Archive for February, 2012
Connecting the disabled to 112
Although the EU-wide emergency number 112 has become a reality, a lot must be done to raise citizen awareness and make the service accessible to the disabled.Watch the video.
Hidden treasures of Europe
Under the slogan 'So similar, so different, so European' this clip shows just how gorgeous and surprising Southeast Europe can be. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey have all set course towards the European Union. Croatia has gone the furthest on the path towards the [...]
NEW and IMPROVED newsroom on europa.eu: get the first glimpse!
In the last few months Europa Webteam have been working at integrating and improving the design of the news and press sections of the EU site (EU press room, EU news, EU calendar and Media centre). All those sites aim to coherently aggregate the news and press material coming from the different institutions and bodies of the [...]
t@Bruxelles
I start my 4th week living in Bxl. After nearly 4 years spent in Berlin, I –secretely- expected Belgian people to be like the Germans: silent, handsome and guilty serious. Well, in a sense, they are. “-Prune. Post. Please. – …… – Do you have any idea of topic? – No clue. Of course! [...]
Times Are Changing: A Personal Look into the Brave New World of Digital Communication
Right from the start I want to admit that I have been slow to adopt the fascinating new gadgets that the digital age has brought us. Call me old-fashioned but I still do not own a smartphone, I read most of my books by flipping their pages and have been only recently introduced to Twitter [...]
Backstage: The making of the LUX Prize
Lights, camera, action! The Parliament awards a prize of subtitling in the 23 EU languages to a European film every year. Blink finds out more behind the scenes. So follow it in this short video.
Followerwonk
What’s it all about? Followerwonk is essentially a Twitter research tool. It lets you search specific Twitter bios for key words or urls. You can see who your followers are following, what lists they are on and who has the most influence, and do the same with the followers of other accounts. You can compare [...]
Go viral or go home
A short summary for the pressed reader: Based upon research and experience, we have concluded that only young, cute, hairy MEPs will allow for successful viral communication campaigns. Besides editing the German website, I worked on two projects last year. One was a comic strip that should explain the Euro crisis in simple terms. The [...]
Closer than we might think
I have always been passionate about the EU, but somehow it has always managed to keep its distance from me. I have tried to move closer to it for a long time and now I finally came to this place they call the heart of the EU, Brussels, but it feels like there is [...]
How to #fail on Twitter
You can be a diva, a politician or a plumber: if you want to say something today, do it on Twitter. Do it fast. Do it live. And do it in 140 signs. But be careful: 500 million people may potentially read you. { A portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger by Andy Warhol and a self-portrait of [...]
European films — what a joy!
Half the European films you watch in the cinema are supported by the EU's MEDIA programme. The programme supports the distribution of 9 out of every 10 feature films in Europe that are distributed outside their originating country. Two and a half million aficionados watch over 15 000 European screenings in more than 100 festivals [...]
Keep Your Audience on Its Tweet: 4 Keys to Building a Strong Social Following
Twitter is not the AP news wire. Injecting a little personality into your tweets can go a long way in helping you establish an online identity—a persona that people will connect with. Try framing tweets in the form of a question or using a joke to get peoples’ attention. If you’re simply pumping out tweets [...]
Internet of things
By 2020, between 22 and 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, providing citizens with an unprecedented array of smart applications and services. Europe is confronted with the challenge of remaining at the cutting-edge of this Internet of things revolution while addressing the complex policy issues that it raises (privacy, security, ethics). This [...]
NWOW revisited
It's been "visited" by Evita and Steve before. The New World of Work (NWOW) fascinates (almost) everyone, especially people like us, who will potentially adopt it soon. In NWOW, performance is everything. You can work anywhere, anytime. Workers and teams are more productive because they’re judged by their results. We wanted to see what it is [...]
Photo of the week: “My bell. My Empire for a bell..”
Last month in the EP there was a big change.. A new President of the Parliament was elected.. Jerzy left the trone to Martin! This month in the EP Chamber there was also a small but noisy change.. the bell replaces traditional gavel! From February plenary session onwards the start and conclusion of a speech, [...]
My first few weeks as a WebComm official
After quite a few years of doing different EU-related jobs and passing the dreaded-by-many competition I found myself in WebComm in the very beginning of January. The first week had a still and eerie feeling to it as Brussels was almost empty and many were still on their Christmas holidays. My first day started with [...]
The News: Unforgettable
From credit card numbers to holiday snaps, 75% of people think they should be able to delete what they put online. The EU is fighting for the right to be forgotten. Wartch the video.
Work in Brussels?
I am often asked by students how one should go about getting a job in the EU in Brussels. There is no short and simple answer to that question because there are many ways to get here. But there are two things that I think you should take the chance to do during your studies, [...]
Discovering Europe through Erasmus
France might be one of the better places for meeting the French, but it also works a treat for making friends from outside the Hexagone. When I left Paris in 1999 after studying there for a year, I did so with an address book spanning the breadth of the European continent. It didn't involve me [...]
School Trip to the New World of Work
Cynical old fonx, not without cause, smell a rat the instant you start talking about “open plan” offices. It’s a trick, they aver, to squeeze us into ever smaller spaces, take away our personal domains and generally reduce us to Dilbert-esque cubicle wage-slaves. So what will they make of the “New World of Work”?
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