Writing for (y)EU » Thinking allowed

Discovering Europe through Erasmus

Steven — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:05:25 +0000

France might be one of the better places for meeting the French, but it also works a treat for making friends from outside the Hexagone. When I left Paris in 1999 after studying there for a year, I did so with an address book spanning the breadth of the European continent. It didn't involve me cultivating a winning personality; it was just one of the unexpected benefits of enrolling in the Erasmus programme.

This year the popular initiative, launched in 1987 to encourage students to do part of their studies in another EU country, celebrates its 25th anniversary. It was appropriately named after Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, who embraced life-long learning and was no stranger to living abroad himself.

I signed up to the programme in 1998 eager for a chance to live in the City of Light and wring some use out of my high school French. Through a friend I managed to find a poky but liveable flat in the swanky 16th arrondissement, just a convenient stroll from the Eiffel tower. I quickly made many friends, not only from among the French students, but also with the other Erasmus students who were as keen as I was to sample what Paris had to offer. Many a night finished in Bar de Bastille as it was one of the few bars that would stay open until the first metro started riding again after 6am. It also proved invaluable to me as regards to improving my French. Shortly after arriving it was clear that the French had not picked up their language from the same books as I had as everyone insisted in speaking at break-neck speeds using words not covered by le Petit Robert. However, I quickly made great progress.

And I have been far from the only one to discover the advantages of the Erasmus programme. From a modest 3,244 students in its first year, it quickly blossomed by 2006 to more than 150,000, representing nearly one per cent of the total student population in Europe. Today more than 2.2 million students from 31 different countries have already participated and this number continues to grow each year.

Erasmus not only offers the chance of an unforgettable experience as depicted in the French film l'Auberge espagnole, but also the opportunity to give a much-valued boost to your CV. Employers appreciate what an Erasmus stay says about the language and life skills of an applicant. A-levels French might show you have studied the language of Molière, an Erasmus stay proves you can use it. It also demonstrates you know how to fend for yourself outside your comfort zone.

My Erasmus year certainly helped me to broaden my horizons. At the end of it, I didn't want the experience to end and after I graduated I went on to do another degree abroad and work in three different countries. It's probably no coincidence that I now work at the Parliament with colleagues from 27 different countries as the stimulating variety of cultures and languages reminds me of the good times I enjoyed as an Erasmus student.

Working with the system – A master class with Paul Boag

Tayebot — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:00:50 +0000

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.

Not only did Mr. Boag prove to be an interesting and dynamic speaker, but he clearly had a lot of experiences working with said big organizations – although it's not quite sure if he ever worked with any EU institutions. God forbid. The audience was composed of web-something colleagues, mainly from the Commission. From my experience of a Digital-whatever person at the European Parliament, our two environments share as much as they differ, especially when it comes to Web-anything or Communication-stuff. The size is not the same, nor the levels of hierarchy. The Commission is, and that's a paradox, much more decentralized AND centralized at the same time than the Parliament is. But "bureaucracy", "they don't get it", "make the logo bigger" belong to a possible common lexical field.

Mr. Paul Boag's starting point depicts Web Teams in large organizations as being depressed and miserable.

Nevertheless, most of the identified problems and proposed solutions might apply to every large organization.

So true

Mr. Paul Boag's starting point depicts Web Teams in large organizations as being depressed and miserable. This, he understands, is because their job is tough in an unfriendly environment. There are constant barriers and problems because the field of work is radically different from the large organizations' rhythm and culture. This is "slow" versus "fast". "Routines" versus "constant changes".

As far as I know, our Web team doesn't feel either depressed or miserable. Hence our reputation of a dancing team. True, we have bad days too. But I believe most, if not all, our colleagues know how lucky they are to work in a team which is recognized (and sometimes even acknowledged) as "different" from the typical Unit of an institution. Every member of our team who left came back to tell us so.

Yet, the sky isn't blue every day over our web-heads. Yes, we'd like things to go faster most of the time. Yes, we hate some routine or old fashioned way to do things.

Let's look at the sources of those bad feelings.

Here are the common biggest issues Mr. Boag has identified after years of working with big organizations.

Problem #01 – Marketing and technology's fight.

Where does the Web Team actually sit? Is it IT or marketing (or communication, editorial). Are web-people considered as marketing people or as technological solutions providers?

Our Unit was the first digital editorial team set up in an environment dominated by IT people (as far as Internet was concerned). It didn't happen without some clashes and territorial issues but, as a brand, we are fully known as editorial. We have a technical sister Unit with which we work very closely without big conflicts in shares of responsibilities. And there is an IT General Directorate we are very happy to work with, again with usually clear definition of who does what. Of course, as all members of the same web-family, we sometimes disagree. But I don't think this identity crisis affects us.

Problem #02 – The Management

What the management wants and what the Web Team wants are often two different things. This must not be read as a criticism of management. Internet is just not their area of expertise.

Although this issue is far from being unknown to us, we are lucky not to encounter it with our direct management.

Problem #03 – Website Steering Committee

A great source of trouble. Committee mentality will kill a website dead. Why? Because committees try to reach consensus which often results in low common denominator.

I hate committees. It's in my genes. This being said, the Steering Committee we couldn't help but set-up for our new digital strategy works surprisingly well.

Problem #04 – Large organizations become institutionalized

When they do so, they look to the inside only. As they used to say at IBM: "If you cut me, I’ll bleed blue".

This takes the form of acronyms, jargon, perspectives that nobody else understand in the real world outside. Wait, there is an outside world?

Our organization was BORN an institution – that should tell enough. Our self-made antidote is my Latvian grand-mother.

Problem #05 – The scope.

The more websites, the better – we all know that. #irony

Big organizations tend to add more and more websites all the time, more sections in a website, more pages in a section.

There is a constant snowball effect: you start with a revamp, add the conception of a new CMS, which by the way, could benefit from up to date CRM for which something as to be developed and still we are at it, why don't we rebrand the whole damn thing?

