Writing for (y)EU » Steve

School Trip to the New World of Work

Steve — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:21:35 +0000

Working differently?

I'm a great believer in what we call our school trips. In other words, that now and then it broadens minds and strengthens the team to get out of the office as a group to do something professionally relevant, but different. Our first school trip was to visit the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, a fascinating cultural, political, artistic and sociological experience. Our second took place this week.

We have been thinking for some time about our office environment, and, not to point too fine a point on it, how inimical it is to the things we value: teamwork, energy, creativity, communication… Evita wrote about this recently and I am sure there are older posts going back some time on this subject and more to come. Suffice it to say that I at least have been sufficiently bothersome on this subject to induce our buildings colleagues to select WebCom as a pilot unit for a project they have launched, known as "travailler autrement" (working differently).

It's a trick, they aver, to reduce us to Dilbert-esque cubicle wage-slaves

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. When you see how the open-plan principle has been implemented in the Parliament hitherto, it is easy to sympathize with this view. Open plan office space currently means cramped, noisy, improvised and, thankfully, only ever for short-term use.

New (and old) Worlds of Work

Consequently, the team's first encounter with our colleagues from the buildings service was not an unalloyed meeting of minds. Things were not helped by the fact that, whatever their merits in their own specialist domain, a bit of work needs to go into presentation and communication skills. Such at least were my thoughts as we squinted at minuscule photos projected onto a distant screen and tried to decipher columns of obscure figures in excel tables. Death by Powerpoint, you've read about it. Worse perhaps was the insistence on how much space (and therefore money) can be saved by moving to an open plan office environment. I could have got up and strangled them: this was supposed to be about making our work conditions better, not about saving money at the expense of the mugs who volunteered to be Dilbert.

It is possible to work differently, better, than our current imagination-crushing rows of grey boxes

It was infuriating, because it so misrepresented the potential behind the ideas these genuinely motivated people were working with, but failing so abjectly to transmit. It is possible to work differently, better, than our current imagination-crushing rows of grey boxes. Moreover, it's about so much more than office space. It's also about using technology well, changing working practice, being more flexible, results-orientation rather than time-serving and so on.

Upshot of the first meeting? First, we're in, but only on condition this is done properly, not in some half-baked, sadly predictable manner. A model project, not a pilot project. Yes, you can save money, but our lives have to get better too. Otherwise we'll carry on sitting in our grey rabbit-hutches and yours truly in particular lives a much quieter life. Second, we need to SEE. Take us to a place which does this already. Then we might get it.

Vision of the future?

Whence, a couple of months later, our school trip to Getronics, a Belgian software company in Diegem, near the airport in the outskirts of Brussels, for a two-hour visit. The first hour was spent watching, and discussing, a presentation (now THAT's how you do a presentation! – on a wifi beamer moreover), which pulled together the three components of what Getronics calls the New World of Work: workspace, technology, culture. Workspace, to which I will return, is arguably the least important of the three.

So what of technology? It means wifi everywhere, the abolition of desktop computers, everyone issued with laptops and headsets, open systems able to connect with people's personal devices, mobility, the ability easily to hold remote meetings, online chat systems replacing email for many purposes, genuinely paperless working, meeting spaces equipped for on-screen presentations, easy teleconferencing facilities, an extranet, and much more.

Note to our HR people: there's no clocking in or out here, no "flexitime", no pointage…

And culture? That's where it gets really tricky, you might think. First, all that technology means that people can work easily from home, or on the road, from a client's premises, or any place with a power outlet and a wifi connection. But "can" is not "will", or even "is permitted". Getronics' answer is to move from requiring people to be in a particular place at a particular time to expecting results of them. Want to avoid the jams and come into the office at 10.00? Fine. Need to be free from 3.00 to 6.00 to fetch the kids from school? Fine. Prefer to work at night? Fine. (Note: WebCom has two or three like this!) Want to work at home today? Fine. As a result, we were told, most people probably work two days a week entirely at home, and come in during the other three. To make this all work, there's another gadget, of course, one which tells all colleagues when you're available, wherever you are, and when you're not. And of course, you have to deliver those results. (Note to our HR people, to avoid any misunderstanding, there's no clocking in or out here, no "flexitime", no pointage…) No-one is checking the time you work, but your managers are checking your results.

And so to the workplace. First thing to say, if all Getronics' employees turn up at the office at the same time, everyone will have a place to work, and the wifi won't crash. However, that is extremely rare. Normally, it's a question of coming into the office (when you need or want to) grab a free desk (any desk), plug in your laptop (to the one or several large screens) and do what you do. The open areas of the building are lined with pristine white tables (such as those on right in picture), mostly equipped with the aforementioned screen and a desktop-style keyboard (some – intended for developers and more "power" users – have several screens). These desks are first come, first served. You can sit anywhere. Just two rules: 1. you clear the desk completely when you leave, 2. don't leave crumbs (you don't eat at the desk).

I have to say those two rules had me reflecting, somewhat guiltily, on my own desk, swamped by disordered papers mixed with the residue of too many lunchtime sandwiches-at-the-desk…

The large presentation room. Note panels by door indicating Outlook-based room bookings

But of course the "hot-desking" (as I've heard it called, though it wasn't a term heard at Getronics) is only a small part of the story. Perhaps more indicative of what it's all about were the myriad of differentiated meeting rooms all over the place. These fall essentially into two categories: the (usually) larger ones you need to book (via a very clever Outlook-linked system) for fixed periods, and smaller ones which are just up for grabs. Some of the latter were practically solo meeting rooms, little "I-need-to-concentrate" getaways for individuals (or for one-to-one teleconferencing), others were 4, 6, 8 person spaces, mostly with teleconferencing facilities and a large display screen on the wall for collective works on documents, presentations or whatever else can go on a screen. All these rooms had two things in common: first, you take them for as long as you need them, but when you've finished, you clear out completely; second, they had glass walls (with a couple of exceptions I'll come back to).

