“Why don’t you help us a little bit with the press, instead of writing those nice stories that, yes…are ok but…nobody reads?”

“Ah!!I thought you were only translating few articles…”

“Alé, that in the end you only copy/paste the news from the press!”

“We show the WebTV to the visitors…But, no, not Facebook….I didn’t know it exists”.

“You know that in the end it’s completely useless, people only look for naked women on the internet”.

Believe it or not, this is a selection of the best comments I had during the Directorate General “Communication” (yes, not “Infrastructure and Logistics” or “Human Resources”, but Communication) seminar on 13-14 November. With great amusement and surprise, I had to defend “Internet” from the attacks of collegues after the interventions of the speakers. After dinner, with even greater amusement, I had to defend the existence of the Web Communication Unit in the European Parliament organzation chart.

I’m not at all a IT geek. I would say I’m rather 1.5 than 2.0  (even if I’m turning 3.0 soon…). I started spending a lot of time surfing the web only since I’m working at Web Comm. When my 2.3 sister is watching TV and at the same time reading the blog that talks about the TV show she’s watching and at the same time posting and sharing comments on the same topic on Facebook, i-Goggle my eyes.

I learnt an important lesson: in a big and complex organisation as we are, changes generate resistance

BUT. BUT I’ve never even dreamt of questioning the revolution brought about by the Internet few years ago. Already when studying communication at the University, back in 2001-2002, my dear prof. Stefano Rolando was talking of the potential of the web for Public Administration. The possibility to skip the mediation of traditional media and have a direct relationship with the citizens. The bi-directionality of the medium. The user that looks for information in a pro-active way and builds up its own “media diet”. The possibility to segment the information on the basis of the public, instead of having mainstream generalist channels. Etc etc etc. All this stuff, old, probably outdated, I NEVER questioned it. I gave it for granted, like my Bible.

And I was wrong. Because, when I got the comments above, I didn’t take them seriously, it was difficult for me to argue. Disarming. I could only try to re-formulate the arguments proposed by the not-so-young Mike Granatt and Ben Rooney in the course of the seminar, that I didn’t find so innovative either, but still, they advocated that social media are (were?) the future and warmly recommended to the EP to go 2.0 and beyond (in their opinion, we’re still in time).

Even the Bible went 2.0. At what point do we stand?

I don’t want to judge anybody for having different ideas. What I think, though, it’s that more internal communication is urgently needed. Our work is not very visible: we don’t sign our articles, we work behind our screen and seldom take part in meetings, and often what we do is considered frivolous (“Ah, and you’re paid to spend time on Facebook?!”). I don’t want to convince anybody that we are doing the right things. But I would like to avoid, at the next DG COMM seminar, that somebody turns to me saying “Come on, don’t say that you’ve a lot of work, you only translate a couple of press releases per day!”.