Problem #06 – Problem people.

Those are the people who never get it. Mr. Boag claimed we all have someone in mind, we all laughed, I wrote a few names down but for some reasons, I can't decipher my typing now.

Problem #07 – Content: Always added, never removed

Removing content is like killing some-one's child.

This was quite a list of problems. Let's have a break looking at a cute photo of an animal.

So cuuuuute.

In the second part of his class, Mr. Boag offered his solutions. You'll notice most of them can address issues unrelated to the web, as they stand on the field of inter-personal relationships. Why don't you send a link to this post to your banker friends, accountant sister in law or publisher nephew?

Solution #01 – Improving perception

To be perceived as experts, we have to act as experts.

People want a team of superheroes as a Web team. What you have to become is to be perceived and respected as being the experts.

As recognized by Mr Boag, being an outsider and being expensive get him listened to by the management – even though he'll probably say everything you, as a web-someone, have been saying for years.

Hence your goal: become perceived as an expert.

How:

Nothing is free, not even your internal Web Team
So far you are probably perceived as a cost. Establish values in the use of individuals by applying internal charging.
Associate a price to your work – even if the price is not charged. That way the client (who, in Mr Boag's view, is the internal user) is held responsible for the work undertaken.
If something you do is going to cost amount X then the clients should think about their return of investment. Use metrics, such as cost by visitor, to demonstrate the quality or the flaws of a requested project.
Be enthusiastic and never say no
Web-people are often grumpy. I know, I am one of them. The reason Mr. Boag gets work (and is a good speaker all the same) is because he sounds over-excited. There is always something exciting in every projects, even in the most boring ones.
This is also why you should never say "No" to a client (again, clients are your internal users, people asking you to do something for them within your big organizations). Clients have to work with you. "No" doesn't allow a conversation. There is nothing left after a No.
Say: Yes! No matter how ridiculous the proposal is.And then, take your clients to a journey where they reject their own idea and adopt your solution.
And when attacked, always take a moment before defending yourself. Don’t respond immediately when you are bursting to do so. If you wait, most of the time someone will step and defend you.

To be perceived as experts, we have to act as experts. Start treating your relationship as a peer to peer relationship rather than a master and servant relationship. Your opinion is as valid as theirs. Come and challenge their perspective. Discuss the brief. Propose. Don’t say no but challenge! Be pro-active! Web teams are not manufacturers. There are a service engaging in the long term.

As he pointed out, expertise via association is a good way forward. Try to become associated with big names in the industry and refer to other experts – have I mentioned I had a master class with Paul Boag? See, it's easy.

3°- Communicate on your last projects

You should make a huge event of noise about everything you do, every success you achieve. Have you read Steve's story on our new design? It's a very good one, just saying.

Launch events, newsletter, feed back your management, offer trainings and workshops. This will demonstrate your values in real concrete terms – and by concrete terms, he means tangible action achieved by your users.

Solution #02 – Overcoming politics

Politics is depressing but we must accept it. There are egos at work in every social interaction. No matter how much you hate it, keep the conversation going. Clashes are counter-productive and it’s a childish attitude.

You need to keep talking to them – even if it’s always in conflict mode. Find any excuse to meet and spend some time with people with whom you are in conflict. Invite them for lunch. When talking with them, make it all about them: their problems, their vision of life.

Build a bond with them.

Don’t knock an idea because it’s not yours (especially if it’s a good one). Experts recognize good ideas if there are not theirs!

Empathize with people’s problems. Everybody has their pet subject. Find what it is and use it.

Not everybody can picture things in their head. Show rather than tell.

Make sure you’re talking to the right person. Sometimes the most influential person is the wife of the client.

I don't have the slightest idea how this photo happens to be here.

Solution #03 – How to get sign-offs

Getting approval is a pain in the neck.

If the decision level is a committee, then there is an extra level of hell to run through.

One trick is to find the alpha male who dominates the committee and sell him the good end of the project.

When it comes to committees, Mr. Boag identifies two ways for dealing with them:

The radical attitude. Explode the committee and consult everybody in the Universe, gather stats to support the decision. It can work but it’s a lot of work.
The conqueror's approach
Find and meet each member of the Committee for one hour. Have a real and good discussion with all of them. Then collate everything and you become the only one who knows it all. When you come back with your set of recommendations in the committee's meeting, you can select and target who you're talking to for each point so everyone feels he’s been consulted, listened and considered.

It is vital to resist the impulse to exclude the client from the process. As a consequence, they won’t feel any sense of ownership. It is better to involve them at every stage of the project, reducing the level of surprises.

One of the great impulse of human nature is the desire to be consistent. If you involve them, they’ll stick to the decisions they’ve been associated with. If they’ve been engaged in the process, they’ll defend it.

Solution #04 – Ending the never-ending-scope

What Paul Boag recommends is to set up a structure for every engagement with a client. Whatever is asked from you should be done so by written with a clear set of requirement (even for a small minor change on a page). You respond with your statement of work and the cost. This is how you establish a contract, even if symbolically, with your clients. It must be written.

With your statement, make sure you include milestones and timeline. It must be clear that other projects are queuing and that even one day of delay, the project might well slip for a week or more. You have other clients and you have the same level of responsibilities to them. Don't forget to include a final sign-off day.

This is how you provide structure and boundaries.

Solution #05 – Content management

Although Mr. Boag really dislikes policies and hates the fact that big organizations have a policy for everything, he finds them very helpful when it comes to content. Policy aren’t personal. It brings a level of structure and objectivity in the painful decision of refusing or deleting some content.

There are two kind of policies you may need.

Policy for necessary content. A content template is a good help. It provides a set of questions like « Who is this page aimed at? », « What’s the main message people should get from this page if they only stay on it for five seconds?» « What should the user do after having seen the page? »
This will structure the client thinking.
Legacy of content (how to remove it)
Convincing your clients that some of their beloved content should be removed from a website is an almost impossible task. It rips out their soul or something. The recommended measure is to establish a clear policy stating conditions under which a content cease to be accessible on your website. Said policy might involve some regular action from your clients, such as checking (and ticking a box in your CMS to prove they did so) their content every six months to grant their interest.