Besides all these glass rooms and the desks, what else? "Lounge" areas – these for social moments or, say, eating those desk-unfriendly sandwiches. Lockers, somewhere for employees to stash anything they want to leave in the building. The occasional centralized printer, showers (for cyclists and sporty types – without glass walls), mini-kitchen areas, a small library for chilling, and so on. On the ground floor, a large canteen, a large meeting room and a boardroom.

One of the first-come-first-served glass meeting rooms

And, apart form the showers, the two exceptions to the glass-walled transparency? The CEO's office, perhaps? No. The boss goes with everyone else. The first exception was a room set aside for collective work on confidential or highly sensitive projects, where, for whatever reason, it is important to keep things under wraps. The second, which really caught our eye, was the "brainstorming room". This had opaque, but translucent, interior walls with an admittedly rather obvious blue-sky-and-clouds design. On the inside, a deep-pile carpet encouraging lying and sitting on the floor, a scattering of multicoloured plastic stools for not-too-comfortable sitting, a white-board and large sliding wall panels designed to be written on.

Finally , before you object, yes there were other anomalies: a legal service area, surrounded by strikingly out-of-place paper files, and a series of three or four individual offices occupied by the HR department where formal, personal conversations could take place (still with glass walls though).

So what did we make of all this?

If the work-life balance thing permitted working at home, it clearly didn't involve playing at work

Feel the inspiration? The brainstorming room.

The first impression was of space, very low density occupation, plenty of available desks and vacant meeting rooms. This was very far indeed from the Dilbert cubicle nightmare, indeed it seemed almost excessively roomy, lacking in intimacy, perhaps. Second, a sensation – quite unexpected, but linked of course – of quiet, a general pervasive hush. Also, noticeably, this was not Google: no slides, no beanbags, no toys. If the work-life balance thing permitted working at home, it clearly didn't involve playing at work. But was it a pleasant and attractive environment to work in? For sure.

So, did we see the future?

What we saw at Getronics was so different from the staid and traditional working conditions in the European Parliament, notwithstanding our modest local efforts at subversion thereof, that it seems ludicrous to imagine a transformation on that scale ever occurring there. But, hang on, it was our buildings people who got us into this, it was they who took us to Getronics (though suspiciously cautious about its exact transferability), they who say they have the support of both the IT and HR people, so let's assume for the moment that there is a genuine will to pursue the idea. So, it is possible?

On the physical workplace, you need a budget and a suitable building. Let's assume, again, that the budget is there. After all, remember, amortized over a few years, this working environment costs less than the conventional one, and though we are not a commercial organization, saving money is something our decision-makers want to achieve, right? Besides, this is also a green option, playing to a need to which public institutions have to be seen to respond. On the buildings themselves, it's difficult to say how suitable Parliament's buildings are, but surely it cannot be beyond the wit of a smart architect to do something great somewhere in Parliament's half-million square metres?

So all you need is a smart architect…

"Lounge" areas: no hammocks, no slides ;-(

On the IT, sure, the technology exists, and is not even particularly advanced, nor, I am sure, more expensive than our current setup. It is certainly more productive and flexible. (Don't get me started on the time and effort we lose through the lack of wifi, the Mac-inimical technologies, the general disregard for mobility, the PC configuration actively hostile to us doing the things we do, the fact that we are constantly driven to bypass the systems we are given just to do our job… Hmm, rant over.)

But, in reality, all you need are the will and smart IT people…

Where it really gets interesting is on the culture issue.

The culture of the institution: is it ready to do this? If so (which, as I say, it might be), is it ready to do it properly? Not some pared-down, heavily compromised, half-hearted, false-economy version, but the real thing? I confess I worry. I can feel the process by which we arrive at some half-baked conclusion in my bones, already hear the "buts" from all sides…

I can feel the process by which we arrive at some half-baked conclusion in my bones

The trust-and-results HR practices on which the model is based is so far removed from the traditional practice of the public sector that the transformation is hard to imagine. A cynic might say that public officials who do not have to fear the loss of their jobs from one day to the next have little incentive to make it work. But that is not, honestly, what I see around me. I see people working – mostly – enthusiastically, for longer hours than they need, sometimes from home in their free time, using their own equipment, getting results… because they are motivated and believe in what they do. And mark this: the Belgian Ministry of Social Security has implemented the "New World of Work". Now there's a school trip we have to do! Don't tell me a Belgian ministry can do this and we can't.

We need to be a cross between a cool web agency and a frantic newsroom

But, finally, what of ourselves? Are we ready – really – to leave our comfort zone, to abandon our secure four grey walls? Is the model right for us? Can we handle the freedom? Is it what we want?

The chill-out Library

On the last point, the answer is, actually, not quite. For us, the objective is not entirely the Zen-like calm of Getronics. In our mind's eye, we need to be a cross between a cool web agency and a frantic newsroom. Communication, cross-fertilisation, circulation of ideas, the ability to grab someone quickly, to knuckle down together in a crisis, to yell when a yell is needed, the opportunity to let off steam and to leaven the mood with a hearty dose of gossip and laughter, that's what it's all about. Plus of course giving people space when they need it, enabling small groups to work creatively together as and when they need to. Dare I say it's about what I hope is THE WebCom core value: being a team. So Getronics is close, but maybe we need something just a little rowdier, with a little more soul, a little more edge.

