I’m honoured to work at this project, and I want to invest myself to make it bigger, nicer, and more powerful. It is a lab of experimentation and creativity, as it tests the potential (and pushes the limits) of institutional communication. Nowhere else, as far as I know, there is a community from so many different countries discussing political issues among them.  I was literally touched by the post on Thailand, when we talked about the riots in Bangkok. Some Thai people commented on it and many, many Europeans expressed them their solidarity and their sorrow, but also discussed the political situation there.

With over 76.000 fans, each post seen at least 100.000 times, and over 1.000 interactions per week, I think we shouldn’t be shy and say that this is one of the most successful experiences of communication on EU affairs ever.

Football time: the genius of Fred "en jouant avec son 'toshop"

Positive feed-back

In fact, we don’t need to auto celebrate ourselves, because we have a lot of positive feed-back, from inside and outside the House.

The other EU Institutions consider us frontrunners, and want to exchange experiences. The last example: a communication officer from EuropeAid at the Commission said he is “a big fan of the Facebook editorial team of the Parliament” and he would like to share with us some best practices.

After the chat with Heidi Hautala on human rights on Facebook, her assistant wrote to me that the results were “very impressive” and that the MEP “was very happy to participate and would do it again for sure :)”, encouraging us to “continue the excellent work!”.

FB fans appreciate our work, and they expressed it many times. Just over the last week, Marcello Toni thanked us for organising the chats, Tremopoulos Michalis encouraged us to “keep up the good work!!”and Mark Valdam said he likes “funny organisations like the EP :-))”.
…and some secrets to reveal
So far so good. Of course we can do much better, and I’ll write another post on what we can and should do in the future. For the time being, just two little confessions.
1) It is a serious thing – When “the pillar” left, I didn’t sleep for one week. I was given more or less informally the responsibility of coordinating the magic Facebook team, and this gave me a good dose of stress. The page took off and grew thanks – among others – to the creativity, restless effort and “geekiness” of Christian. I don’t know if I can keep up, but I will do all my best because I believe that this communication platform has a great potential to get Europe a little bit closer to citizens, but also to get citizens closer to European decision makers, and maybe most important, to get Europeans closer to each other.
2) But you don’t have to take yourself (and the others) too seriously. Do you know how the best posts that we publish see the light? Normally we exchange tonnes of emails, and at some point somebody comes up with a funny, sometimes hilarious email, that the others – crazily enough – take seriously. And then it goes on Facebook and gets a lot of comments and “likes”: the magic of Facebook!

For me, the important thing is to keep this spirit alive and…enjoy your work!

IS IT an addiction?! Thanks to Fluxy for the pciture on Flickr @ http://bit.ly/brf29N

I considered myself a “frequent social media user”, with some incipient risk of addiction. Since I read this blog from tech company Retrevo that relieved me. I’m NOT in the top risk category. Apparently, I don’t present the most visible signs of what researchers call “obsession with checking in with their social media circles throughout the day and even the night”.  

Believe it or not, the most dangerous symptom of the syndrome, according to scientists, is interrupting sexual activity (or, as Retrovo delicately phrases it, “intimate moments”), to check your Facebook or Twitter account. According to Retrevo, 11% among young users (under 25) do it regularly. Yes, that’s right, check their fourth chart, third green column from the left… My theory “the youngest, the best” is totally in crisis now.

Another bad sign is if you check your account(s) as soon as you wake up in the morning, sure that there will be somebody even more zealous than you who already posted something. This is a very contagious virus, since it strikes 48% of social media users. Not me.  I’m the kind of girl that avoids any interaction with the world (real or virtual) before 9.00h.

But then, it comes to the third, unmistakable symptom: are you ready to interrupt a dinner for an electronic message? YES! Yes, I am! I am able to start a 2 hours conversation on the phone while starting to eat and I completely forget about my dinner. But then the phone is quite old school isn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t consider it as “social media”, but more as “social life” addiction.

Naturally, all this left me burning with curiosity… I started to wonder if my colleagues were those kind of very bad addicts, or just we all belong to the old school. Here the result of my Flash Survey 19-04-2010.

Sex and the ex

Definitely happy to discover that the majority of us don’t open Facebook during our “intimate moments”. Only one admits to having had “a chat” while making love.

