At work
European History of (Cheap) Political Jokes
I am kind of an expert in bad jokes. That’s what happens when you are German Eurocrat – you hear quite a lot of them.
A book and an interview with my boss
Few weeks ago I received an invitation from the EP's president Martin Schulz to attend a special event in the House – the launch of the book Europe’s Parliament: People, Places, Politics by Stephen Clark and Julian Priestley. This is the secret project my boss was working on since quite of a while whenever the [...]
Sometimes, just try it!
Sometimes we agonise about whether we should try something. What if we can’t cope with the traffic? What if the server crashes? What if the language cover is not enough? What about Linux users? What if… what if … someone doesn’t like it? Then, sometimes, unaccountably, we stop worrying and just try it.
A coffee with Marc de Martelaer…
We invited Marc from Audiovisual Unit to tell us more about his background, what are his tasks, duties, future projects and personal goals, hobbies. I'm a Belgian, born from Dutch parents. They decided, when I was born, to speak French. This is why I know both languages, let's say : I'm a « real » Belgian. thanks [...]
What would Steve Jobs do?
iPad thinking Actually, one answer to the question is known: Steve Jobs generally did what his instinct, intuition and insight told him to do. And the results were pretty impressive. This thought crossed my mind when reading a review a few days ago of one of the plethora of tablet computers now available in stores. [...]
Meeting Raffa
She is young, ambitious and talented. She used to be part of WebComm "Dream Team". Now Raffaella works for the new EP President and she tells us all about it. What are your main tasks? One of the most amazing things of the new job is that there is variety of tasks and occasions that is [...]
The Creation (of a new paradigm for EP communication)
In the beginning was a word, and this word was from our Secretary General, and this word was the Secretary General. And the word was: “let there be light on the political side of the Parliament”.
The tale of the infographics
After just a few days since I returned from my holidays (I like saying that it has been just a few days, although in reality more than two weeks had already passed), I immediately realized how hard it is to go back to previous habits of constantly checking those social media producing machines and swallow [...]
Equal pay in the spotlight
8 March is International Women's Day. The theme this year is Equal Pay for Equal Work. Women on average in the EU earn 17 % less than men, or another way to put it is that women to be able to earn as much as men did in 2011 women have to work the whole [...]
The War of the Bubbles, or: 1999 Was a Bad Year
I never got her name but I will always think of her as 1999. 1999, the year I went to journalism school and the faculty told us students not to buy a computer, but to invest that money in a driver's license instead. The 15 computers the university had bought and kitted with this new [...]
Times Are Changing: A Personal Look into the Brave New World of Digital Communication
Right from the start I want to admit that I have been slow to adopt the fascinating new gadgets that the digital age has brought us. Call me old-fashioned but I still do not own a smartphone, I read most of my books by flipping their pages and have been only recently introduced to Twitter [...]
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. [...]
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