By Evita & Anete. Before the elections we had the opportunity to carry out a project that was a repetition of an experiment made 50 years ago. We already wrote about the recipe of this experiment and now it is time to summarize the results.

7 YaBs completed their mission

Overall we can say that it has been a blissful time – stressful, but very interesting.
 
• 7 secret agents out of 27 reached their destination and will become real agents as promised: Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Maltese, Spanish, Bulgarian and Estonian. 2 countries of Iberian Peninsula, 5 “new” Member States. Is there any connection?

• Some celebrities complained about not being informed beforehand officially.  Sorry, there are some things you don’t inform about. Did they inform us that they would become famous before they did it? For this reason or another, the Italian, Latvian, Greek, German and Luxembourgish secret agents got stuck one step before reaching celebrities.

• 2 secret agents got lost from the very beginning. Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Swedish secret agent made a virtual completion of the mission – Erik met his celebrity through the TV screen. Typically Swedish – reminds us of the jolly book of Astrid Lindgren about the best friend ever Karlsson-on-the-Roof who believed there was a man sitting in the TV box.

Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Remaining 13 secret agents travelled around from hand to hand, but at some point they got stuck. Why? Lack of motivation and interest? Fear of looking silly? Fear of being involved in political matters? Not knowing what to do exactly? Procrastination? The reasons could be more than many. Some movement followed after slight pushing from our side although we didn´t want to intervene during the mission. But still… Well, would somebody like to write a PhD on this?

• The first one to leave was the Italian YaB, the first one to arrive: Polish. Does it say something about the mentality or work culture?

• We received many funny and imaginative photos picturing the YaBs in diverse environments and situations — meeting mimes and military men at the Brandenburger Tor, bathing in the sea, having lunch or a drink, partying, having a medical check etc.

• Facebook page for Travelling YaBs now has 554 fans, out of them 61% are woman. In the web we found an article that says that 98% of women love James Bond. Of those 98%, 95.7% of them have had erotic dreams involving at least one of the Bonds. Is it something similar here or are the mother feelings stronger in this case because they are so small and cute?

• The Polish, Latvian, Danish, Greek, Italian and Portuguese media covered the missions. Strange enough: the most of the journalists involved were also women.
 
Conclusion: only 7 YaBs arrived but… sometimes the road is the destination. We hope you enjoyed.

Pimping the secret agents (or YaBs)

As our work does not leave our minds as soon as we are leave the building, one evening I was talking to our Latvian editor Anete and she told me about an idea that had crossed her mind. She wanted to prove that the world (in our case we’ll stick with Europe) is smaller than we think and we are all connected in one way or another. Today her idea has grown into an experiment that we are opening this week.

Here is the recipe (in case of repetition modify amounts and/or steps accordingly):

1. Take 27 figurines and give them to your team colleagues who afterwards turn them into YaBs (yellow and blue, you know).

2. Assign them their nationality.
Each of ours comes from a different EU Member State.

4. Give each of the secret agents their real name and their own code name.

All their code, name and nationality.

5. Choose the starting date of the mission.
The YaBs will start their on 9th of May in the European Parliament’s Open Day (we will be handing them out at Web Communication stand on the 3rd floor in the European Parliament)

Naked YaBs

6. Make some rules to make it more fun.
6.1. Each YaB should travel from one person to another, and should be passed from hand to hand until it reaches its final destination.

7. Make a buzz about it

Fully dressed (hum, body-painted) YaBs

 8. Wait for the results

And this is how you create your own experiment!

P.S. Idea is based on the Six degrees of Separation theory which states that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.

9. The YaBs project in a nutshell

1. We will release 27 YaBs on Saturday 9 May in the EP buildings at Brussels during the Open day. You want to be one of the first link in the chain? Drop us an e-mail at WebComm@europarl.europa.eu now!
2. Each YaB has a target and a destination. Your role is to give it by hand to another link in the chain so each YaB can reach its target and its destination before 4 June 2009.
3. All YaB travel’s steps must be illustrated with photos of the YaB and names or nicknames of their guardian (and as many photos of you and the YaB as you wish). You can follow the Yabs travel on their Facebook page.
4. It’s all about fun, degrees of separation and solidarity! Help a YaB, carry a YaB, give a Yab!  

10. P.P.S. Thanks, Nadina, for inspiration!