Fishing for public attention is the daily business of politicians; therefore it is always a pleasure to witness some original and positive ideas in this respect. One such election project was a Czech MEPs idea to cycle from Prague to Strasbourg and to announce it as a central pre-election promise. “If you vote for me and I get elected, I will pedal all these six hundred forty seven kilometres or so to get to the Strasbourg plenary!” (He told us about his project when he was one of eight new MEPs we interviewed for the website)

Well, he did it! And in order to attract the well-deserved attention, he took a shower, shaved, combed his long hair and instead of slipping into a business suit, he put his cycling gear back on and walked into the plenary chamber for all to see as if he would be saying: “Look, I am a cyclist! In case you wonder why I am dressed like that … I came by bike to the plenary … yes … not just from the hotel, but all the way from my home county … the Czech Republic … this “far away country of which we (you) know little …”.

What a voter-friendly and ecologically inspiring deed! We can sit back in our chair and start daydreaming … “if we all could take our bikes to work, or even to Strasbourg … what a wonderful world this would be …”.   

Now to be honest, I was a bit jealous at first. I like bike tours as well. However, somehow I do not have the luxury to take out twelve days in order to go to work, however … to be honest, neither did he. In the middle of his commuting, on his “way to work”, soaked wet by sudden rain showers somewhere in the Bohemian-Bavarian borderland, reality caught up with him – the next day his presence was required at a political group meeting in Brussels. “How to cover the distance between Nuremberg and Brussels by bike in a day?” might have crossed his mind. Well, the only way is air travel of course and there goes the purity of the ecological commitment … but let’s not be unfair.

The life of a politician is not easy. Especially if one does not live up to election promises made. Our cycling MEP did indisputably live up to his election promise. This is even more impressive because his political profile is not centred on ecological themes, but rather on the reduction of regulation. And being part of a club with a majority of middle-aged men who maybe give the impression that they prefer limousines, for his cycling exploits at least he is destined to stand out during the coming five years. A nice political PR job!

PS: The bike trip eventually turned out to be 871km long and was concluded with a bitter aftertaste. Edvard’s fellow traveller, Czech globe trotter František Šesták, who has cycled tens of thousands of kilometres around the world, was deprived of his bike in Strasbourg. After having served him for more than 32,000 km, it was stolen. Links:

http://www.kozusnik.eu/

http://tinyurl.com/lkrzor – Edvard Kožušník on Facebook

Oh well, as hardships go, it’s not as bad as some, let’s be honest.

The emerging consensus is that the elections awareness campaign went well. Speaking parochially, we believe the online part of it particularly so. Several members of the team report approaches from journalists eager to find out about our ventures into the social media. Students of communication visit us to find out more, and I personally find myself invited here and there to present the online campaign to a surprising array of audiences. I was most amused by one inquiry, which reached me via a colleague, asking who was the “web guru” in charge of the campaign. I’ve been called many things, but never that. If only he knew…

What will be on their screens this autumn?

Of course, indulging in a feelgood factor for a while is fine, but the time is coming now for some serious evaluation. What worked, what didn’t, what did but wasn’t worth it… We need some number-crunching and bean-counting. At the end, we’ll have to decide, in the first instance, whether we stick with all the platforms we have opened or not.

However, it’s a bit more complicated than that. First, while we’re busy thinking, the internet is moving on. As I write, Twitter is turning out to be one of the major collateral stories of the unrest in Iran. The US State Department reportedly intervened to reschedule routine Twitter maintenance to avoid critical downtime in Tehran. This is the same Twitter that plenty of normal people, in my experience, hadn’t even heard of two or three weeks ago. So who knows what’ll be hot when the European Parliament gets down to work in earnest after the summer break?

Parliament will be working, going about its business, legislating, doing politics… Whither our  social web tools in this context?

Second, we have to consider the purpose of what we are doing. All of the really new things we have done – interactivity on the website, social networking, viral tools – have been launched in the context of a pre-electoral communications campaign. We were people with a message: “Parliament matters to you, so vote!” From now on, we’re in a new context; Parliament will be working, going about its business, legislating, doing politics… Whither our  social web tools in this context? Is it still about communicating a message, or, by its  very nature, more about participation and interaction in the political process? (“e-democracy”?) What does that imply about how MEPs are associated with what we do? And what does the answer to that question imply about our all-important institutional ethic and status: communicating for the Institution, not its component parts?

