Our production on this blog - from July 2008

As communication geeks (and freaks), we always look at the stats. How many people did read this article? What was the traffic on the hearings website?

But we don’t look at ourselves that much… What about changing the point of view and take us, member of the web communication unit of the European Parliament, as target? Let our readers rest for a while, let them in peace. And let’s make a little assessment of our own production on this blog.

First statement: 201 posts have been posted on this blog since July 2008. A quite great amount if we look at the fact that it really started in February 2009, in the run up to the European elections. Since then, 176 posts have been posted, which makes about one every two days. The record is for October last year with 41 posts – which makes twice posts a working day!

EP officials are also thinking creatures, not only blind machines (or am I misinterpreting?)

Second statement: Guess what? The most used category is called “At work“, with more than 35 % of the posts. Not a big surprise since this blog is run by a team of professionals… The second category is “Thinking allowed“, which shows that EP officials are also thinking creatures, not only blind machines (or am I misinterpreting?). Personal posts aren’t that popular, but for that, we have our personal blogs, don’t we?

Third statement: Who’s writing on this blog? It’s very unequal. On average, every editor wrote 5 posts. But if we take out the three most prolific writers (who account for more than half of the posts, with a special mention for the first one who wrote… 53 posts), the average falls to 2.4 posts per person… Some people didn’t write anything, some others only every six months. C’mon guys, our readers would like to know a little bit more about you! (By the way, I’m not very prolific either…)

It’s quite difficult to analyse these figures… There are very different opinions in the team about this blog, perhaps also different views of how it should look like and why it is important in our communication strategy. And, as in every team and for every project, there are some frontrunners and some stragglers. But maybe we could write a post asking colleagues about how they consider this blog?

Not a bad likeness, actually...

No, seriously Julien, it was great to see you and spend an hour throwing around some ideas about blogging, Europe, the constraints of institutional commuunication and, basically, How To Do It Better.

So we were curious to read what you would write afterwards. Well, now you’ve published your third Brussels Bubble post, all we can say is Yes, we agree! Especially with the following paragraph:

They looked really enthusiastic, interested and willing to get the visibility of the Parliament to a new level – and I can only ask all politically responsible persons within and outside the EP to support them in their endeavour!!

There was much more than that of course and I would really recommend it to anyone who wants to think about EU blogging and the issues which surround it.

We’re working on how to make this blog do more – we have ideas, some of which you helped inspire, others we have been developing for a while. We’d be grateful for your feedback.

Meanwhile. First step. A really short post.

A while ago, in February to be precise, I wrote a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears“, at the end of which I wondered “whether an article titled and tagged as this one is, especially when these terms appear in tempting conjunction with “European Parliament”, gets any bump in traffic?”. Well, since we’ve been in the mood for number crunching I went and checked.

Thanks for the traffic, Britney

And the answer is: since records began (as they say) “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears” is our “most read” page on this blog – homepage excepted – by a street. The page has been viewed over 3000 times, which is roughly six times the number of the next most popular page, the Team, and over seven times the score for the next real post. What’s more, it maintains a constant flow of readers, so, yes, some search terms are, well, timeless.

People are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it

It amuses me to imagine the disappointment of hopeful teenage internauts* who find themselves confronted with my earnest musings on search engine optimisation. Actually, I don’t have to imagine; I can see the disappointment in the 94.95% “bounce rate” on this page, and the average 1.34 minutes people spend there (so, actually, some-one must be reading it!).

What do we conclude? Well, the obvious I suppose: people are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it. (You didn’t need me to tell you that, perhaps?) Oh yes, and that if you want your comments section spammed by a world-full of internet sleazeballs, just publish a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears”. Now I know why Tibo looked heavenwards when he saw what I’d done. But he found a good spam filter, so all’s well that ends well, right?

Anyway, what about our real top posts? Here are the top five “real posts” on our blog so far in 2009 (in reverse order, of course):

no. 5

“Moderation in all things“. My own best scorer (without cheating), with some thoughts about moderation v. censorship on Parliament’s website.

no. 4

“New technologies: keeping up without being killed in the attempt“. A “guest blogger” piece, this, by Jaume, a.k.a. The Director, about how to deal with unruly WebCom subordinates. A recent publication, so probably has the legs to move up the rankings.

no. 3

“The importance of being normal” by Manja. This one involves Manja meeting her friend and normal person, Ola-dele Kuku, and getting a bit of real-world perspective on what we call Europe.

no. 2

Are people looking for love as well as sex?