Policies are good, in this specific case, because they are neutral.

***

This was a lot of food for thought. It's not exactly a survival kit for big organizational environment, yet I found it provides good perspectives on how to improve your web-whatever situation.

In conclusion, I will emphasize how the live class is better than any summary one could write. If you have the opportunity to bring Mr. Boag to speak to your team, your bosses, your clients, you should really go for it.

Frankly about lingua franca

Anete — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:44:21 +0000

Out of different practical reasons EP’s Facebook page similarly to this blog is being updated only in English (apart from casual insertions in other languages). Our fan community is continuously and quickly growing but how long can we justify our monolingual existence in the main social network of the world? And should we at all?

English has become a real lingua franca and without any doubt this provides many advantages, but aren’t we going against the principle of multilingualism and depriving some while giving advantages to others, especially if they represent a certain political wing? Aren’t we actually giving the floor and stage to, for example, British eurosceptics who can demonstrate all their eloquence here? And don’t we make look some genuinely clever people less educated because of their lacking language skills? It’s not the same to debate political issues as to comment on your latest pub experience. Besides, more than one-third of European adults aged 25 to 64 perceive that they do not know any foreign language.

A menu in a restaurant in Vosges mountains

According to a Eurobarometer Survey (2006) 13% of EU citizens speak English as their native language. Another 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation. 77% of the EU citizens consider that children should learn English as their first foreign language. In 19 out of 29 countries polled, English is the most widely known language apart from the mother tongue, this being particularly the case in Sweden (89%), Malta (88%) and the Netherlands (87%).

Even if you do get the meaning of our updates and the comments by other fans and can put a sentence together, it’s not the same as grasping all the subtleties of a debate and express yourself convincingly and with grace – this is something most of the people only can in their mother tongue(s). Not to mention the possibility to misunderstand something or to be misunderstood completely, thanks to e.g. the good old “false friends”.

Interesting enough – most of our fans with a huge difference come from Italy, then followed in close distances by Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece and Spain – countries, with exception of Germany, where, I would say, the use of English is not particularly prevalent and extensive. Italy is even one of the six Member States who had a majority of mono-linguists in 2006 (59 percent).

All the EP’s information offices in the respective EU countries have a Facebook page, too, but isn’t it all about creating a common space for debate?

How far does our duty go to involve the citizens? You could argue that we are already pioneers by using the social media to ensure a dialogue with citizens, that it’s not a legal obligation, that it’s not so serious anyway, that in any case not all the people are willing to participate in open debates (although they might be more than willing to vote or express themselves in other anonymous ways), not everybody will want to sign up on Facebook to participate in the debates and so on. But still there is a little something in us that says: can’t we do better?

It’s a tough nut for us to crack. We have tried a translation app called “Bing” from Facebook but for some reason it appears in only about half of the posts written in a foreign language, besides this is just a machine which makes lots of (often very funny) mistakes and which will need another 15-20 years to achieve acceptable degree of accuracy. To involve real translators would be too costly and time consuming. And would have to use English as a relay language anyway, otherwise we would have to cope 506 possible combinations of 23 official languages of the EU. And not everything is translatable! Volunteers, like this project conceived by Luis von Ahn? (watch the TED video, it’s great) An excellent idea with a huge potential but who would be our volunteers and would it be quick enough for our debates and chats and also reliable? So what is the solution? Is there any at all? Maybe we should forget about our concerns and see this as a tool for learning English? Whatever way we choose it’s hard to resist the magic of seeing Europeans discussing European issues and their personal experiences freely across the continent.

Togo or not Togo…

Florent — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:20:43 +0000

Moderating the press conference (on the left Mr Assarid and Michel, on the right Mr Aguiriano, Director-general for DG EXPO (Thanks to my colleague Istvan for the pic)

This is a blog post I was supposed to write some time ago… But somehow I couldn't find the time to do it last week. Now I sit comfortably in my chair in lovely Strasbourg (yes, it's plenary once again), watching the Christmas market under the snow outside (or almost) and I can remember those sunny and bright days I spent in Lomé, Togo, at the end of November…

It all started with the boss (aka Steve) popping up in my office, a little bit embarassed. "Well, Florent, I'm afraid some people will be jealous…" Our sister unit, "the press" as we call it, had no French speaking press officers to cover a Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Togo… So we were asked to help them, and as French editor I was the first to get the offer.

It was a bit unfair, I must admit, as I already went to Tunisia for another mission last July. Missions are something rare in our unit, and two missions abroad in the same year was stretching the limits.

It took me about half a second to weigh up the pros and cons… And to accept the mission, of course not out of personal interest but to fulfil my duties and stay loyal to my beloved institution.

First times are always something special

I had never been to "black" Africa before and the first thing I would say now that I'm back is that I would like to return there. The country, as I could see during the 5 days of work and the 2 free days I had at the end of the mission, is really poor but people are extremely friendly. Yes, if there is richness in Africa, it's definitely the people.

The natural comparison that comes to my mind is always the one with China, where I went for several long trips. Togo seemed much poorer. Lomé is the capital and main city but you do not see more than 10 buildings in the whole town that have more than five or six floors. Industry and business seem to be non-existent. The hospital we visited with a delegation of MEPs and African, Pacific and Caribbean (ACP) MPs was hosting a lot of… Chinese doctors and nurses. Many people were sleeping outside, along the roads. And unemployment hits -officially- above 30% of the population (it may be even higher in reality). With 60% of the population being under 25, it would be the "land of hopelessness" if people had no such a positive attitude…

An impressive audience for the opening ceremony (thanks to my colleague Istvan for the pic)

First day, first date

I did not tell you yet what exactly I was doing there. So, here is the explanation. Elected representatives from the EU and the ACP countries meet twice a year, alternatively in Europe and in an ACP country, to discuss development. This has been decided in 2000, when both parties agreed in the Cotonou agreement on a stabile framework for their relations. The Joint Parliamentary Assembly, which gathers 78 MEPs and their counterparts from the 78 ACP countries, is a unique area of discussion for the representatives that control the governments' actions.