But, to give the presentation man his due, that's exactly what he said: first work out what you want to achieve, then implement it. So, do we?

(All the smaller photos in this post from Getronics' NWOW website. Thanks to them for their great hospitality.)

All is revealed: the 15 shows in the Christmas video.

Steve — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:06:06 +0000

Angels?

Our latest Christmas video, as afficionados of this blog, and indeed many others, know, is based on the title sequences of 15 well-known TV shows. Well-known? Well, yes. But so far, no-one has been able to recognise them all, with age and nationality playing a clear role in determining which ones are familiar and which completely mysterious.

So here, how, the definitive guide to the 15 shows to which we pay homage, with the title sequences which inspired us. Enjoy!

Charlie's Angels

Hawaii 5-0

Avengers

Married with children

30 Rock

Pippi Longstocking

The Wire

The Sopranos

Dexter

Murder She wrote

Unfortunately, embeddding is disabled on YouTube for this one, so just a link, I'm afraid

http://youtu.be/v94ugLhua9Y

Addams Family

Friends

Beverley Hills 90210

The West Wing

Mad Men

Embedding also disallowed here, I fear

http://youtu.be/WcRr-Fb5xQo

And finally…

We are not alone (though we were before these people!). Still, good luck to them. Along the same lines, albeit a slightly different concept. (How come they have ten times as many views???

Is it uncool to say I love my job? WebCom in 2011

Steve — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:44:08 +0000

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of the pain-in-the-neck style stuff in my daily working life too. All that non-productive paperwork which seems to be very important to somebody else (though I suspect rarely, if ever, actually read), which has accumulated over time like a series of archeological layers you can dig back through to examine the management anxieties and fads of different eras. Don't get me wrong either in thinking there is no conflict, that everyone pulls their weight equally, that merit always triumphs and that the undeserving inevitably languish in obscurity. No sir. So far, so familiar in every large organisation, right?

Heading happily to jobs they love

And yet, I am uncool enough to say I love my job, like some sort of ridiculous American inspirational CEO or pushy office junior. Why?

What is it that really matters to most people about their jobs, once they have one that can keep body and soul together in a satisfactory manner, that is? I suppose it's about two things: (i) whether you actually believe you are achieving something, and (ii) who you work with. Simple really. In both categories, the WebCom life works for me.

This is supposed to be the traditional end-of-year review post. Actually, I looked, and there has only been one before, in late 2009, so let's say that makes a tradition. I was musing about it in the office - in fact, thinking "that's-another-bloody-thing-to-do" – on the last working day of the year, slightly aggrieved about being the only one still there (trying to clear out some of the sort of stuff referred to above) when, at 5.46 pm, something happened: an email arrived.

I have to say I felt inordinately delighted … the sheer webcommishness of it

Not usually the source of much joy, but on this occasion the sender was one "santasecret[...]@gmail.com", the title "****SURPRISE****" and the message "Go and look in your pigeon-hole NOW". Which I naturally did, to find a card and the kind of present you actually want to receive. I have to say I felt inordinately delighted. We do the Secret Santa thing every year and it always spreads an improbable amount of happiness. But a gmail Santa, getting in there at the last minute, with perfect timing, and a really nice personal present? Well, it gave me a warm glow, not only about the clever generous person who is my Secret Santa, whoever he or she is, but about the sheer webcommishness of it, the atmosphere in the team that makes this seem if not exactly typical of our daily life, then not anomalous or strange either.

Who you work with

Who you work with makes all the difference, as I said. In many ways, it hasn't been easy. Over 2011 (see? I am doing that review of the year thing…), nearly half of the entire WebCom team has changed. I was worried that the famous spirit would go, that the newcomers would not feel part of the team in the way that their predecessors, who were the "founder" members of the unit, had. I was also worried that maybe some of the impetus and energy would leak away, as the pioneer days came to seem a thing of the past. It was also hard to see some good friends and very able colleagues leave, and frustrating too that the vacancies in several cases took months to fill. At one point in the year, I even thought I detected signs that people were not all happy or comfortable in the team. But then, yes, it came back. The team now is every bit as good as it ever was, perhaps better even. A year which included these moments of doubt ended with my Secret Santa and, of course, this.

Let's say it: in many ways it doesn't feel like part of an EU institution at all

Of course, it's not just a cool video and a Christmas present which make people great to work with. It is, and I am not exaggerating, being surrounded by a young, friendly, enthusiatic, motivated and creative team which makes them great to work with. I shan't pretend that everything is perfect in the world of WebCom, but, having kicked around the Parliament for over twenty years, and having worked with some very talented and remarkable people throughout, I can still honestly say that this team is different. It has an atmosphere unlike any other. Let's say it: in many ways it doesn't feel like part of an EU institution at all. To a large degree, that goes with the territory: the web, a team composed mainly of new recruits, the fact we take – we need to take – the kind of people who get social media, the fact that, if we are to do our job at all, we have no choice but to innovate all the time. I sometimes wonder what ex-webcommers make of the EP world outside our little sub-culture, but they're smart, adaptable and they need to move on some time.

And, finally, after all the guff about sub-cultures and motivation, let's just say it: there are just some great individuals working in WebCom right now. Step forward, Secret Santa!

So, reasons I love my job no. 1: being with great people.