Third, entry barriers have tumbled. Suddenly everyone wants to be in on the act. It is safe to predict that, before long, most Members, all political groups and many others in the EU political-institutional world will be venturing forth on the social networks. What will this mean for us? How will this ecosystem develop? What will be our place in it? How will the expectations of users be affected?

So much to think about. Moreover, as politicians often say in a different context: never forget your base! All the flash-harry social stuff is all very well, but we have a day-job too, maintaining an online information and news service worthy of the name. This has to mean a serious upgrade to our flagship website, in the direction of the kind of multimedia, multichannel, interactive service users now expect. All this in the full range of languages and, of course, with top quality content.

“Now what?” is therefore a pretty big question. To answer it, we need some serious thinking. I hope we are granted the time and the space to do it.  I also think we need help. We may like to see ourselves as trailblazers – in our perhaps undemanding peer group we probably are – but others have been in similar enough situations to have a thing or two to teach us. So we need to strike a balance between following our instincts and some good old fashioned professionalism. We need feedback. (Some on our Facebook page here – 18 June). We maybe need to go and find a real web guru to talk to.

Yes, maybe only 10% of projects make it, but that doesn’t mean the other 90% fail.

Talking of which… Guess who was in Parliament yesterday. No lesser figure than Google co-founder and ubergeek Larry Page. He had many fascinating things to say. I was most impressed by his remarks on how you foster innovation and come up with the Next Big Idea. In part, his message was about money: it has to be freely available and available to be lost (as in Silicon Valley), but it was the other half of his answer which caught my ear in the context of what we do. It’s about the attitude to risk taking. Yes, maybe only 10% of projects (or start-ups) make it, but that doesn’t mean the other 90% fail. Most of the 90% don’t get where they intended, but lay the foundations for Another Big Idea, create networks which end up creating unexpected results, or simply teach their protagonists how to get it right next time.

In our modest way, perhaps we need most of all to heed that message. Just try; if it doesn’t work out, there are plenty of other ideas that will. We just need the investors who are prepared to lose their (in our case) metaphorical “million bucks” in the process as an investment for the long term gains.

It's difficult to find new challenges after the elections... Photo by Koshyk on Flickr

And now? What’s next? After the tension of the election night (“Here are the first results! Tweeeeeeeeeeeet please! Asap!”), we’re coming in what I call a “post-electoral depression”. Nothing matters any more. Day-to-day work seems quite boring. What’s the aim of the articles we write, if not to increase the turnout in the elections?

On top of that, after having been in the “centre of the world” – or the “centre of Europe”, with hundreds of thousands of visits (i.e. readers) each day, nobody cares about us now. The stats are going down. We will become anonymous again on the web. No banner campaign, no Google adwords. Well, is that strange to be a normal citizen, waking up each morning for going to work instead of changing the world!

Retrospectively, overmotivation is probably dangerous. We should now wait five years until we can experience again an electoral campaign. For the time being, I will go on holidays. Just to forget a little bit the work, just to remind me that there are some wonderful things in the world which have nothing to do with my job. And when I will come back, I will be highly motivated for the next challenges. Because fortunately, we will find new goals, new projects, new deadlines … La vie est un éternel recommencement, en somme…

Twitter HQ - the team gets its briefing

So we are finally there, and some of us are trying to come to terms with the concept of life-without-elections. I know this must seem strange to an outside world on whose consciousness these elections impinge as just one of several matters to which they might dedicate a moment’s attention, but in our professional universe they have been pretty much the only story in town for a while now.

However, there is still the grand denouement to be played out. For us, this brings with it a little bit of extra (self-inflicted) upheaval, as we have decamped en masse to temporary accommodation close to the heart of the action on Sunday night – “results night“.

For the kind of coordination this will require, the old methods are the best – someone will stand up and shout.

Amid the clamour of ongoing construction – TV sets being set up, screens for results, special facilities for journalists, spectacular lighting - we have taken possession of our little piece of prime real estate. That’s 50 square metres just off the plenary chamber (the epicentre of results night), now occupied by 31 people, 31 PCs, one allegedly networked printer, two small TVs to follow the news, nine telephones (some of which actually work) and a smattering of wifi-equipped personal laptops for the would-be footloose and fancy-free. A Belgian fire officer came by, grimaced a little, but gave us a clean bill of health as long as we make sure our chairs are stowed under the tables when we leave our desks.

Yes, it is quite tight…  So just as well we get on.