My job was the one of a press officer, as I said. I wrote press releases in French (another colleague took care of the English ones), something similar to what I do for La Une ("Headlines" page) maybe just a bit more factual and less free. I moderated the press conference and the press breakfast with the co-presidents of the Assembly, Louis Michel (Belgian MEP and former commissioner) and Assarid Ag imbarcaouane from Mali. And, last but not least, I was answering to journalists on the phone.

Ads for AIDS prevention were all over the place.

The first call I got was from a nice young lady that saw me during the press conference. She wanted to meet me – why not? But she could not come to the office. So she proposed to meet at my hotel at 8PM. Well… It sounded strange and not 100% professional… Following the advice of my experienced fellows from the Press unit, I asked whether it was about the Parliamentary Assembly or not. "Well, it's a bit about it and mainly about other stuff", was the answer. Gosh. I had to decline the "rendez-vous". I didn't know being a press officer was also about turning down this kind of requests. Damn, I was so naive, wasn't I?

A premature conclusion

This blog starts to be too long, so let's come to a quick conclusion, if you've not already left. I discovered a new continent and a new job. I liked being in contact with MEPs and journalists. I did not like very much the writing of the press releases since there is no creativity behind it. And I liked following the multicultural debates (yes, in such an Assembly multiculturalism takes another significance!) on the impact of public debt on development, on the fight against malaria, on the Arab Spring, on the situation in the Horn of Africa…

The political situation on the spot was also very sensitive. The country is in a democratic transition, with the actual president being the son of the dictator that held power for 38 years. There was a big debate about nine MPs that were "dismissed" for changing their political party. MEP Louis Michel was rather in favour of this decision, many journalists again – a very hot topic. The reasons behind are quite complex and I can't go into details but it generated some hostile press coverage and rather virile interventions during the press breakfast. Another challenge to master – really interesting from a professional and personal point of view. Yes, you get the feeling you're in the political business and not only watching it from the outside!

Yes, you get the feeling you're in the political business and not only watching it from the outside!

We also got the chance to be invited for dinner by the Togolese correspondent from Radio France Internationale, and we spent the whole evening discussing the political situation. It was a really enlightening debate that offered us to understand the situation much more in depth.

Get out and you'll see!

Getting out of the office, meeting new colleagues, working directly with MEPs, being on the spot and not hidden behind a screen is always worth it, being it abroad or not, being it in Africa or not. Now I'm waiting for the next opportunity and, as it won't come before a long time, I just hope other colleagues will have the same opportunity and share their experience with us…

Four gurus and six ideas to improve our web presence

Florent — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:18:00 +0000

Where is the web heading? Thanks to Ludwig Gatzke for the pic @ http://bit.ly/tNLmG8

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 Parliament web presence. Here are the six concrete ideas I'd like to remember and share with you.

From Nicolas Princen, head of the web unit of the French Presidency

A company called Viewrz helped the French Presidency to tweet live some extracts of the video stream of the G20 meeting in Cannes. The principle is quite easy: you follow a debate, and whenever you find an extract interesting, you instantaneously send a message to the company, which will cut the last 30 seconds (or 20 seconds, one minute… this has to be decided in advance) of the video and send you a specific link to this short video. Then you just have to tweet it.

=> It would be great to use this kind of tool to cover our plenary debates. It's resource efficient (we need only one or two editors) and the format is nicer than a traditional coverage: you have a live tweet (for example one quote for each political group) and right after the debate you put it online as an article (in a kind of a Storify format). You can skip the boring/technical/empty parts of the debate and focus on the main political statements.

From TBWA 365, web agency

It was very interesting to have a look into the way of working and the logic of a private company, and I noted two things:

They always start the briefings with their customers with a "cold", data-oriented analysis. It allows to assess the efficiency of a campaign/online strategy.
=> Maybe we should try to objectivise the efficiency of our actions in such a way. We do it but it could and should be more systematic: what were the most popular articles on the Parliament website this month? What worked on Facebook, what was the most retweeted? We need an analyst who does not work as an editor – and thus could be impartial. We could gather good practices and improve the efficiency of our coverage.
TBWA advises to look for editorial partnerships rather than advertising campaigns. In 2014, the Parliament could write objective, neutral stories about the mandate and the upcoming elections and propose it to big newspapers. I know that journalists don't like it, but it seems newspapers do accept it for (obvious) economic reasons…

La Netscouade, web agency

Benoît Thieulin, CEO of this agency that is well-known for its involvement in the French presidential election campaign in 2007, shared his vision of the future of the web. A highly interesting speech from which I'd like to keep only the concrete points:

The web is now coming back to more "intermédiation". In the last years, the trend was to try to communicate directly with citizens, but now people want to get some analysis. Hence the central role of journalists, bloggers etc. There is more space for indirect communication and we should not (only) aim at targeting citizens directly.

=> All our multimedia products (for example this one or this one) should clearly made available and customisable by internet users and journalists.

=> Our Facebook and Twitter content should be more "MEP-compatible" so that it can be re-used as much as possible.

He also pointed out the "social television", i.e. the fact that people watch TV to get the news but comment at the same time on Twitter with their tablets.
=> This raise again the question of putting a twitter feed next to the plenary streaming to allow people to comment live.

Slate.fr, web newspaper

The editor in chief explained us how they explained complex issues in an easy, friendly and funny way. For example, for the scandal around French billionaire Ingrid Bettencourt, they put it in the form of a – fake – Facebook stream. It's really worth having a look!