What you do

Wasting your time with great people can be fun, but doesn't necessarily mean you love your job. Fortunately, I don't think we waste our time.

It's not that we're cool, but that we're lucky enough to have a cool job

The internet is a fantastic field to be in. Things are moving so fast, you have to be on your toes, you have to try to spot the trends, you have to be creative, you have to be out there, at least in terms of our EU/institutional world, doing things that are breaking new ground all the time. You don't know what you will be doing in a couple of years, because no-one knows what they'll be doing in a couple of years on the internet. Let's face it, it's fun. It's not that we're cool (though we may be) but that we're lucky enough to have a cool job. Moreover, no-one would seriously contest that the internet has become the prime mass communication tool in our world, both directly and through its pervasive impact on the media. Sure, you still can't beat TV for getting a message, or particular content, across to a lot of people at the same time, but when it comes to informing people's daily lives, to giving them a way not only to hear, but also to send, messages, online is where it's at. And that's our job.

2011 will probably go down as the year we got cracking on the refonte

2011 will probably go down as the year we got cracking on the refonte, principally upgrading the website. Near the end of the year, we launched a redesigned version of the website, the most visible, but very far from the most significant part of this process. Some of the groucherati moaned about it of course, and, yes, it was buggier and less stable at the outset than it should have been. But most people loved it, and the truth is, the EP website now looks good, and, like any other website, once you've become accustomed to it, is easy to use – though it still has to get easier. We now have the basis for the really interesting and innovative stuff that comes next.

Not that innovation has been on hold. In 2011, along with our friends and colleagues in our sister Webmaster unit and from the IT department, we developed and launched a mobile version of the website, we made a new website for visitors, we developed the new portal page for the main site, we helped develop a strategy for the websites of Parliament's Information offices around Europe. Outside the website, in the world of the social media, we have seen the number of fans of our Facebook page double to (right now) 211,029, we developed our own Facebook chat application and used it to chat with 14 MEPs and one Arab Spring activist since, we have a really innovative application on Facebook to promote the Sakharov human rights prize (so innovative that Facebook's own automatic filters initially couldn't handle it), we have the new "MEP tab" on our page, grouping all the MEPs on FB and allowing you to "like" or "friend" them right from our page (plus a similar tab for FB pages of the Parliament's offices), … Pause for breath … We introduced a new Twitter strategy, which saw the number of followers we have triple over the year (it helped that the editors who added most won a bottle of fizz for their efforts!), we are now the proud managers of a Parliament LinkedIn group, we have started making our own (endearingly webby?) web videos for YouTube and Facebook and are looking forward to going onto Foursquare next year, as well as launching something truly remarkable, currently codenamed "Newshub", on which we have been beavering away, and about which I will maintain an air of mystery and suspense…

Am I getting carried away here?

And dare I add that along with all of that we have carried on publishing daily news on the Headlines page of the website in 22 languages (this used to be all we did once upon a time…), updating and managing Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and co. daily (really great pictures on Flickr, by the way, have a look), we now do infographics on a weekly basis and are planning way more, and, and, and… Am I getting carried away here? The point is, all of this does make a difference – this is a Parliament which is really communicating online, breaking out of the famous Brussels Bubble.

So, reason I love my job no. 2: doing great things.

And finally…

I like to think most of the team read these blog entries (actually the blog is one thing where we do sometimes have different opinions), so this last bit is for you guys.

Thanks for all the work, thanks for being such a great team, and have a really happy Christmas. See you next year.

The Christmas video

Steve — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:35:17 +0000

Ever since we did this lipdub back in 2007 (that was before social media were invented, right?) our colleagues have come to expect the annual WebCom Christmas video at the staff party. And, sure enough, we were trailing and teasing our new opus from mid-November and showed it to our colleagues last night at the yearly bash.

But we don't do it for our colleagues, we do it for ourselves. I mean, what else would we do with lunchtimes and evenings – eat, sleep…? (Pyramid of needs, anyone?) Seriously though, this video is worth weeks of expensive team-building courses sitting in front of flipcharts or building rafts to cross muddy ponds – not that our employer has ever offered us anything like that – and is huge fun into the bargain. It has become part of the collective self-image and, yes, I do sometimes show these videos when I am asked to present the team and its work.

Inevitably, there is always the impulse to go one better, and in any case to find something a bit different from before. While everyone still remembers that first lipdub, we have done some nice stuff since. Nothing has gone viral like that first one did (nearly 100,000 views in the end, I think, on YouTube), but that's not the point: we've tried things out, had fun doing it and got good results.

There can be odd spin-offs. Last year's exercise ("young me, now me") led to some of our number featuring in a book by American artist Ze Frank, and thus sitting on coffee tables from San Diego to Boston.

This year's movie is unquestionably the most ambitious we've done technically. The director, Dan, and special effects ace, Mathieu, really excelled themselves, sacrificed a great deal of their free time to the project – even if I have the feeling they are both fairly nocturnal animals anyway…

The concept is a ready made meme

The concept (Tibo, of course) is a ready made meme, though I am not aware of anyone else having done this in quite the same way. We collected some of our favourite TV series, past and present, and did mini-remakes of their title sequences, with small tweaks, naturally. Much of the fun in watching the video is in the recognition, so we went mainly for American shows everyone knows.

Except of course they don't. One little side effect of making this video was the renewed realisation of how much our younger lives were conditioned by the Iron Curtain. The US shows that were to an extraordinary degree a common staple of audiences across western Europe turned out to be unknown in the East. Anyway, I think I can safely say that nobody, not even among the westerners, has yet recognised all the shows we included.