Worth a mention, the case of “an ex insisting on checking if she got a text to her phone during sex”: maybe a sufficient reason to break up. (ed. How reliable is such information about an ex, I wonder?)

Otherwise, numbers talk clear: we are below the average, with 14 out of 15 answering an unambiguous “NO” to the question.

Night-book?

Unit below the average also there, but with some more positive answers: 1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up (no Dan, not everybody does!), or before going to bed. It is, surprisingly, a 80% male majority. Maybe girls have something better to do at night?

Ex are recurrent presences in this poll: “My ex was sticking to Facebook as soon as she woke up. And I would have killed her!”. Poor guy… Take comfort from your colleague who had to deal with the sex-SMS-ex.

Dinner and phone, a popular combination

1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up, or before going to bed.

Yes, we’re definitely the old school. Most of us allow interruption of dinner by the phone, but internet is not mentioned at all: we don’t have “our computer at the dining table”.

Some people “try to avoid it” (the phone), meaning that it’s a very frequent practice. Only 5 say a convinced “NO”, whereas the others – knowing that they could be judged under the Fine Dining Etiquette rules – answer a timid “no, unless…”.

No ex this time, but a very liberated family: ” I was always thought those families that wouldn’t answer the phone during dinner were strange. Would they rather have the phone ringing off the hook than answering?!”

And now comes the best…

Eh eh. You thought you were sane, didn’t you? That, despite the hours spent in front of the screen, all the pictures of your school mates you have been browsing, the dangerous chats with the ex, despite Twitter and MySpace entering your adult life, YOU are still immune. I did. Till I got at the end of the article:

“56% of social media users need to check Facebook at least once a day. Even more impressive are the 12% who check in every couple of hours”

Every couple of hours??? What if it’s every couple of minutes??? My god…THAT’s a SYMPTOM! Unless, unless…you have a good excuse…a good excuse like

“I use it for work”

And, uff, I have it. Do you?!

But it would have been even better if I was not eating a biscuit when he stretched out his hand and smiled: “Klaus Welle”. Me, mouth full: “Baffabella Be Mabte”.

For those who don’t know Klaus:  he is the Secretary General of the European Parliament. Basically the Boss of the bosses of all of us, the “Administration”.  He organised a meeting on 25 March to welcome the “new officials”, those who recently passed the notorious 9 months probation period.

It happened that he sat just next to me, and he was often turning at me to look for approval. And I, of course, punctually nodded.

This meeting was a “première” established by him. He wished that our career will be ”long and satisfying”, and gave to each of us us a book, “Memoires” de Jean Monnet.  Something written “more than 30 years ago but very actual”. Because  – he said – our job is not a common one, and we have the responsibility to try to make “things move forward”, and “hopefully in the right direction”.

Web Communication Unit well represented in the meeting with Klaus Welle, Secretary General of the European Parliament, on Thursday 24 March

Three things to remember

1) This Parliament is an anarchic place: there is space for individual creativity and spirit of initiative. Hierarchy exists, but you will always find ways and space to make things move on. And it’s not like national parliaments, where decisions are pre-determined by the executive: this Parliament is free to say no.

2) We should ‘push the limits’ to make the Parliament gain power and weight in the institutional architecture. Help MEPs to use ‘the grey zones’, even of the Lisbon Treaty, to extend the sphere of influence of our institution.

3) It’s the politics, stupid! Administration and politics are interlaced. Our existence is legitimated by the existence of the MEPs, and our duty is to help them, consult and be at their service. It’s necessary to understand political points of view to do a good work as an administrator in the EP.  Making an experience in a political group can be helpful to understand the political perspective.

A great boost of energy

A part from the basic instinct of nodding, I couldn’t agree more. I was thinking of my experience of an assistant, but also to my months here in DG COMM. There is a lot of unexplored, open space in this Parliament, and this spirit of “exploring”, and pushing the limits” to “make things move” is what makes me alive, awake and über-motivated.

Taylor Swift, 20 years old American country-pop singer: first thing you fall on when you look for "SWIFT" on FB

The so-called SWIFT agreement was not only a kind of miracle that made it possible to watch EPLive with a lot of emotion, passion and tension. It was also, for me, the occasion to better understand Twitter, on which I thought as Kurt (post of 9 Feb) before.