“P.S: I love you“. Eirini talks about meeting real people at the 2009 Open Day. (Actually, honesty dictates that I reveal that this one has a highish bounce rate too – are people looking for love as well as sex?)

no. 1

“Europe is nothing but a big bad wolf“. Eirini again, this time priming her readers for the European elections. Well done, Eirini! A few more people reading our blog and we might even have got turnout to go up…

And finally, quality…

Since we are believers in quality, not only quantity, a “special mention” here also for the post with the longest average time spent by readers reading it. This goes to Tibo, for a post (alternatively cri de coeur) called “Living in a world of meetings“. It’s good, so why not go and read it, but be sure to spend at least 4 minutes 42 seconds doing so, so you don’t depress his record-winning online stamina.

So there you have it. Totally scientific and statistically rigorous, of course. By the way, do you think I got enough dodgy search terms into this article to make the top five?

*****

PS The Irish said “Yes” to Lisbon today. Should I have blogged about that? Never mind, the EP reaction is on Parliament’s website (on a Saturday!!!), thanks to our friends in the press service. Besides, blogwise, there’s always our soon-to-be new friend Julien Frisch to do the heavy lifting (looking forward to meeting you, Julien). I keep checking for the inevitable post.

PPS and * English language readers may have enjoyed a great new word: “internaut”. Yes, the French have this great neologism for internet users. I has always amused me. Just thought I’d share that.

Sometimes you have to look at the world as it is

This is probably exactly the wrong place, indeed a self-contradictory place, to hint at heretically relativising thoughts, but being away far from Brussels for a few weeks has made me reflect on digital divides of various sorts.

There is the usual one of course, between people with access to the internet and those without, but it is probably fair to say that, at least in the developed world, no-one need be cut off from the internet, any more than anyone need be cut off from TV or a telephone. No, the important digital divides now lie between the different ways in which people experience the internet. That’s why I mention my own difficult “reintegration” after the break – it made me think about what kind of internet user I am and how that is quite different from other people, including many I work with.

Disclosure: I am white, male, British, university-educated, mid-forties.  So now you know. I am not “generation Y“, I don’t think I ever used a computer at school, and at university I wrote all my essays longhand.  However, when I watch the television (which is not that often, but apparently more often than Generation Y’ers) I notice from the current crop of ”nostalgia” programming (70s and 80s) that my generation is in charge of the (mainstream) media. I further note that Obama is not that much older than me. So perhaps my generation is in charge of the world too. Closer to home, I work daily with computers and the internet, I like gadgets. So how do I use the internet?

The important digital divides now lie between the different ways in which people experience the internet

Email is integral to everyday life also outside work, but most non-professional messages are dross (i.e. advertising). Just a small minority actually get any attention, but these are mostly unimportant and/or unofficial.  I still want my electricity bill in the post. On paper.

I check news sites, often provoked to do so by the two or three automatic newsletters I have signed up for. But, if I’m honest, it’s always the same two or three sites and I still want the “proper” news regularly (meaning the BBC, TV or radio). I still subscribe to paper magazines – which I actually read, but almost never buy newspapers.

The only news where the web really dominates for me is tech news.  That seems appropriate.

I buy things online – books, music, travel tickets, car hire – but only from big, well-known companies. I research offline purchases too, but most real things I want to touch before I buy.  I can’t bring myself to feel comfortable about eBay.

And of course, I find things out from the internet: weather, location, addresses and phone numbers, missing facts, quotes, dates… “Look it up” is something which now basically means “google it”.