So there's a challenge.

And here's the video.

New website: so that was the easy bit…

Steve — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:40:09 +0000

Out with the old, in with the new.

It seems an age since I posted here an appeal for input on a renewal of the European Parliament's website. Actually, it is an age! I suppose I had little idea then just how huge an undertaking this was going to be. Nevertheless, this week saw an important stage of the process completed. It's blue, it's new and it's online – the redesigned official institutional website of the EU's directly elected democratic lawmaking institution! And, speaking personally, I now know why you don't do this kind of thing too often.

An oil tanker of a website

The renewal of Parliament's website was always going to be a pretty ambitious undertaking. It is, truly, a vast and sprawling website, answering the needs of many different user groups. It provides daily news, live and recorded webstreaming of plenary or up to thirteen parliamentary committees simultaneously, a mass of documentary information about Parliament and how it works, profiles of every MEP, a database of their assistants, another database of registered lobbyists, a register of official documents, every conceivable form of parliamentary document (reports, agendas, working papers, resolutions, amendments, adopted legislation, procedural rules, etc.), sophisticated legislative tracking tools and search engines, details of all committees and delegations, their calendars of meetings, membership, agendas and meeting documents, studies carried out and commissioned by Parliament, a host of applications and online forms, and, as we were somewhat shocked to discover, between seventy and eighty sub-websites on various themes, ranging from the Sakharov human rights prize to the page or the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment panel. (Pause for breath…)

And all of that in 22 languages. (So it's really 22 websites, not one.) No-one has ever done online multilingualism like this.

I was never very keen on those colours on the old site

So it's big. It remains a remarkable undertaking and massive achievement. But it was also a bit long in the tooth and decidedly Web 1.0. The beast dated back in its essentials to 2005, and, in the intervening period most of the online excitement in Parliament had been elsewhere: special temporary sites for elections and hearings, EuroparlTV and all those cool social media platforms we've spoken about so much on this blog. The dear old website got a bit left behind, slowly, moreover, accumulating the clutter and detritus of time: all those mini-websites, random pages for special occasions, outdated content, promotional buttons for things that seemed important at the time…

And let me now finally admit this publicly: I was never very keen on those colours on the old site. (Funnily enough, we heard this same sentiment from a cool techie guy we met today, telling us why he liked the new version.)

A project (with a dodgy name)

In that slick way of public administrations everywhere, we called our project "The Renewal of the Web Presence of the European Parliament". In French, it was called the "Refonte". For once, the French was shorter than the English. Confession: I came up with the long and awkward English formulation, and have lived to regret it. The point was: "this isn't just about the website, it's about everything we do online". Good point, but still simpler to call it the refonte.

Call it what you will, the political masters told us to get on with it in December 2010 – yep, a year ago.

The first delivery was the mobile version of the site in June 2011. Check.

The second was the redesign. "Autumn 2011" we said, and here it now is. Check.

New MEP search tool

The idea was simple: we needed impetus, things had to move on, be seen to move on. And yes, those colours… So the first big thing on the main website was to get a new look. Of course, that wasn't the whole story. Though we couldn't envisage a major restructuring of the underlying technology in 2011 (budget planning oblige), we could do something to address some of the more pressing user feedback: palliate some of the navigation problems our user feedback was telling us about, re-organise the rather cryptically structured content in the "Parliament" – now "About Parliament" – section, address the fact that EuroparlTV was still an outlying website, introduce some basic social media features and make it much easier to find MEPs. So Phase 2 was in the end a little more than "just" a redesign. Hence the new portal, hence the new EPTV section, hence a great new MEP search tool, hence much more…

But the third phase is the technological, and indeed editorial, heavy lifting: rebuilding the CMS, integrating new features, a top to bottom rethink of the navigation, integrating social tools, real open data facilities, better decentralised publishing mechanisms and contemporary editorial content (multimedia, infographics, applications and so on). Oddly, phase three, though probably more significant in what is delivered to internet users, will be far less visible and contentious than phase two, consisting of new features progressively integrated over time, rather than a one-shot graphical transformation of the entire site, introduced from one day to the next, shocking to the eye, perhaps, but fundamentally an exercise in continuity.

Hands off my website!

Or perhaps, "who moved my cheese?" People grow accustomed to anything of course, develop habits and strategies, they know where they are. So when you change anything, naturally, they are unhappy and complain. If, as is almost certain, the switchover does not go smoothly and, as is 100% certain, there are myriad bugs and errors to sort out, the complaints will gain extra purchase. 'Twas ever thus, and thus it was on the great day, 29 November, when our lovely new site, which had behaved impeccably in pre-production, stubbonly refused to work, with several sections falling foul of inexplicable and grimly persistent server problems. A day spent waiting for news that the site is finally online, punctuated at frequent intervals however by reports that the problem is still proving intractable, is – believe me – a very long day. Most reasonable people, of course, will cut you some slack on days like this, and most did so, but that did not really make it any less nerve-wracking. So when, after thirteen hours of pure daylight angst, the message came through at 7.00 pm that the site was finally online in its entirety, and that the entire IT department had its fingers firmly crossed, the relief was palpable.

Of course, the end of the major problems (the crossed fingers worked) simply opened the season on the avalanche of complaints from people who "couldn't find something any more", felt aggrieved about their content supposedly being less "visible" or who perhaps didn't like the new colours. As the wise words have it: you can keep most people happy most of the time, but never will all of the people be happy all of the time. Of course, there are genuine bugs and gremlins. They will be sorted. Possibly, experience will show that some great ideas will ultimately be shown to have been less than great. But meanwhile, the job is to hold out, correct the genuine bugs and wait for people to get accustomed to the new look and feel.