=> Worth trying in order to explain the negotiations on the EU budget or the financial supervision package?

A speaker, a video, a strategy

Tayebot — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:10:49 +0000

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 profiles and, of course, I had to watch it – with many interruptions due to the complicated lifeflow of my typical Sunday.

Yes, I don’t have a life. I have a lifeflow.

Simon Anholt is not someone I knew. He’s « an independent policy adviser working with Heads of State and Government and with national or regional administrations to develop and implement strategies for enhanced economic, political and cultural engagement with other countries. As a keynote speaker for EuroPCom 2011 he pointed out what the EU should do to regain its communication 'sense of purpose' in the 21st century. »

That’s what the video description says about him. A nice Wikipedia addition says he is best known for his work on the image and reputation of countries, cities and regions, and as the author who coined the term 'nation brand' in a 1996 academic paper.

Now, if you haven’t seen his speech, now would be a good time.

It’s like exposing a secret fraternity we all can relate to.

The nicest elements of the whole speech come from the fact Simon Anholt is speaking out loud some communication 101 basics most EU communication officers have known since they graduated but which have always remained, somehow, alien to the institutional culture – to say the least. Listening to him provides you with the feeling that everything one’s been defending in an infinite number of meetings was true. It’s like exposing a secret fraternity we all can relate to. All those quick faces we exchanged, the complicated handshakes and the discreet marks of belonging were not in vain – there is a truth out there and Simon Anholt just lifted the veil up.

Now, I don’t agree fully with him on everything – and that’s maybe the best feeling. There is room for discussion, debate, expert exchanges on a subject that most of my friends, family, domestic pets and acquaintances find quintessentially boring.

So, when Mr Anholt says:
« Creativity which is needed in order to communicate with enormous number of people to attract their attention is wasted if it’s simply exercised at the communication end of the process. Creativity only works when it’s exercised at the development of policies. »

We’re the waiters and maître d’ in the European restaurant and we deliver the food cooked by the Master Chiefs.

I humbly disagree. Not with the fact that creative policies are, indeed, more powerful and more needed than anything else to, among many other and bigger ends, beef up your brand’s purposes and your communication mix. Of course, we, as civil servants in charge of communicating the EU, we need creative and inspiring policies. But can we actually make that happen?

No.

We’re not the senior officials and politicians Mr Anholt rightly targeted his speech at during the EuroPCom event. We’re the waiters and maître d’ in the European restaurant and we deliver the food cooked by the Master Chiefs. If the meal of the day is not inspiring, fresh, interesting, if it does not taste good, shall we just quit doing our job until the cooks come up with a better recipe?

Well, that’s always an option. Or we can run a campaign to be elected as MEP and change the world – some do, congrats and good luck to them.

But there is also the possibility to keep doing our job the best way we can, which involves being creative « at the communication end of the process. »

In order to do so, we may well get inspired by Mr Anholt’s precise definitions of communication and brand and define what definition of communication applies to our work and mission. We may identify our brand purposes since we are it. This will clarify and answer a question we tend to get more and more during the presentations our EP Web team gives on our activities.

The question is: « What’s your strategy ?» and our typical answer until now is: « Our strategy? Well, we have one, it’s locked in a safe and we lost the key. »

Which communication category concerns us?

Mr Anholt identifies three completely different realities behind the word « communication: »

information provision
advertising
propaganda

Most of the job of our Web team concerns the information provision about the news and activities of the European Parliament. Now, when Mr Anholt states that « information provision is only possible when there is a demand for information » in other words that « Attempting to provide information when it has not been asked for on a subject that people are not interested in is quite simply a waste of money » I don’t agree again.

I strongly believe the institutions have the duty to provide information about the EU affairs whether or not there is a demand for this information. First, because we live in an age not only of information overabundance but also of information confusion. My view is that, in the mælstrom of voices that express themselves online, there is a need for a neutral, politically balanced speaker on European affairs. This is part of what defines us as a public service. This is also a pillar of democracy and transparency: full information about what the European Parliament does, discusses and votes must be available and accessible in an understandable way.

Second, I don’t believe in a constant expressed need for any kind of information. I never buy a travel book about a country until I plan to actually go there. On many occasions, I bought the said travel book when I was already in the country. Thanks to the travel book publishing industry, they don’t wait for my need to arise before writing the book – otherwise I’d need to postpone a hell of a lot of trips.

Most of people don’t express any interest for the news we are publishing daily in twenty two languages. Until they do. Until the day the subject concerns them – and since the European Parliament is dealing with an awfully large range of subjects, this day always arrives.

So, our EP Web Team supplies information – that’s our communication job.

Now, what’s our brand purpose?

Again, I can only praise the quality of Mr Anholt’s very articulated speech. No powerpoint presentation and, yet, a perfect definition of what lies behind the generic « brand » word.

Brand image: « my perception of your product » therefore not controlled by the product’s owner.
Brand identity: « what my product looks like »
Brand purpose: what you do, produce, sell and, by extension, what you are. « The art of getting lots of people to behave as if they were one person »

I really like this clear distinction of values for an overused word such as « brand ». Again, I’d like to apply Mr Anholt’s medicine to our case, the EP Web team.

Not to the European Parliament, mind you.

I have a lot of ideas about what the institutions should do to communicate better, to engage with the public on social media or to improve our daily life. But I ain’t a guru nor a senior official. I’m a feet on the ground kind of professional who believes you can improve the whole starting with your part. And our part is the EP Web team’s mission and work.

The EP Web team’s brand purpose is to provide the general public, aka « normal people » with information about the European Parliament in a way they can understand and even be interested. And we do that online only. Other teams share similar purposes for different audiences or via different media: TV, journalists, events. We’re online.

By defining our brand’s purpose, we can deduce the social media strategy we are asked so often for. Our social media strategy is to provide understandable and interesting information to people wherever they are online. And since the digital world simplifies feedback, conversations, interactions, by nature we report those elements to our stakeholders until the day they will naturally directly exchange with the general public.