So far, so Web 1.0… So what about the much-vaunted social media, Web 2.0 and all that? I share photos and the odd video online, but for me this is an operation, not a spontaneous  everyday mobile experience (like in the adverts). Yes, Facebook and Twitter are on my every day must-check list, but I realise that I am largely a spectator. I want my “friends” to be people I know, and at least feel friendly towards. I like to see what they are up too and, because I know them, don’t see this as voyeurism. I love checking out the cool online videos and websites (here’s one from this week) people link to – this is the greatest use of social networks for me.  Increasingly, though, I realise that 95% of the tweets I follow are just boring (I could cut down to following about five people with few regrets, those who (as we used to say back home) “only say something if they’ve got something to say”). So I consume social media, but it occurs to me more and more that I struggle for inspiration as to what to post myself.  This just doesn’t seem to be an issue for many others, but for me it just doesn’t come naturally to tell people about the trivia of my life, and I so want my updates and tweets to be interesting and pertinent that I self-censor almost anything I might put for fear of wasting people’s time.  That leaves “professional” updates and tweets, but even there I feel the need to moderate the volume for fear of inundating friends and/or spoiling the personal nature of Facebook (no such qualms with Twitter).

So, you might say, if I’m so reticent about talking about myself online, why am I telling you all of this?

Because I need an example.  I do not claim to represent my generation, but I also suspect that I am not untypical: a web-consumer, but not usually a huge web-explorer; a frequent user, but cautious about getting stung; attracted by social media, but not instinctive or natural about opening up my life to all online. The internet is an extra dimension, but not a natural habitat. I am not clueless, but I am not as clued up as many who surround me (thank goodness). I am a digital immigrant (like Svetla’s mother-in-law).

The pressure is always to be cutting edge, to be doing the latest thing, surfing the latest trend.  We need to do that, but we cannot do ONLY that.

None of this is how it’s supposed to be.  Breathless opinionistas and bloggers imply that all web users are spontaneous and opinionated online, smart, faddy, creative, uninhibited, keen to interact, desperate to be heard. They are supposed to be citizens of the world, talking to the world and listening to the world. They flock to the latest hit online video or cool website, aggregate content with their RSS browsers, and share their every move with their friends (whom in their case they probably do not actually know) in real time, tweeting on their mobile phones.

Of course, many, many people are doing exactly that, and more.

But many more aren’t.  The internet is like society in general, made up of people with very different online lifestyles.  People have their groups and their habitual haunts, their comfort zones and their downtime, their professional worlds and their private lives. Some people are young, energetic, adventurous, maybe also gullible, impulsive and fickle, others are more staid, constant, cautious, but perhaps also more stable and committed.

Where am I going with all this?  I suppose it’s no more than a question of trying to stand back for a moment, relativising and remembering that even online the European Parliament has to talk to everyone.  Catering to one world (good thing), must not exclude catering to others (also good thing). The pressure is always to be cutting edge, to be doing the latest thing, surfing the latest trend.  We need to do that, but we cannot do only that.  If our notion of digital democracy is to focus ALL our efforts on Facebook and Twitter (or whatever’s next), we win plaudits from the in-crowd online, but we arguably open up a digital divide of our own, cutting off an otherwise completely sentient crowd of people (I know many of them) who may have heard of Facebook and Twitter, but still think it’s a bit of a waste of time. They exist, yes, they use the internet, and they vote…

This is a huge simplification of course. As we found during the election campaign, different online and traditional media are not sealed off from each other, but feed off each other constantly. Nevertheless, we should not forget that in the great big world of the internet, people still organise themselves into their own little worlds. One of our jobs is not to limit ourselves to yet another little world of our own.

Do I overstate my case?

I say the “happy position”, because it is great (and easy) to be the cool guys constantly bidding for an idea and able to moan virtuously when the ol’ fuddy-duddies didn’t get it. Trouble is, they did! 

We are on MySpace!

What changed? For us, three factors. First, the world changed (not just for us, but for us too). The internet became what it is, technology moved on and we entered an era where NOBODY could ignore strange phenomena like MEPs’ speeches getting a million views in two days on YouTube or improbable Scottish singers becoming 50-million-view sensations…

Second, Obama happened. Politicians everywhere saw tangibly, and in the highest-stakes democratic contest in the world, how clever use of the modern internet for political communication can mobilise and motivate in ways hitherto unsuspected. Rightly enough, suddenly all politicians want a piece of that particular action.

How many times have we girded our loins, prepared our pitch, convinced that our latest scheme for something dangerously hip on the internet would be a tough sell to our flinty-eyed superiors, only to find the door wide open and be told to get a move on?