Don't get me wrong: most feedback was extremely positive, especially that which came from outside. Here finally, said some, was an EU institutional website which didn't look out of place in the second decade of the twenty-first century: here too, observed others, was a site which set out to make things easier to find for a "normal person". Now you're talking!

The long road ahead

This was, yes, the easy bit

So, satisfaction? Yes. But though many may see this as the big transformation, we know it is not. This was, yes, the easy bit, even if all the under-appreciated developers, graphic designers, integrators and editors who sweated blood and burned vast quantities of midnight (and weekend) oil to achieve this result may not see it that way. However, this was our high-visibility moment, the point at which users will have the strongest emotional reactions to our work, when a angry reaction from a powerful individual could consign months of work to the trash. We're not out of the woods yet maybe, but my hunch is that the balance of reaction is positive enough to carry us through.

Of which I'm glad, because having done the easy bit, now we can really start to deliver the even better stuff.

Unlocking your inner teenager

Steve — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:15:13 +0000

A lesson in the power of a little harmless silliness being learned in WebCom right now. Our social media researches have brought us to Foursquare, the geolocation social network, which allows you to “check in” to locations (bars, parks, restaurants, public buildings, even bus-stops, basically anywhere that someone before you (or indeed you) has set up in the system). When you check into a place, you can see if any of your friends are there, read tips left by other Foursqare users (“try the double-cheese-superburger-with-skinny-fries, it’s awesome!”), leave your own tips, post a photo, and lots of wonderful things besides.

Now, of course, all this has potential for the European Parliament. Say some itinerant tourist checks into the Place du Luxembourg in Brussels, wouldn’t it be excellent for him or her to find a tip like this: “You’re only 200m from the Parlamentarium, the awesome (people say “awesome” on Foursquare, apologies…) new visitors’ centre of the European Parliament”? That tip might be left by us (in which case it wouldn’t include the word “awesome”), or by some random Foursquare person. Either way, it might just mean someone discovers the European Parliament (and, thus inspired, twenty years later becomes its President, perhaps).

(From memeburn.com)

At the moment, all this is still a gleam – albeit quite a bright one – in the eye of the WebCom social media team. Right now, we’re testing, which means a bunch of webcommers, and even a quite senior guy who has been known to hang out with them, are suddenly avid Foursquare users. Which is where the inner teenager comes in.

If you don’t know Foursquare, you should be aware that it has another feature I didn’t mention above, a rewards system for checking in. You score points for every check in. There are all sorts of bonus points to be won for various forms of extra merit, such as checking in at the same time as a friend, checking into a new category of place, checking in in a different country and many more, often quite spurious, virtues. As time passes, you earn, or “unlock”, a variety of “badges” (thereafter associated with your user profile), and, crucially, you can even become “mayor” of places you frequent. The undersigned, unbeknownst of course to the municipal authorities, is currently mayor of the local swimming pool, and the corridors round here teem with the mayors of various lunchtime sandwich bars in the locality. We even have in our midst the mayor of the building we work in, something which might surprise the real boss sitting on the sixth floor…

We have a new daily subject of conversation as we all arrive (and check in, of course) in the office each morning

So far, so trivial. But it gets even more gloriously trivial. The real genius of Foursquare has been to make all this competitive. After each check in, you are immediately shown a ranking vis-à-vis your friends, which naturally means we are constantly vying for top spot. Even greater pride is vested in mayorships, from which it is relatively easy to be ousted. I, for example, temporarily lost my mayorship of the swimming pool thanks to the Strasbourg session, a week’s absence which allowed someone else to assume the mantle.

So guess what? We have a new daily subject of conversation as we all arrive (and check in, of course) in the office each morning:

“So, some fancy checking in gets you number one spot, but not for long!”

“Damn, you overtook me! I’ll be back”

“What’s going on with T***, he earned 150 points since last night???”

“Hah, gotcha, I’m mayor of Le Sandwich Rapide now”

… and so on.

All a bit ridiculous for a bunch of hard-bitten professionals such as us? Of course it is. But remember, this is about research and understanding the client base. Good will come of it, I’m sure. Five minutes’ regression a day to teenagerdom is a small price to pay.

UPDATE: This video about Foursquare did the rounds this week. Have a look, it’s exceedingly cool!

A Week of Check-ins on the Path to One Billion from foursquare on Vimeo.

When is a birthday cake not a birthday cake?

Steve — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:00:08 +0000

Do you rely on Facebook to remember your friends' birthdays?

Emblematic incident for our age in the WebCom team recently.

Since most of us are Facebook friends, it had come to general notice that one of our number was celebrating his birthday a short while ago. Naturally, he was the recipient of the usual cascade of best wishes from his Facebook friends, though, as he was in one of his intense project moments, earphones on, hunched over a steaming keyboard, he had not yet, as lunchtime came round, registered the goodwill of the world at large towards him. He did however register the fact later when a delegation of smiling colleagues, bearing a homemade birthday cake, entered his office.

A look of puzzlement all round. But we saw it on Facebook…

His immediate and gratifying look of pleasure however swiftly gave way to one of some embarrassment as he clocked the fact that was not a simple social call, but birthday-related business. “Um, you know, it’s not actually my birthday,” he explained, “I was born in December…”

A look of puzzlement all round. But we saw it on Facebook…

Our friend and colleague is of course a true digital native, also one (I wonder whether this has a bearing on the case) who spent the early formative years of his life in the tender embrace of the German Democratic Republic. Suffice it to say that, like many others from his part of the world and others, his data-protection instincts had induced him to specify a Facebook birthday different from that recorded in his home municipality. Elementary, sensible, but we fell for it and took him a cake.

