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 and Facebook. Perhaps this is the reason why I find the recent shifts in how media content is consumed so amazing. People are searching for and getting access to information on the run, moving to new interactive platforms and developing preferences for visual content over text. This puts tremendous pressure not only on traditional media to change but also on public institutions like the European Parliament to modify the way of providing feedback on their activities and to remain relevant in the changing communication environment.

The striking thing about the digital revolution we are experiencing is the extent to which it has transformed our lives. I really find it hard to imagine how work has been done before personal computers (I have had colleagues here in the EP still keeping fond memories of the days when they used to type on their typing machines letters and notes to the hierarchy) and I cannot remember what it was like before I could google something on the Internet – although now that I think of it, I have some vague memories of the excitement caused by the discovery of a search engine called AltaVista. I have this nagging feeling that just as I find this pre-PC world so distant, in a decade or so my now two-year-old daughter will look at me as a living dinosaur for being so inept with tablets or social media or whatever comes next.

Change does not only come from new hardware and tools. To write this blog entry, I did some brief research (also a sign of the times, I guess) on the Internet about evolution of communication and media consumption and I found quite a few thought-provoking powerpoint presentations, infographics and videos – and relatively little written text. Media professionals are becoming increasingly aware that to attract the attention of people, they need to offer them not so much beautiful phrases but eye-grabbing visual content. This in turn will continue to shape people's perceptions of and demands for information – and I will not be surprised if before long governments across the world adopt the 140-symbol Twitter style of presenting their ideas and policies to the public, as some suggest.

For all the recent ground-breaking developments in the digital world, the essence of communication has not changed much since pre-historic times. It is still basically about providing information in one form or another about what you have done, or think or plan to do. Over here at WebComm we are working in an institution that owes its existence to public trust and we have an obligation to keep our audience informed of what the Parliament is doing to deserve this trust. So as a newcomer I am excited to join a group of people exploring bright new ideas and launching projects that will hopefully take the institution to the cutting edge of public communications. But at the same time I feel that it is a team that appreciates the essential value of information and despite being a bit behind the curve on new technologies I hope I can find my place by helping to meet this basic need of providing unbiased facts and reporting on activities.