All this adds up to “Twitter HQ”. We wanted to be in the thick of it, so that, as events unfold on Sunday night, we are in the midst of the action, twittering merrily in 22 languages, giving our followers a blow-by-blow insider’s account of election night. We also took the view that, for the kind of coordination this will require, the old methods are the best – someone will stand up and shout. No-one will be out of earshot. 

Meanwhile, we’ll get to know each other a little bit better, especially perhaps as night follows day on Sunday and we plough on into the wee hours relaying the outcome of the poll in remote Finnish provinces or little-known Greek islands.

I expect us to get through election night without serious outbreaks of violence.

I will blog another time about the team and how magnificently it has risen to all the new election-related stuff asked of it. Suffice it to say for now that this is an outfit with a high capacity for intensive teamwork, that I expect us to get through election night without serious outbreaks of violence, and that we will doubtless look back fondly to this as a positive group bonding experience after we return to our usual offices.

So we’re set. Next stop Sunday night. Follow us on Twitter!

Another orange envelope on its way to the Netherlands (Pietro Naj-Oleari, 20-05-2009)

Each member of our team will be voting since there is always time to vote. Here at the EP headquarters we will on election night be as much waiting for the results to know how the “camembert“  will be divided as we will be waiting for the turn-out figures.

As an incentive for candidates to continue campaigning: one third of our staff has not made up their mind yet less than two weeks before the elections. What everybody does know, is whether they will be voting for a candidate in their home country or for a Belgian candidate. Remember, for European elections it is possible to vote in the EU-country of residence. Only three people are saving the honour of our unit by making a true European choice: they will be voting in Belgium. Well, actually only two people are saving our honour since one is voting in Belgium because his own government took away his voting rights!

In case you did not make up your mind yet, continue reading to find some tips and tricks to make your choice.

Firstly, if you still barely know what the European Parliament is made of, watch this video explaining the groups with a chocolate cake. It seems the British conservatives taste deliciously! Bear in mind that many parties running for election are not represented in the current Parliament. You can check out the voting lists in your country  to know all participating parties in these elections. You will find the lists on the right site on your county page, once they’ve become available.

You may have a cross-party issue on your mind you want to fulfil. You may want to vote for a candidate that will look after gay rights, or you may want to vote for a MEP with special attention for disabled people. Just contact the spokesperson of the party of your choice and ask if there is a candidate on their list looking after your specific interests.

Finally, many candidates are using this year the social media for their campaign. The candidate you want to know more about may have put a video on YouTube, a page on Facebook or keep a blog and in any case (s)he will have a website. If you were able to find this blog, you certainly will be able to find more info online to make up your mind! 

Most citizens will be mainly interested in knowing how their party did. But what if in the next elections turn-out figures would be as exciting to them as they are to us…. Suppose we would slightly change the rules for the elections in 2014 and let the citizens of each EU-country really get the politicians they deserve…. by number.

We could link the number of MEPs per country to the turn-out in the country (we would need to find a solution for Belgium where voting is compulsory). If citizens would know they could be poorly represented – not necessarily by ideology but by nationality - in case they would not show up, they may be very keen on voting to gain an extra MEP or two for their country. How exciting the elections would be in that case ……

No, I am not only dreaming and actually did last week a down-to-earth thing and casted my vote. So one more orange envelope is on its way to The Hague… And no, I will not tell here what lady I voted for.

“When men say they cannot find a suitable women, I would say: you should have your eyes checked.”

With the elections for Parliament only one month away, this is the time to finally achieve a 50/50 representation in the hemicycle. In order to achieve this, it would help if more women would vote and that they would vote for a woman. But would that do the trick? To start, we would also need a good representation of women on the voting lists.  A glance at the lists of the seven Dutch parties that are currently represented in the European Parliament, however, does not lead to much optimism: only two parties have a woman as a frontrunner….

Support the 50/50 campaign

Dutch Commission Kroes is equally pessimistic. She would like to see two of the six top positions that will or have been opened this year on EU (President of the European Commission, EP-President, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and in case the Lisbon Treaty enters into force, President of the European Council) and NATO-level occupied by a woman but said this week: “You need to have about eternal life before half of the politicians is a woman”. Assuming the 67-years old Commissioner does not have eternal life, wouldn’t it not be nice she would actually be able to witness equal representation in her lifetime? Kroes said to find it strange that there are not even women in the picture for the position of EP President: “When men say they cannot find suitable women, I would say: you should have your eyes checked”. The link to the interview is here for those who read Dutch.