Miffed? Well, no. For this was a bona fide WebCom moment, a Facebook non-birthday cake. The tail of the virtual world wagging the real world dog. How appropriate. And the cake was excellent too.

Trouble is, they’ll all want Facebook non-birthdays now too.

From the Tunisian camps

Steve — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:09:00 +0000

An experiment in WebCom this week. Parliamentary delegations are frequently accompanied by a press officer, but thus far we have had little success in arguing the case for a web editor to go along. Until now.

A delegation of six MEPs, led by Maltese Member Simon Busuttil arrived yesterday in Tunisia, and will, starting today, visit a series of refugee camps. Our guy is on the spot with the delegation and will tweet live throughout the day, occasionally adding some rough and ready photos as he goes along. The principal Twitter feed for this will be Europarl_FR, but the other editors back in Brussels will regularly pick up his tweets (not all of them, the rate he is going…) in other languages. I’ve just been checking, and there is a constant flow direct from meetings with refugees in the camp the delegation is currently visiting.

Snaps from the phone on day one (from EP Flickr)

We will also publish daily updates with more written stories which will be sent to us each evening in a special focus on the website, and post material to the Facebook page. Decent internet connections permitting, we will post some higher quality photos to our Flickr page as well.

As I said, it’s an experiment, but we hope it will be an interesting and fruitful experience. We would really like feedback on what people think of this, so please leave comments if you have any.

A blog post from our man when he returns, I trust.

From Tahir Square to Brussels

Steve — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:39:22 +0000

Just a quick note to point to the presence in Brussels of a multi-party group of Egyptian activists, all involved in the revolution. Amongst them, of great interest to us, Waleed Ahmed of the 6 April Youth Movement whose Facebook group/page (English page also exists) were central to the organisation of the protests which led to the revolution. (By the way, good article from Slate on the history of online activism in Egypt – it did not come from nowhere!) Anyway, this impressive young man told us he’d travelled directly from Tahir Square to the airport to join us and took some time during his visit to answer some questions on Parliament’s Facebook page.

The (Flemish) Art of Politics

Steve — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:13:10 +0000

Summer is coming. That’s good, obviously, but it also seems to create a horrendous accumulation of pre-recess deadlines. The doughty webcommers have been suffering lately under a avalanche of proof-reading, proof-listening, proof-this, proof-that, for weeks now, usually for other people’s projects. It’s the price you pay for (at least theoretically) covering every language, that when anyone in the vicinity needs to be sure that, say, the text of a new brochure or the recording of a new multimedia feature is in good, fluent Bulgarian, Greek, Portuguese, Latvian, Danish, or whatever (x22), they tend to look your way. (It usually isn’t, by the way.) And that’s on top of the day job, though I also suspect that another price we pay – this time for visibly enjoying our job too much – is that people often assume we just spend our time messing around on the internet and have plenty of time for more. (Not true, folks. You heard it here first…)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that even the normally chirpy people of the second floor of Montoyer 75 were chafing at the grimness of the toil, the extended hours and the general slog. Dark mutterings were heard in the corridor. The time had come to take a short break from the routine, just to take a couple of hours out of the office doing something a bit different. Inevitably, everyone was soon calling it our “school trip”.

How we ended up deciding on a visit to the Flemish Parliament is a long story, but had to do with a previous visit by the undersigned which had left him most impressed. But on Friday, 1 July, after the weekly “stand-up” meeting (at which, perversely, most seem to sit on the floor), we all walked, cycled or scootered the 2km or so down the road to the Vlaams Parlement.

Installation in the old Post Office space, De Loketten

Now, I am not going to go into the intricacies of the Belgian constitutional system. Still less am I going to discuss the merits of Belgian politics. In fact, you can probably find out everything you need to know about Belgium’s surreal system in 4 minutes in this justly famous YouTube video. However, I will pause to note that Belgium is a country of 10 million inhabitants which hosts fully seven Parliaments: the two-chamber federal parliament, the Flemish parliament, the Walloon parliament, the parliament of the French Speaking Community, the parliament of the German speaking Community, the parliament of the Brussels Region and (OK, cheating a little here) the European Parliament. Five of the seven are in Brussels, which clearly thereby holds the world record for largest-number-of-parliaments-in-one-city by a massive margin. In case you were wondering what happened to the parliament of the Dutch-speaking community, which should logically (!) exist, you should know that, in a bout of rationalising zeal no doubt, the Flemish decided to merge the two sets of of competences into the single Flemish Parliament, though they do, as a result, have to exclude the six Brussels-elected members from votes which would have been the responsibility of the notional Parliament of Flanders. Got it? Good. We’ll move on.

Unassuming entrance to the art wonderland

Though this visit was in part about getting to know the quirks and (generally hidden) wonders of our host country a bit better and indulging in a little inter-parliamentary liaison, it was really about doing something together and having the opportunity to marvel at something genuinely interesting, even inspiring. For whatever you think of all the constitutional contortions and political chicanery, the Flemish Parliament is undoubtedly the coolest parliament any of us had ever visited (and that’s quite a few).

