At work
The Battle of the Giants: Facebook and MySpace Fight It Out
It has become a platitude to say that social networks will be the next big thing. Unfortunately, if you subscribe to this widely held view, you are patently wrong. Judging by the amount of media exposure social networks get, and not just in web-focused but also business press, they are a big thing at the [...]
A Swift look at Twitter
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, [...]
What do editors do?
Back to basics: we were surprised by some internal comments regarding the workload of our team of editors. Outside of our beloved 1st and 2nd floors, it seems most of our colleagues don’t have a clue what we’re doing. Yeah, we’re the “Web-guys and girls” and it doesn’t sound that tiring. Well, time for a reality check.
Obama is hiring a Twitterer…
…”But don’t mention #SWIFT in the application”.
This Tweet by Kattabel made my day:
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 [...]
A yes, a no, a maybe…
There was a palpable air of stakes being upped in Strasbourg this week, with parliamentarians flexing their muscles and, like rookie supermen early in the film, taking themselves by surprise with their own new powers. Last time I can remember that feeling was another seminal moment: the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999.
From Russia with cold: 30 hour Moscow experience
Taxi driver no 1: “Until this country starts producing something, it will go nowhere”
Lyudmila Alexeyeva: “It is not awarded to me, but rather to all of us, especially those, who have lost their lives for the cause. If they were alive, they would be happy”
Sergei Kovalev: Russia is currently a stumbling block in the way of international progress. It’s not alone; some other countries are also “splendid” enough.
Oleg Orlov: “Sometimes you feel that you are scooping the sea with a spoon”
Taxi driver no 2: “Airports, hotels, nightclubs, you wouldn’t service them without payoffs to gangs”
@ the Airport café: “Man, move to another café. They sell the same stuff there, I’m busy”
So this is what its like after all
So this is what it’s like? After more than a decade and a half as a journalist, I am now a source. One of the… yes, one of the “faceless bureaucrats”.
From paradise to Brussels
Working for the European Parliament is in many senses a unique experience. One of them is that you get the chance to work in a multicultural environment with people from all over Europe. In our unit we got “representatives” from 22 different countries.
I normally share office with my nice Bulgarian colleague Svetla, who used to [...]
Brake-down in communication?
I wouldn’t fancy working in Toyota’s communications department at the moment. The company has sailed into a perfect “faulty component” storm that has led to the recall of millions cars and trucks and a suspension in sales of many of its most popular models. The estimated bill is expected to top a cool 2 billion [...]
Haiku news from the European Parliament
This week, a group of journalists endeavoured to make a “news” experiment. They isolated themselves from the world’s traditional media (no radio, no television, no newspapers) and “produced” news having as unique sources of information “haiku” texts on Facebook and Twitter. To complicate things, they were not allowed to click on the links proposed in [...]
Horace’s spam sandwich
Let me do some maths today. I have been an editor of the EP website since the beginning of 2007. We write one or two stories per day, let us make it average: one and a half, times three years, be it 200 working days per year (minus holidays etc.), and we get: 1.5 x [...]
Twittering the hearings
Just a short post to draw attention to one of the more interesting aspects of the hearings of commissioners-designate, one which may mark an important change in the way EP political groups communicate.
I was fascinated to observe during the seven days of hearings we have already had, and presumably in the one more we are [...]
Let’s hide the ugly truth underground?
“Could you be a bit more… flowery?” my boss asked me after having read a letter I had drafted. Flowery??? “Well, the text is perfectly alright but you are too much to the point… it is very short, very Nordic…” After some investigation I figured that my Latin boss back from the years did not [...]
Video six-pack.
It’s a tradition. Now and then we make a video, especially just before Christmas. Sure enough, at the end of last year, we made Writing for (y)EU. Basically, it’s a commercial. It’s about the stuff we do. You may know it; it’s on our Vimeo page and was embedded in a previous post on this [...]
Live streaming – sorry, PC only.
In this post, we address a situation we’re not happy with: our live video streams are only accessible to users with a PC (or with Windows OS). Warning: this is a geeky post and half of it may be unnacurate.
Website: where we are now. Auditioning too?
An interesting showcase of what Parliament currently does online getting underway as I write: the hearings (“auditions” in Franglais) of the commissioners-designate for Barroso’s 2009-2014 Commission. Even with our “old” website, combined with the newer tools we have picked up over last year, there seems to be a reasonable amount we can do.
Tibo commented in [...]
Help! It’s a blank sheet moment…
It’s a classic fantasy. You can start with a blank sheet, your options open, all choices yet unmade, no idea too crazy, no limits except the limits of your own creativity… I refer, naturally, to designing a website (what else?).
What lies ahead.
I won’t come back on 2009. I am not a nostalgic kind of guy. I’ll just support Steve’s claim on how this particuliar year marked many breakthroughs for us, professionally and online speaking, and I kind of feel things will be different and, possibly, a bit less exciting for us. You can’t have European Elections [...]
That was the year that was
One year ago. December 2008. I just remember being incredibly stressed out; and, remarkably, that Tibo was even more so. We were up against the deadline for signing the “online” contract with our agency. We maybe didn’t realise it at the time, but in that contract the shape of WebCom’s annus mirabilis could already be discerned.
Professional chatterboxes
Already thought by some of our colleagues to pass our working hours in ways that are not quite serious, we have just started a new line of work which will give them another stick to beat us with. Yes, we now – officially – spend our time chatting online.
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