Third, the European elections loomed. Let’s not beat around the bush, EU people are worried that turnout could decline once more and the elections fail to receive the attention they are due. So the moment is propitious for trying new ideas, heading in new directions. Turnout is not determined by EU communications campaigns, but the cry went up nonetheless “we have to do whatever it takes!”

So, in a short space of time, we have an environment where suddenly the seemingly impossible, or, better, unimaginable, became urgent, where ideas which had hitherto been pushed in vain sailed through with barely a squeak. It was disconcerting: how many times have we girded our loins, prepared our pitch, convinced that our latest scheme for something dangerously hip on the internet would be a tough sell to our flinty-eyed superiors, only to find the door wide open and be told to get a move on? Will it last? Maybe not, but these are good times for innovation and it is hard to imagine how the internet genie can now be persuaded back into the bottle.

So why a hint of nostalgia for those sunny days when we banged our heads against a wall of seemingly implacable web-scepticism? Well, we’ve gotta do it now, haven’t we! 

Someone once said be careful what you wish for… I sympathise. Once upon a time, the web team of the EP spent its days researching and writing articles for the headlines page of the EP website. It was a full time job, done well. It still is.  (A full-time job, done well). But today your friendly web editors have one or two other things to keep them out of mischief:

+ moderating comments for our interactive features on the elections website

+ administering a MySpace profile, blogging, posting videos and photos, making friends, moderating comments

+ from today, very much the same for a Facebook page

+ managing a Flickr account, uploading photos, responding to users (and a separate “Guest photographer” photstream)

+ blogging on this blog (no, that’s a pleasure!)

+ getting out there, spreading the word, linking, commenting, posting, networking

+ and (soon) managing a new YouTube channel (part of EUTube)

Meanwhile, we’re not out of ideas yet. More projects are in the pipeline, but  a degree of suspense about those for the moment.

It’s great, of course, and there is SO much more to be done (as a rather intimidating encounter with a man from the UK Central Office of Information recently brought home to me), but it’s also rather a lot of work in the meantime. It’s all very well to set up cool new social networking sites, to finally “get it” (thanks Nosemonkey), but once you’ve started there’s no going back. Social networks, by definition, need daily input, a truth the EP web team  is discovering by doing.

So sooner or later, recognising a reality that public administrations traditionally feel hard to deal with, our strategy will have to be as much about what we are going to stop doing as about all the new things we can find to keep us busy. Just for now though, those elections continue to loom, all hands are on deck and there are seven weeks to go (it says so on MySpace) and, dammit, we’re enjoying it!

Barack Obama's Facebook profile (www.facebook.com)

Today, I find myself in downtown Brussels in a hotel, surrounded by people without ties but all sporting the inevitable conference badges, where in a moment I am participating in a panel discussion entitled “What won it for Obama?”, alongside journalists, broadcasters and someone from the Obama campaign team (of whom we are all duly in awe). It is difficult to approach such a discussion without a feeling of deep inadequacy. The Obama campaign has set standards which online communicators across the entire world currently aspire to. In the case of the European Parliament, as I have had occasion to note, the effect has been to create a broad, perhaps rather vague, wish to get a bit of the action. I remain personally convinced that people who want their piece of the Obama magic don’t necessarily know what exactly they’re asking for and may be quite surprised when they find out.

The first thing always to say about the Obama campaign (the online component) is that it is not simply transferable to the European context. An electoral battle between two individuals, with charismatic candidates, pots of money, a clear choice and at stake the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation, is not, shall we say, the situation we find ourselves in as we contemplate our communications campaign on the European elections. Nor are we supporting a candidate, able to take partisan positions and deploy the passion inevitably unleashed by a US election. Passion may well exist for European politics – it should – but it does not find the straightforward bipartisan outlet that a US election offers.

So, as I say, humility. But humility does not mean that our job is unimportant. Our task is a more than honourable one, to encourage and generate interest and participation in a democratic process which, for all that people may not realise it, does matter hugely to everyone living in Europe. So let us look at Obama’s campaign and see what inspiration it does have to offer.

Social networking in particular allows people to make the campaign as much about themselves as about the candidate or the political party to which he belongs.