The starting point of the visit was in the public area of one of the two buildings which are occupied by the parliament, formerly a Post Office building. The upper floors are occupied by the offices of the political parties in the parliament and by its administration. The ground level, however, is the old counter-lined hall where Belgians from all over the country used to come to do their financial transactions, now accommodating, at one end, a cafeteria and, at the other, an art exhibition or installation. The space has a rather stalinist design aesthetic, but has acquired a period charm, offset nicely by the contemporary art. From this meeting place, we proceeded to the top floor, where we were booked into the Daktuin (“roof garden”) restaurant for a lunch, which included, for those thus inclined, that well-known Flemish delicacy, Kangaroo stew. (For the record, lieve taxpayer, we paid for ourselves…) In best school trip fashion, we all took the opportunity to spill out onto the extensive roof terrace and took pictures of each other with our mobiles, with a great view of the rather scrappy Brussels skyline behind us. Yep, check Facebook…

The Google ceiling: Global Satellite Project by Joaquim Pereira Eires.

After that, the tour of an hour or so, with officials of the parliament doubling up as tourist guides, explaining to us a heady mix of architecture, art and constitutional niceties. The thing that strikes you most is the sheer quantity of contemporary art around the place, so much that it becomes of theme of the parliament itself. The aim here is not to be a tour guide for the Flemish parliament, so I won’t linger too long, but here are a personal selection of the art works that particularly caught my eye.

Google world glass ceiling. At the top of the administrative building there is a glass ceiling made up of a Google world satellite photo of the part of Brussels we are in, centred on the Parliament building. Nice that an image taken from above is here seen by looking upwards. Simple, but great idea.

Paintings in blood and hair by Philippe Vandenberg. His own blood and hair, by the way. This freaked some of us out.

A Flying Island by Panamarenko. Panamarenko is one of several artists of international fame represented here, another one is…

Jan Fabre, three of whose beetle sculptures adorn the reception room alongside the plenary chamber. We were told by our guide that these were in fact rather small fry. The King apparently has an entire ceiling in his Palace covered with Fabre beetles.

Reflections on the Illusion of Power by Roger Raveel. Strategically placed outside the Speaker's office.

A work called Reflections on the Illusion of Power, which plays subversively with reflections to remind the holders of power that their power may only be an illusion and will in any case pass. This is placed right outside the office of the speaker of parliament.

Lunar art. Did you know that the only art exhibited on the moon was created by a Belgian artist, who persuaded an Apollo 15 astronaut to carry to the moon a tiny aluminium figure amongst his personal effects? Well now you do, and a copy of the figure, produced by the artist, is displayed in a meeting room under a photo of the original lying in the moon dust. There’s something very belge about that, I think.

Neon displays in committee rooms. Self-obsessed artist-photographer Liliane Vertessen, has photo and neon displays in two adjacent committee rooms. The photos are, well, of herself and one of the neon displays reads: (in English) “Love yourself so you can love somebody else”.

Figures in a paternoster lift. The old constantly rolling lift system (actually out of action during our visit, sadly) cannot take human passengers any more, but is inhabited by full size replicas of random people photographed by the artist wandering around Brussels. Surprisingly addictive to look at.

Shadow writing. More meeting room art: seemingly random squiggles of wire cast shadows of written messages onto the walls. Nice.

The plenary chamber. Not exactly a work of art, perhaps, but the plenary chamber itself, which occupies the covered-over space of the internal courtyard of the neo-classical building which accommodates all the parliament’s meeting rooms, is a remarkable place, very much in the contemporary-meets-parliamentary-tradition mode that characterises the parliament as a whole. Everyone’s favourite story about this place is about its glass floor, designed to let light into a public meeting room below and generally live up to the ethos of transparency the architects were trying to achieve, but which proved rather too transparent for skirt-wearing lady members of the parliament meeting above.

Jan Fabre's suspended beetle sculptures, untitled

There is lots more art, I mean lots more, all over the buildings, almost to the extent that it is possible for the casual visitor to start to see the place primarily as an art installation rather than as a parliament. Apart from marvelling at the art, this particular visitor also found himself marvelling at the fact that this seems to have been possible without endless agonising over what should be installed where, which artists should be represented, how political and geographical (though not, in this case, linguistic) balance could be maintained, and all the considerations which afflict aesthetic decision-making in the European Parliament. The self-deprecating, almost subversive nature of much of the art was also impressive, revealing a certain humility and a willingness of the parliamentary authorities to undermine any illusions of grandeur they might be tempted to assume. But then, perhaps I’m wrong, this is just very clever branding and status-building. As our guide smilingly told us: “we couldn’t compete with the Federal Parliament’s huge collections of old paintings and classical art, so we decided to compete by buying lots of modern art.”

Maybe that’s the secret of this strange little country; as long as they are competing via art collections and displays of humility, perhaps they can still manage to rub along together for a while yet… I hope so anyway.

***

A word of thanks to the amiable, efficient and knowledgeable Dries, who set up our visit and guided half of our number around the buildings. And congratulations to the Flemish Parliament for being so cool. More pictures below. (All photos from art section of Flemish Parliament website.) A brochure (in French) is available for non-Dutch speakers.

Panamareko: Flying Island

Le Cannibale en Pleurs, by Philippe Vandenberg. Blood and hair. His own.

Belgian Moon art: the Fallen Astronaut, by Paul van Hoeydonck

Wire shadow writing, by Fred Eerdekens

Liliane Vertessen, Joshua Tree - Love yourself so you can love somebody else

Liliane Vertessen: Nooit hetzelfde altijd anders

Liftintegratie, by Guillaume Bijl

The plenary chamber