This is what we do and we do it in a creative way – or so we hope. One hint keeping us doing so is that 95% of our 172,000 facebook fans don’t live in Belgium.

95% of them.

The reason we are reluctant in detailing our strategy, with action plans, expected results, deadlines lays in the ever changing environment we work on. The digital world is faster than any previous territory for communication. We believe an unwritten constitution à l’anglaise serves better our brand’s purposes. By the time we would have a detailed written strategy ready and approved, facebook will be closed. People will have digitally migrated somewhere else.

The part I liked the most.

"Why so serious?" - The face behind the mantra

The most inspiring bit of Mr Anholt’s keynote speech is rightly quoted by Ronny Patz on his blog:

"[civil servants and politicians] make the fatal error of believing that because their job is so serious they also have to be boring. Actually, it is the most irresponsible thing on Earth for policy-makers and civil servants to be boring because it’s the boring policies that fail to grasp the imagination, fail to communicate themselves and consequently fail to do any good."

Lip-Dub Friday I'm in love from Web Com on Vimeo.

« Why so serious? » should become our team’s mantra.

****

For more about the EuroPComm speakers and speeches, French readers might appreciate this post by La Communication européenne: EuropCom 2011 : quelles étaient les présentations qu’il ne fallait pas manquer ?

Here’s a nettle. Grab it.

Nadina — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:34:02 +0000

Imagine if, when you get out of your house one sunny autumn day in Brussels, the boulevard, normally over-crowded by snaked-shaped car lines near your street is completely car-less. Imagine if this boulevard for once gets filled with bikes and roller blades instead, let’s say ten, hundreds of them… If you are already picturing that in your mind, then multiply their number, double it once more and you will get car free day in Brussels last Sunday.

No cars allowed. Photo taken from Flickr @John & Mel Kots

Although started in the 90s, the initiative was later on established at an international level by the European Commission and became part of a bigger yearly project, European Mobility Week. With more and more cities adhering to this concept, the initiative has spread all over, reaching 2017 cities this year. To my astonishment, when surfing a bit on the web the other days, I have found out that Oradea, my hometown in Romania, is also a part of this movement, with a part of the city closed to traffic.

On car free Sunday, as cars were banned from the city, people have conquered the streets. Only lost tourists or some ignorant drivers ventured on the streets, looking like hated creatures disturbing the peace during a perfect day in an almost reborn city. Needless to say I am exaggerating, but I felt a complete exaltation seeing crowds of people zooming around the long boulevards with their bikes and replacing the loud whirring noises made by cars with a joyful, much friendlier buzz of people on the streets.

It was the one time in this year that I had no problems breathing the air of Rue de la Loi (Map) - one of the most jam packed and polluted streets in Brussels – a CO2 sponge, as it is sometimes called…. Apparently pollution levels on this street were brought down up to ten times when compared with a regular day thanks to this. And indeed, it felt as if a huge vacuum absorbed for a short while the horrible smell of the cars – usually quite of a pet peeve, I can assure you. By the way, I once heard that the average life expectancy of people living in the EU’s polluted areas is reduced by around two years due to this.

Photo taken from http://psychoadvertising.wordpress.com/

As for the day, besides biking, there were other events around Brussels. I particularly enjoyed the bio gourmand market in Sablon Square, where farmers from Lot, a beautiful region in France, gathered around and enriched locals with some healthy food and some great French wine. As I was enjoying the friendly atmosphere, my mind slipped away to Food Inc. I don’t know how many of you have seen this documentary that sneaks in and unveils America’s corporate controlled food industry (it was nominated for Oscar in 2010 and won some 3 prizes the same year), but I will be extremely honest: the movie takes a part of your joy away, makes you feel a small, very small pebble in the ocean, but in the same time, makes you slightly more aware of yourself and your surroundings. Just like car free days and the statistics collected after it…

However, it seems quite promising that such a considerable number of people (or should I call them pebbles?) are enjoying a car free day and that events like this one or similar ones get more and more people aware of the need to cut pollution and switch or at least, alternate, to a friendlier means of transport.

Sometimes stressful, rarely frantic but always home feeling, Brussels is packed with bikers and bike friendly inhabitants. I dare say then, why couldn’t this yet a yearly car free day become a monthly event?

Try the Forgettometer

Kostas — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:34:44 +0000

What is the measure of a good summer? Feeling depressed when back in the office is one, but one can feel depressed for all sorts of reasons. Feeling happy to be back, refreshed and ready for work, as proposed by someone a few days ago could be another, although I do have some reservations. It does sound a little counterintuitive. Not that it isn’t great to be back in the office. It is, of course, but this is not a discussion on the merits of working for WebCom but something a little different: an attempt to develop a scientific method of gauging the success, or otherwise, of one’s holidays.

Vasiliki, on the Island of Lefkada

In all I judge mine a success. I felt it while I was on holidays (for no other reason than that it felt good to be where I was, doing what I was doing, being with the people I was with) despite the fact that objectively it was a pretty mediocre state of affairs, neither the place, nor the hotel or the entertainment, being “ideal” even by my own rather low standards.

But how can you actually prove this? How do you quantify the level of satisfaction you draw from your holidays if you can’t claim to have spent them on a zillion dollar yacht or on the beach in Bora-Bora? Until this past week I had no way of doing it. But now I know. I have a measure and I am ready to share it with the world: it is the forgettometer.

How much do you remember when you come back? Do you remember your password? It took me 3 tries, so I will arbitrarily give me 3 points (out of, say, 10) for “forgetting your password”. Do you remember how to embed a video? It took me a couple of minutes, so I will even more arbitrarily award myself (or rather my holidays) another two. Do you remember how to find something in your office phone menu? I didn’t even remember my phone had a menu, so I think 10 points are in order, with another 10 added for forgetting to call a team meeting on Tuesday. And then the coup de grace… Do you remember how to tweet?