There are hundreds and hundreds of tweets on this subject, marked by the ash tag #SWIFT. Before the vote – with the goal of informing, lobbying and campaigning – during the vote and after the vote. I wanted to count them, but I gave up (does anybody know if there is an automatic way to count the Twitters?!). I preferred to try to understand why so many.

My very rudimentary conclusions follow. Excuse me for the comparison with Facebook, it’s due to the familiarity.

1 – Welcome to the geeks paradise! Twitter is for the experts. The #SWIFT votes were twitted by MEPs, bloggers, journalists, political groups etc.

2 – Bit.ly/tr.im2ç or the essentiality of Twitter: confirming that it’s not “to have fun”, but more to get, give and circulate information, in Twitter you don’t get lost in photos, links, applications. It’s only short text and – not by chance - every day more and more bit.ly and other short links.

3 – And if we tweeted…from the toilet? I was impressed seeing that some MEPs were twittering from the hemicycle. Ok, this is possible from Facebook as well, but I’ve the impression that with Twitter is quicker and more connected to the “right people”. Maybe on Twitter she had loyal followers, waiting for her to tweet, the #SWIFT geeks let’s say. Basically, on Twitter you’re not necessarily a friend or connected to that person, but you’re interested in the topic, and you’re not bothered if you receive 5 updates on the same subject from the same person in 15 minutes.

4 - @ RT # = bla bla bla – I saw the lack of interactivity as the main limit of Twitter. Now I understand that it simply works differently. You don’t post on the others’ wall (that – in this way – stays clear and readable) but trough RT (retweets, event multiple), @ (questions/answers, see the one between Marjorie and Julien on 11 February at 5:00 PM) and # (establishing a subject). Once again, it’s not immediate, but once you’re in the circle, it’s very quick and interactive. Europarl_EN has been widely retweeted in this occasion, because we gave the relevant information timely. Also Parliament’s president Jerzy Buzek was retweeted – even if its statement came later – because it was meaningful.

5 - Whatever you want to sell, be there – Twitter is really a promotional platform. Most of the Tweets are made to draw people’s attention to some other pages, or more detailed analysis. But the advantage is, you don’t need to follow the link if you don’t want to know more.

6 – ASH! # is a useful tag to search the good information, at least in the peak-period for a certain topic. If you look for SWIFT on Facebook, what you get first is Taylor Swift, a 20 years old country singer with over 3 Million fans. Only scrolling down to ”posts by friends” you get something relevant and connected to “our” Swift. In Twitter you need to scroll down by date (this is another differences, Facebook relevance is based on numbers of fans/friends, whereas in Twitter – as any news room - what counts is the date. A “search by date” function would be very useful). If you put a double search criteria, #SWIFT and #EP, the research refines even further, proving that who’s part of the conversation is also part of the game (#EP is really internal jargon).

Facebook is more like a wedding were you know everybody. Twitter is more like one of those receptions in the Parliament where you feel a bit uncomfortable.

All the above characteristics make Twitter a very powerful campaigning tool. MEPs, bloggers and activists kept each other posted and active (like Julien Frisch: “Raise your voice against #SWIFT at the EP page on Facebook: http://tr.im/Nf9V“). Facebook is often linked from Twitter, as a proof that the two platforms are not in a competition because they have good complementarities. Facebook itself was a campaigning tool in during the SWIFT case. By the way, in this page it’s very interesting to see how people created and spread lobbying tools and organised action against SWIFT trough the social media (but this would deserve another post).

Like the Parliament, most of the frequent internet users use both platforms to reach a broader public and speak with different codes to different interlocutors. We are already quite good on Facebook, I’m sure we will make many progresses on Twitter soon!

In conclusion, to describe the differences and similarities between Twitter and Facebook I liked the party metaphor. Facebook is more like a wedding were you know everybody and you feel happy to meet old school friends and new ones. Twitter is more like one of those receptions in the Parliament were you feel a bit uncomfortable in the beginning. You don’t know almost anybody and you need to start a conversation, normally on work-related topics, with faces that you only know by corridor-contact. But, like in life, the borders between one sphere and the other are not so rigid and they will evolve with the time. So…eyes open and ready to surf the next wave!

