At work
Go viral or go home
A short summary for the pressed reader: Based upon research and experience, we have concluded that only young, cute, hairy MEPs will allow for successful viral communication campaigns. Besides editing the German website, I worked on two projects last year. One was a comic strip that should explain the Euro crisis in simple terms. The [...]
NWOW revisited
It's been "visited" by Evita and Steve before. The New World of Work (NWOW) fascinates (almost) everyone, especially people like us, who will potentially adopt it soon. In NWOW, performance is everything. You can work anywhere, anytime. Workers and teams are more productive because they’re judged by their results. We wanted to see what it is [...]
Photo of the week: “My bell. My Empire for a bell..”
Last month in the EP there was a big change.. A new President of the Parliament was elected.. Jerzy left the trone to Martin! This month in the EP Chamber there was also a small but noisy change.. the bell replaces traditional gavel! From February plenary session onwards the start and conclusion of a speech, [...]
My first few weeks as a WebComm official
After quite a few years of doing different EU-related jobs and passing the dreaded-by-many competition I found myself in WebComm in the very beginning of January. The first week had a still and eerie feeling to it as Brussels was almost empty and many were still on their Christmas holidays. My first day started with [...]
School Trip to the New World of Work
Cynical old fonx, not without cause, smell a rat the instant you start talking about “open plan” offices. It’s a trick, they aver, to squeeze us into ever smaller spaces, take away our personal domains and generally reduce us to Dilbert-esque cubicle wage-slaves. So what will they make of the “New World of Work”?
Is having Maltese as an EU language a waste of money?
1. Although Maltese and English are official languages in Malta, Maltese is designated as the sole national language in Malta's constitution, with all the legal ramifications that would suggest. There might be just a handful of us, and most of us might be hairy and short, but that's no reason to belittle us. 2. Maltese [...]
E-leap forward
It’s a simple story about now and then. Then it was early 2009 and I was doing my traineeship at the very same unit where I now, almost three years later, started to work in full position. During this period of time Web Comm has enlarged its grip of using online mediums and I feel [...]
My accidental career part deux, or: the WebComm Way
"We are what we pretend to be – so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Thus the late great American author Kurt Vonnegut defines the moral of his seminal novel Mother Night. It's about an American presumed Nazi propagandist during World War II. Only the reader knows he is in fact [...]
Working with the system – A master class with Paul Boag
I was lucky enough to be invited by our colleagues from the European Commission at a Master Class given by Paul Boag. Mr Boag is an expert in many things, including web design. The topic of the class was how to work with the system when you have a web-something job in a big organization. [...]
Photo of the week: “A family photo”
I love this layout because it transmits the atmosphere of the last days of a presidential cabinet. The last days of Jerzy Buzek's mandate, the end of an era, the closing of a circle. Everybody in the President's office was really relaxed; Jerzy was sitting amongst his staff, with his visiting daughter not so far [...]
A coffee with Tom, an MEP’s assistant
We invited one Polish assistant to an MEP to have a coffee together and tell us more, what assistants do, what their ordinary working day looks like, how they feel integrated into Brussels life, what their hobbies are and so on. Tom, so tell us more about yourself, your background, how did you start in [...]
Does a great office make you happier?
If you are following our blog, you will know that we consider ourselves to be a cool unit. And even though during last year most of the unit has changed and is still changing this year, the coolness factor has not disappeared (as Steve duly noted in his blog), I might even dare to say that [...]
Is it uncool to say I love my job? WebCom in 2011
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.
A juicy tale
I'm not one of those supermarket shoppers who would spend a lot of time poring over label products. I have my favourites and I stick to them. It took some time to find them though, and the way was that of trial and error. Knowing what you buy is important. Rules obliging producers to give you the [...]
Vive la France!
Florent has already written about the most interesting things we’ve learnt in Paris. I will complement his points, while adding a general consideration: the French web scenario is well ahead in terms of trends, vision and professionalism. This summed to their elegant, sophisticated way of presenting things makes me say “Vive la France!”
Photo of the week
"It is a good challenge for a photojournalist to find a good and news way to illustrate an interview. In this case the interview was about the report on security on motorbikes by Wim Van de Camp ! The best way was to convince him to pose on a motorbike, but time constrain did not make it possible. So [...]
“Sliding doors”
After so many years working in the EP (nearly 6), an outsider photographer could think that you get tired or short of ideas because you have been taking photos of everything.. but he/she shall be wrong! One of the reasons why I love my job is because in the EP house, as everywhere, you can [...]
Four gurus and six ideas to improve our web presence
With some other colleagues dealing with social media and the Parliament web presence, we went for a two-days trip to Paris to meet some geeks. Or, to be more precise, to meet web experts, public institutions webteams and web-journalists. A highly valuable school trip which gave some ideas about how we could further improve the [...]
New website: so that was the easy bit…
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.
Integration best way to make online gambling safer
The European market for online gambling has increased enormously over the past decade and today 10 % of all gambling takes place over the internet, via mobile phones or interactive platforms. There are almost 15.000 gambling websites in Europe and the annual market volume is in excess of 10 billion euro. I have never [...]
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