currently aspire to. In the case of the European Parliament, as I have had occasion to note, the effect has been to create a broad, perhaps rather vague, wish to get a bit of the action. I remain personally convinced that people who want their piece of the Obama magic don’t necessarily know what exactly they’re asking for and may be quite surprised when they find out.

The first thing always to say about the Obama campaign (the online component) is that it is not simply transferable to the European context. An electoral battle between two individuals, with charismatic candidates, pots of money, a clear choice and at stake the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation, is not, shall we say, the situation we find ourselves in as we contemplate our communications campaign on the European elections. Nor are we supporting a candidate, able to take partisan positions and deploy the passion inevitably unleashed by a US election. Passion may well exist for European politics – it should – but it does not find the straightforward bipartisan outlet that a US election offers.

So, as I say, humility. But humility does not mean that our job is unimportant. Our task is a more than honourable one, to encourage and generate interest and participation in a democratic process which, for all that people may not realise it, does matter hugely to everyone living in Europe. So let us look at Obama’s campaign and see what inspiration it does have to offer.

Social networking in particular allows people to make the campaign as much about themselves as about the candidate or the political party to which he belongs.

For me, the crucial point about Obama’s online campaign was its effectiveness in involving people in the campaign, making it about them as individuals. The campaign was able to make people feel that the election was about them: their concerns, their work, their families, but crucially also about their voices, their efforts, their contribution. Part of the genius of Obama’s small contribution strategy – whether or not that is really where his funding mainly came from – was that it gave contributors a part of Obama, gave them a direct personal stake in his campaign. Illusory perhaps in many ways, but this sense of involvement also found an outlet in the online tools deployed. Social networking in particular allows people to make the campaign as much about themselves as about the candidate or the political party to which he belongs. It also means that people get the message not necessarily from distant institutions, organisations or even candidates, but from their friends and neighbours. And as any advertiser will tell you, word of mouth, or its digital equivalent, works SO much better than any organisation telling you what to do or think. Perhaps this is also part of the oft-denounced atomisation of public opinion.  Sure, but if all the atoms are heading in the same direction, you get a tidal wave which results in the astounding gathering we saw in Washington DC’s mall on January 20th. (Ahem, I know, mixed metaphor…)

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So what do we conclude in a European context? After the panel discussion, which has just taken place, I see many things we can’t do, but most of all I believe that we are at least right to do what we are trying to do, which is to involve people in the election, to make it about them. This, according to my fellow panelist, Ruth Spencer, who runs the Thinkaboutit competition, is also what that exercise seeks to achieve – to get people to think about European politics in terms of how it impacts on their lives. Even more, what the Obama campaigner, Jodi Williams, said made it clear that the Obama campaign was thinking in terms of people passing the message to other people.

How are we, in our modest way, hoping to achieve some of this? Some is already online: our elections website, online debates, this blog…, but much more is to come. Coming to the internet soon, your friendly neighbourhood European Parliament (maybe not as you know it) on social networking sites and much much more.

Who knows, maybe we’ll inspire the 2012 Obama re-election campaign :-).