This Tweet by Kattabel made my day:

Should you apply?

Two big joys. Fist one: Obama is looking for a Social Networks Manager. Everybody knows that the American President used the social media tools trough all his campaign and continues to feed them actively, with over 7,5 Million fans on Facebook and more than 3 Million on Twitter.

Kattabel made a direct connection between Obama and the European Parliament, suggesting that the vote on SWIFT really affected Americans politics and politicians.

I’m very impressed by this Tweet and I dream of the day when, let’s say Mr. Barroso, or Lady Ashton, who, so far, are still a bit behind, will publish a similar annoucement.

Now… please don’t rush away to go and send your application, stay here to read the rest of this post!

Mia Cambronero, on the left, has been Obama's Twitterer till now

The lucky one (till today a young lady) will be working “closely with the rest of the New Media department” but has to be “ready to work hard”, since ”this isn’t a 9-5 sort of job”. The motivation is important: you should be “passionate about engaging millions of Americans in advancing President Obama’s agenda and changing the country”.

But there is a second thing which makes me feel even better. Kattabel made a direct connection between Obama and the European Parliament, suggesting that the vote on SWIFT really affected Americans politics and politicians.

This might sound a bit provincial (“Uh uh…Obama is talking of us…”). But wait. What if this was really the beginning of a new leading role of the European Parliament on the international stage, a role that the EU never gave to our institution before the Lisbon Treaty?

It will be very interesting, in the years to come, to see how the Parliament will be able to stretch the powers granted by the Treaty to play a role in the world. This was for sure a strong start, whether Obama does actually care or not of what will you write in your application.

“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!”.

This is why I decided to make this outing and share with you all the websites and online activites that persecute my conscience, but also those that are giving me some relief.

I will start from the neighbourhood. I was looking for some relief, but they made me feel worse: I didn’t even manage to understand the rules of the game, so -of course – I lost all the matches. I was a bit released by discovering that the game was old, one year or so.  ”I shouldn’t care”, I thought, “it’s not for Copenhagen”. Immediately I discovered that the neighbours had come up with something else, new and richer, to persecute me: you can Play 4 Climate (they’re cool, the neighbours!), posting videos around to convince your friends to act for climate. My score? Zero. I thought I was already bothering enough my friends with my Facebook activities for the European Parliament, so I avoided to play 4 climate.

After the neighbours, it was the turn of the tests. If my behaviour was bad, at least my knowledge could rescue me! I started with my addictions to these. I continued with the National Geographic. The verdict was always similar: “You could be greener”, “You may want to play again” or “Sorry Charlie. You might be time to look a little closer the next time you hit the market”.

And I discovered that, yes, I’m very bad, but fortunately I’m in good company.And now it’s better, little by little I’m getting out. I found that there are many people like me, in every corner of the globe. Our community is called Hopenaghen and we share messages of hope and relief, it helps a lot. Recently, I found a great, funny, green guru, that  showed me the way.

Now I’m even taking active part to convince others to go green. And it’s only the beginning of my conversion. You might have big green surprises soon…

Being difficult to ‘touch the reader’, as Kriistina righlty wrote, we often struggle between the feeling that ‘we are the best’, ‘WE are social media’  and – depending on the day – ‘we are out-of-date’, or ‘our website is slow, is static, is old…’ .

But what are the others doing? Where do they stand? Far from respecting any website analysis criteria, I here only try to sum up the elements that caught my attention on the different webistes I’ve surfed.

Art collection of the Italian Parliament: Members at work?

My choice of parliaments is completely arbitrary, and I apologise with the collegues that feel underrepresented. Don’t worry: we can write a series of this (and then put them in a Focus of course!). I took in consideration: UK Parliament, Spanish Congreso, Italian Camera and, with the help of Christian and Leszek, German Bundestag and Polish Sejm.

UK Parliament: interactive and connected!

UK Parliament’s page open with a pop-up survey, asking to answer few questions on the quality of the website…WOW!! They even thank you for taking part in it.