A big fail...

This will take some explaining. I do remember how to tweet and love doing it, but…

First of all I came back having forgotten that I have to tweet, but that’s so unprofessional I will actually deduct a point from my score. And then there was that most excellent site that allows you to handle twitter without actually using it. Now what was it called? It was, before the holidays my daily companion, my trusted lieutenant for all things Twitter. I used it every single day, all day to tweet in two languages. It was a little tricky sometimes but it certainly made my life a lot easier. I was so fond of it, I didn’t even bookmark it, I just typed the address every time. What a mistake!

... for a good reason

Yes… I came back having forgotten its existence, its name, its URL, everything. Then at some point the need arose and, after having tweeted some, I dimly remembered I had long stopped using Twitter.com. Slowly it dawned on me that there was some other site that did the job. Ah yes, that greyish site. Umm let’s see… no, not bookmarked (in case you hadn’t noticed, I belong to the AltaVista generation and will never, ever, say “favourite”), no recollection of its name whatsoever.

It was embarrassing. So embarrassing I didn’t even dare ask. I just wandered down the corridor hoping someone would be using it. Someone was. My holidays were certainly over but forgetting Hootsuite is a definite 10 out of 10.

So in aggregate I have unscientifically but fairly accurately awarded my holidays a nice 34 out of 50 or just a whisker short of 70% on the forgettometer, which sounds about right. Not bad… not bad at all.

Travel blogging with an iPad

Tayebot — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:23:46 +0000

I’ve always considered the iPad as a beautiful, wonderful, joyful tool for consulting digital content rather than for producing any. Nevertheless, the range of proposed applications dedicated to writing, editing photography, publishing on various blogs platforms never ceases to impress me. I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, the EP doesn’t always support my taste for digital experimentation, therefore I had to use a week of personal holidays to review the iPad as a blogging tool. To be honest, since I was traveling alone, I wanted to impose to myself a discipline of writing, in order to structure my days and bring some purposes to my wanderings. Also, writing is what I like.

I did it for science

My trip was in Istanbul for a week, a city I’ve never been before. I didn’t want to carry my laptop as I’ve started to appreciate iPad’s light weight and versatility. However, I can’t type more than an e-mail or a tweet on the glass screen. I bought the bluetooth keyboard, which doesn’t weigh much. It stayed in my hotel room all week, being used only at night when my writing routine was taking place.

The keyboard is a real pleasure to use. It connects in a glance with the iPad, copy/paste is made easier, arrows allow you to navigate in your text and, of course, typing itself is quicker and more precise.

Selected apps

Depending on your workflow, your blog’s host and your own preferences, you may consider you don’t need any apps to blog from the iPad. I personally like the whole apps concept: there is always one which does exactly what you would like to perfom. The difficulty lays in finding it.

When blogging, my workflow is as follow.

Drafting

First, I take notes in an analog notebook with a pen. This old fashioned aspect will not be covered in this post.
Then, I write my draft in an offline software. I hate it when you’ve typed thousands of words in a blog’s CMS and your precious text disappears because of some interruption of Internet services you have no idea where it comes from. Also, a specific text editor allows me to start different drafts and to work on them at different stages. For this purpose, amongst all available editing apps, I chose Daedalus (€4.99) after having tried OmmWriter (€4.99) and Notebooks (€6.99). The chosen one won because it has a simple way of managing the different files (with a “pile” analogy) and absolutely no formatting possibilities (like bold, italics and so on). This ensure a cleaner text when copying/pasting into the blog’s CMS. OmmWriter has a larger typing area and Notebooks is just too sophisticated for my leisure use (although it might be great for more professional tasks). There are zillions of text editors, so pick yours.

Photographs

Because it was a travel blog, pictures were important. You need a specific adaptor (€29) to import you photos from your digital camera to the iPad. The built in photo app does its job properly : import is relatively quick. You can select the photo you want to import but you can’t create new albums in the iPad. You cannot edit the photo either. Finding the right photo editing app took me more time.

I used PS Express (free), Filterstorm (€2.99), Camera bag (€1,59) and Snapseed (€3,99). This last one is definetely the best: it has automatic improvement feature, manual tuning with very smart touch point of control and few but nice filters and effects which I came to appreciate. Camera bag is fun and will do if you just want a quick effect on your photos, based on various famous renditions of films (lomo photography, polaroid etc.). The two others are too expert for me – and the lack of automatic adjustment may fit better to experienced photographer while it proved too time consuming for me. I was in holidays, remember?

Publishing

My personal blog is on Tumblr but their application isn’t super user friendly on the iPad. Accessing Tumblr Dashboard via Safari just doesn’t work on iPad. The best app I could find to edit, format, add the photos in the text and publish my post is QuickTumblr (€2.39). It has only two flaws.

First, you can only work on one post at a time. No collection of drafts and so on – hence the smart idea of drafting your posts in a specific text app.

Second, because of some Tumblr’s limitations, you can’t just add your photo in the editor. You must either publish them on an ftp server (QuickTumblr manages it very well for you and once you’ve set up the ftp access, it really flows well) or add them as link in your text.

Quicktumblr is great for formatting and inserting photo links (or any type of links) but you need first to publish your photos somewhere on the web in order to be able to link to them. I didn’t have any of my various ftp servers’ codes when in Istanbul, so I used Picasa.

Generally speaking, the digital editing (adding photo, adding links, embedding video) part is the real flaw of using an iPad.

To publish the photos I wanted to use in my posts, I first uploaded them on a specific Picasa gallery using Web Album (€2.39). Then, I had to open each of them in Safari, copy the ready-to-insert link, switch to QuickTumblr, insert the link at the right place in the post and so on so forth.

This was hell. QuickTumblr has some bugs: it keeps a small text area when the bluetooth keyboard is connected and it doesn’t save your cursor’s position in the text when switching to Safari and back.