For me, the crucial point about Obama’s online campaign was its effectiveness in involving people in the campaign, making it about them as individuals. The campaign was able to make people feel that the election was about them: their concerns, their work, their families, but crucially also about their voices, their efforts, their contribution. Part of the genius of Obama’s small contribution strategy – whether or not that is really where his funding mainly came from – was that it gave contributors a part of Obama, gave them a direct personal stake in his campaign. Illusory perhaps in many ways, but this sense of involvement also found an outlet in the online tools deployed. Social networking in particular allows people to make the campaign as much about themselves as about the candidate or the political party to which he belongs. It also means that people get the message not necessarily from distant institutions, organisations or even candidates, but from their friends and neighbours. And as any advertiser will tell you, word of mouth, or its digital equivalent, works SO much better than any organisation telling you what to do or think. Perhaps this is also part of the oft-denounced atomisation of public opinion.  Sure, but if all the atoms are heading in the same direction, you get a tidal wave which results in the astounding gathering we saw in Washington DC’s mall on January 20th. (Ahem, I know, mixed metaphor…)

…

So what do we conclude in a European context? After the panel discussion, which has just taken place, I see many things we can’t do, but most of all I believe that we are at least right to do what we are trying to do, which is to involve people in the election, to make it about them. This, according to my fellow panelist, Ruth Spencer, who runs the Thinkaboutit competition, is also what that exercise seeks to achieve – to get people to think about European politics in terms of how it impacts on their lives. Even more, what the Obama campaigner, Jodi Williams, said made it clear that the Obama campaign was thinking in terms of people passing the message to other people.

How are we, in our modest way, hoping to achieve some of this? Some is already online: our elections website, online debates, this blog…, but much more is to come. Coming to the internet soon, your friendly neighbourhood European Parliament (maybe not as you know it) on social networking sites and much much more.

Who knows, maybe we’ll inspire the 2012 Obama re-election campaign :-).

So far, it has been an experiment.  We have been writing this as if it was for real, the idea being to demonstrate that it is possible for officials of the European Parliament to write about their work without trespassing on terrain properly reserved for politicians.  We also hoped to demonstrate that we do actually have something worthwhile to say, something which might be of interest to the outside world.  But, I’m sure you will understand, there have been two main problems with this.  First, we don’t really know how interesting this all is for others until others have the chance to read it and give us their comments. (We know we will be in for some aggro from the usual suspects, but on the whole we believe that people will accept that we are people doing a job, talking honestly about that job, and therefore that we’ll get useful, creative feedback.)  Second, mainly because so far we haven’t had feedback, it is difficult for us to maintain momentum, to keep up the enthusiasm for posting our entries in a void.

That’s why the time has come. We have now to go back to our bosses and ask them to look over this blog. What will they say?  Have we overstepped the mark? Is it better for officials to seen but not heard? Can we, when push comes to shove, be let loose on an unsuspecting world?

I would say this, wouldn’t I, but I think the time has come to take the risk.  It’s a small risk, to be set against what I believe are important potential benefits.  One of the greatest problems we fight against in our daily communications is the perception outside the Brussels bubble that the European institutions are faceless monoliths, impenetrable walls of steel and glass. One small thing we can do to counter this impression is to reveal the presence of real people inside.  Not earnest euro-automatons, not robots programmed to spout the institutional line, but individuals who think openly and honestly about their work, acknowledge the difficulties, see the funny side, and generally use their own minds.  That’s what we are, why not be straightforward about it? 

Remember too that the world of communications is changing. The web has wrought a huge change, especially among the young, who obtain most of their information from the internet. They live in a world where regular people talk to other regular people, where individuals say what they think and accept what others say in the same spirit. Web communication in this context is a conversation, not one-way information, and people need to converse with people.

We will respect constraints, but will be open about doing so.  There are limits, there are places we cannot go: our political opinions, personal judgements about members… well, it’s obvious.  It may be counterintuitive, but while revealing ourselves as human beings we will of course remain officials of the European Parliament!  Seriously, that’s the whole point, this is a blog we write as professionals, something implying respect for the proper constraints of our job, while being open and honest about what it means to do it.

I can say no more. It’s now up to others whether you will ever read this.