Immediately, the feeling is of involvment and interactivity. All the navigation is user-driven. Any section has many layers from which you can choose: basically you create you own home-page according to your interests.
No much text, but factual and accesible information available immediately, for example on meetings, reports and special events.

Scrolling down the page a little, the ‘Get involved’ part of the site becomes central: a direct link to Facebook (double-WOW!) , and then audio and video archive. But that’s not all. Opening the ‘Join in!’ page, you can access Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, FriendFeed (a sharing tool open to comments) and ‘Parliament Labs’ the blog of the Web centre of the UK Parliament (Steve, is it your source of inspiration?).

Finally, you can access online forums where people debate Parliament-related topics. But collegues, don’t worry: I couldn’t find any topic with more than 50 comments! What I also find good is the ‘bookmark’ tool, that allows to share the information on the most popular social networks.

Another important part of the homepage is dedicated to visits and school tools to learn about the Parliament: a website really user-oriented and participative, that should inspire many others!

Spanish Congreso: so transparent and…so international!

Impossible for me to enter the Congreso website in Spanish. The default version is English. Fortunately, only the titles. When you go to the body of the text,  only the Spanish version is available.

Languages a part, transparency seems to be the main concern for Spanish legislators, as acts and bills occupy most of the space on ‘La Une’. But multimedia also plays a role: a nice photo gallery of the building, and link to three different channels of the Congreso web TV.

As a confirmation that transparency matters to Spanish congress, the very effective seach engines: if you look in ‘Publicaciones’ or ‘Iniciativias’ or ‘speeches’, you can search by a key word and a very comprehensive and understandable list of documents appear, with hiperlinks allowing to relate one document to the other.

On the main page, also, contacts for visits and email addresses: an attention to citizens that is never unwelcome.

‘Camera dei deputati’: Youtube and the link…with the past

The remarkable element of Italian Camera’s website is the portal containing an historical archive that collects audio and videos from 1919 till nowadays. Amazing: for example, watch the ‘Camera fascista’ voting for the foundation of the fascist  ‘Empire’! Scary and…hilarious.

There is also a photo album showing the magnificent artistic properties of the House. Feeling like visiting it? Easy. Just send a fax to the security…:)

But please don’t think that Italians only look back to the past. Modernity also has its place on the homepage of ‘la Camera’, linking to its Youtube channel. Opened in November 2008, the channel contains 134 videos, many of them reporting on current activities, special events taking place at the Parliament, debates and interviews. The most viewed has 966 visits. A pity that comments and rating are forbidden.

Bundestag: multimedia and multilanguage

Germans…I’m sorry guys, but they do it better! They have a brand new website, inaugurated in August. First of all, it’s available in French and English, and not only the homepage! You can access activities, acts and general information from the main menu, with a very easy and complete navigation system.

In second place, videos, photos, webTV and multimedia in general have a prominent role on the homepage, that has an appealing graphic and  ‘magazine’ style.

A very easy calendar tool on the right of the main menu links to the activities of the chamber,  while the TV schedule connects you the programs of the day.

On the left, space to interactivity and games: a section dedicated to young people, another to children. Virtual visits, funny widgets and simulations to play ‘the MPs’ make the visit entrataining and useful for the non-specialist public.

Finally, if you want to follow the results of next Sunday’s elections live, be connected!

Maybe it’s the absence of any link to social media, or actually the absence of Bundestag from social media at all, that made a German blogger comment that this is a website from the 90s. I wish all the parliaments’ websites were from the 90s like this!

Polish Sejm: transparency and children at its heart

The website is entirely translated to English, a part from the actuality. Sections are clearly and simply structured, and access to document is intuitive. They even have regulation on lobbyist and list of lobbyists publicly available from the main page.

Polish Parliament bets on children to be better known: an interactive animation shows the history, the symbols and the meaning of the country as well as of its national assembly.

And us?

No, I’m sorry…the exercise didn’t aim at judging who’s better and who’s worse. So, no comparison with OUR website please! We know that we have much to learn, but also that we try and do our best to make our webiste attractive and useful.

Being imaginative, however, why not dreaming of Europarl as a mix between the connectivity of UK Parliament, the content-richness of German, the transparency of the Spanish and Polish and…the beauty of art galleries of the Italian? :)