Social Media
Twitter in Wonderland
We started Tweeting before June 2009 elections. We tweeted information about the election dates, which were not the same in all countries, about the results, during the electoral night. At that time the newborn Europarl_XX accounts (change XX for the 22 language codes) where just learning how to walk, taking the first steps in a [...]
The passivity of a Facebook activist
No longer daydreamers The cold wind coming in from Lake Michigan was the only thing that reminded me about how long I had actually stood there, on that very same spot. There was a Starbucks with comfy seats and hot drinks just around the corner but no caramel macchiato in the world was worth the [...]
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”.
Killing Smartness… with Smartphones: the disenchantment of memory?
Do you remember the way you used to look at your grandfather? An old man with some leftover white hair, carefully combed to one side in order to disguise the bald spots on his head. Perhaps he would sit in his armchair, smoking an old pipe, blowing grey smoke into the air. Didn't he convey [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
How to #fail on Twitter
You can be a diva, a politician or a plumber: if you want to say something today, do it on Twitter. Do it fast. Do it live. And do it in 140 signs. But be careful: 500 million people may potentially read you. { A portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger by Andy Warhol and a self-portrait of [...]
10 things I learnt about our Facebook page last week
I need to confess something. I can't count, I can't do even simple math. I don't like numbers and going through different statistics always gave me a headache. I'm sure people like me inspired Facebook when they're prepared the new Insight section for pages. It's quite easy to read and analyze. And instead of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Who said that good web campaigns have to be “coordinated”?
Sometimes it is exactly the opposite. This week I met in Milan the campaign wizard and the web content manager of the new Mayor Giuliano Pisapia. His campaign has been one of the most remarkable examples of participative web in Italy, a fascinating example of how the internet is affecting modern politics. Two lessons learnt: the internet and the neighbourhood can be very good friends. And “coordination” is NOT the key to success.
A speaker, a video, a strategy
Like most of the EU Communicating Brussels Bubble, I watched the excellent speech given by Simon Anholt. I wasn’t at the EuropComm 2011 opening session, I only showed up at the workshops where I started to hear about how this speech was great, witty and inspiring. The following weekend saw the video being shared on my teammates’ facebook [...]
Storify = { twitter + curation + social networks }
PORTRAIT – Xavier Damman is the kind of guy that forgets his iPhone on the train from Antwerp to Brussels. But he’s also the kind of geek that makes a revolution. Online. When we wrote to arrange a meeting with Xavier Damman, he replied to meet “at 12pm-ish” in front of the Spinelli entrance of the European Parliament. [...]
Unlocking your inner teenager
A lesson in the power of a little harmless silliness being learned in WebCom right now. It’s all to do with some very serious research into the potential of the Foursquare social network.
Tunisia 2.0: reporting back from refugee camps at the Tunisian-Libyan border
I went to Tunisia this summer and this experience may be worth a blog… You may think I just went there for nice, relaxed holidays on the seaside in a 5-stars resort. You may also wonder about the choice of this destination provided the recent events and the instability in the region…
MEPs Tab: the Birth of an App
It’s not new: many things that come to light in our work, come from very far away. On Facebook, most of the ideas that we are currently realising belong to Christian’s time. Challenges and satisfactions of working for a big and complex institution: “it’s like walking on eggs”, somebody said. Completely right.
From the Tunisian camps
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.
Lessons from the Danish suburbs: Après Aarhus
Do Danish journalists get jobs? Why are Danish trainees so hard to find? Why do students still want to work for newspapers? Are media and journalism the same thing? Are Danes really the happiest people in the world? All this and more in these brief post-Aarhus thoughts.
Dictators are (also) on Facebook
Damascus is only a three hours flight away from Brussels, yet an infinite distance runs between Syria and our understanding of the recent events. I have been to Syria two years ago. Like in the other “Arab spring” countries, nothing could lead to imagine what would have happened today under the puzzled and incredulous eyes of us Europeans. Likewise, we are far from understanding the spam attack on the European Parliament’s Facebook page by pro-Syrian messages that started two weeks ago is still going on.
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