If you want to support this cause, sign the “Females in Front” petition that is about the four different leaders of the European Union that will be appointed during the next 12 months only (not about NATO). The humble aim of this campaign is that one of them should at least be a woman.

You can also sign the 50/50 petition that aims at getting women on those high EU-posts as well but is also about “putting  pressure right now on all national political parties and require them to ensure the equal representation and ranking of women and men on their electoral lists and to include gender equality as a priority in their programmes.”

“The reason why women have not yet achieved equality, despite the fact that they have been trying for decades, is the idea that they can do it by themselves, that they do not need men.”

Women’s Rights Committee Chair Anna Záborská recently gave us an explanation for this male-domination: “The reason why women have not yet achieved equality, despite the fact that they have been trying for decades, is the idea that they can do it by themselves, that they do not need men.”

In order to achieve the 50/50 representation we indeed need the help of men. They are certainly not unwilling or unintersted as a Eurobarometer poll showed in February that 83% of women and 76% of men agree that women can bring a different perspective to politics. So we can gently ask them to vote for a woman but will it be enough?
Perhaps men do need an incentive and we can learn something from the women’s rights movement in Kenya who announced on 1 May to boycot sex for a week in order to enforce better rights (today they will be able to take stock). The sad situation of women in Kenya cannot be compared to the situation of women in the European Union, but we may copy some of their good action practices and… improve them on the way…..

So, tell your bed partner as a little reminder that if on election night it seems there will be no equal representation of women in the European Parliament, there will be no sex during the whole summer (until the next elections would be better but that may have devastating consequences for Europe’s gloomy demographic crunch) .

And finally a plea to the 368 male MEPs that will be elected for the next term: follow in the footsteps of MEPs Raül Romeva i Rueda , Giovanni Rivera and Konrad Szymański : elect twenty lucky devils among yourselves to join the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality committee. They have plenty of work!

With thanks to Lena and Raffaella for their suggestions.

P.S. Still have not read enough about this topic. Go here, even if it were only to check out the great illustration

The latter happened to me last week. In an interesting coffee break with some hard working colleagues who are totally devoted to the communication campaign, I learnt that in some countries, like Spain, the chicken of the installation is bilingual. It means that its messages are delivered not only in Spanish, but also in Catalan, Basque and Galician.  

Maybe this ability with languages is one of the reasons why this motive has become one of the most popular among the citizens. Even if cat lover Thibault thought everyone would fall in love with the cat and the lion, the truth is that the “beauty queen” of the campaign is the chicken. By popular request. One of them even got a love letter in the form of graffiti: “Je t’aime, poulet” (I love you, chicken). A public love declaration many women and men would dream of. Well, the chicken got it in just a week: it was love at first sight.  

In other cities passion towards the giant chicken has reached a point I could have never imagined. Like a pop idol, one of them was “assaulted” by fans that took away the labels dressing it. As the campaign invites voters to do, someone in Madrid made a choice: they wanted a naked chicken.

The naked chicken in Madrid (photo from the EP Flickr account)

Some said it was vandalism (“the chicken was vandalised in Madrid”). I prefer to understand it as another love declaration. A passionate one: you know what they say about Mediterranean people and Latin Lovers.

I must confess that at the beginning I could not understand why so much noise for a chicken. But now I have to admit that a giant chicken that travels all around the European Union, doing stripteases if the fans so require, and speaking so many languages (more than 25!) to get closer to the citizens, has a kind of a charm.

Nice work, and the bar set suitably high for future satirists…

The emails were flying around the office this morning, with everyone selecting their favourite from Cédric’s versions of the “It’s your choice” theme.

I liked the one below, not least because it provides – a posteriori – the perfect illustration for last week’s poll on the elections website about the internet*. In the spontaneous office survey this morning, others were however preferred, but for reasons of impartiality, I shall not reveal which.

Nice work, and the bar set suitably high for future satirists…

* Our poll asked whether the internet was out of control and whether it needed more regulation (yes, it needs better regulation; yes, leave it alone; no, it’s fine as it is).  The results were evenly split three ways. We will be publishing all the archived results of our polls soon.

Since we’re on the subject, why not answer this week’s tough question about whether you want more holiday!

http://www.puisney.eu/la-campagne-de-pub-que-vous-ne-verrez-jamais