Generally speaking, the digital editing (adding photo, adding links, embedding video) part is the real flaw of using an iPad. There are no keyboards’ shortcuts to move quickly from an app to an other and I grew quickly tired of the process. I suspect publishing on other platforms than Tumblr, such as WordPress, would be easier and faster.

I also lacked a good correcting tool – I can’t stand the automatic correction proposed by the device. Antidote exists (for French) but is pricy (€ 19,99).

The whole process of posting once a day took me more or less three hours a day (not counting the analog part). This was taking place usually after dinner, in a quiet garden with decent Wi-Fi coverage.

If I were to consider moving to travel bloging as a source revenue (since some people seem to earn money from this activity – I have no idea how), I would perhaps be better equipped with the tiny MacBook Air (11″ screen).

However, the iPad has some great advantages. It’s so easy to carry it during the day, to start to edit your photos during a meal, for example. Also, because switching from an app to another is still a bit cumbersome when using a keyboard, you may tend to focus more on your writing task, with less distraction than on a laptop – but maybe I am just easy to distract.

PS: I wrote this post as described below – except our team’s blog is powered by WordPress. The WordPress allows you to insert photo in your post directly from your iPad (no need for third part hosting) but you can’t format anything in the text neither insert links (well, maybe if you know all the html stuff which I don’t). I couldn’t change the size of the photo, though, once I had chosen it. When opening WordPress back-office in Safari, you can format at will and insert links – it’s a bit cumbersome. You can’t however change the photo size once uploaded and you can’t add a new image. There must be a specific iPad’s app for blogging with WordPress, of course. There’s one for everything, they say…

PPS: my travel blog (well, only seven posts) can be found on http://tayebot.tumblr.com – it’s in French and proposes essentially posts about the bitter condition of being a new father.

Case Study: Can Institutions Be Cool? (Part V)

Tayebot — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:00:46 +0000

This is the last post of the summer case study on the possibility for institutions to become cool. Before we jump to the conclusions, let’s review what we learnt.

The summary that will never get me a PhD

This four part case study looked at the different ways an institution – usually considered as an unattractive administrative body – could acquire the reputation of being cool, as in the combination of the feeling of liking it with the desire to belong to it. Why would an institution become cool is another question that will be left unanswered here.

No way we're talking about being cool without a reference to George.

In a hasty and totally subjective way, with no strong ground on which to build his argumentation, the case’s author identified five kind of institutions:

The ones that are just born cool because their « raison d’être » rocks and is supported by adequate actions and needs little communication – the given example being Unesco and the generic class being « cool by ontology ».
The ones that benefit from the charismatic essence of their leaders or, even better, of a series of charismatic leaders. What else than the White House could belong to the category is still a mystery to the readers but the generic class is still called « cool by capillarity ».
The ones that had absolutely no possible chance to even dream of being cool but which succeeded never the less thanks to huge spending in communication (and possibly other ethically debatable means) – the proposed example being the FBI and its army of influence provided by the Hollywood industry since the thirties and the proposed class being « cool by majoring in mass communication and minoring in blackmailing ».
The same kind as the previous one, only they fail in trying, even with good professional communication, the French Hadopi being one of them and the generic class being « most institutions ».
The ones that had only slightly better starting chances than the FBI and yet reached the tribe of the cool by making sure their activities fitted with their purposes even if they were founded by possible Dr Evils – only examples the author could come up with being two American foundations, the Gates’ and the Soros’. Generic class: « cool by action ».

Yeah, yeah. And…?

That will sound basic to most of readers in the field of communication, but the key to any success, when it comes to your branding, lies in the identification and definition of your brand’s core values. You only need a few of them, but they must be strong, clear and shared amongst your organization.

From those core values, and depending on the strategy you want to develop and conduct, you might find a benefit in becoming cool. If this becomes your goal, well, some leverage exists:

Your leadership – but also any representative of your organization. It’s one thing of having one Obama or one Steve Jobs at the top of your pyramid, it’s another to be able to count on thousands well educated scouts, professional ambassadors, devoted evangelists. The organization’s staff, the users communities can do marvels in bringing some coolness to a brand. Charisma can be spread out within any organization if the people selected stick to the core values and make them theirs.
Your actions – it’s not only what you say, it’s mostly what you do. It pays in the long term and one mishap can fully damage your brand reputation – but if you keep acting within the perimeter of your core values and of your raison d’être, you may acquire a cool reputation. In a few thousand years.
Your communication – promoting what you do well in a fun, entertaining, interesting way can speed up the reputation building process. It will never be the sole factor – but you’ll hardly reach any cool status without some communication.

In some cases, communication might be your only chance. There is a reason most institutions are perceived as boring, dull, uninteresting – it’s because they serve the public, the community and it’s not always sexy. Yet, by assuming what defines you and by playing with it, rather than denying it, you can become cool.

There is almost nothing cool in a public library in the era of Internet – and yet:

If corporations are psychopaths, I’d say institutions are rather neurotics. What’s the difference?

In his 2003 documentary (and following book), The Corporation, Canadian Joel Bakan “establishes parallels between the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave and the DSM-IV’s symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.”

If corporations are psychopaths, I’d say institutions are rather neurotics. What’s the difference? The former doesn’t know he’s has a mental condition and doesn’t differentiate his (affected) mental perception from reality, whereas the latter knows there is something wrong with his condition. In that aspect, institutions know communication (amongst other characteristics) is not their strongest asset and they are often reluctant to embrace what it takes to really communicate.

Of course, the lines are moving, especially in the US where staff moves more naturally from public administration to private sector and back. The influence of our over communicative world strikes European institutions as well – but for a public organization, there is still quite heavy reluctance to brand and market itself.

The cool factor is not an absolute necessity to reach – yet it does help to carry and spread any messages an organization might want to push. We’ve seen it’s possible for institutions to be perceived as cool – not to all of them and hardly without some effort, but it’s reachable.

However, the cool factor is only the cherry on the cake of a well planned and conceived communication strategy.