In one month I visited or participated in the work of all DG Communication Units – the Web Communication Unit, the Press Service, the Audiovisual Unit, the Media Services and Monitoring Unit and the Europarl TV Unit. What are my main conclusions? The European Parliament’s communication policy is certainly following the new challenges of information era. During the last year it has become more active than ever to respond to all the new requirements by using such new communication tools as Web-TV, Facebook and Twitter. The European Parliament provides all kind of information (written, oral, audiovisual and web) on the EU matters in all official EU languages. So no doubts – wonderful work is done here.

They say here they want to reach their "Latvian Grandmother" - well here the Speaker of the Latvian Parliament (and my boss), Gundars Daudze, shows how it's done! - from Saeimas Flickr page

Also in Latvia we’ve learned the lesson of information revolution and widely opened the door of the Latvian Parliament to the new media. We started to use Twitter in August 2009 and for the moment we have more than 1200 followers (it is remarkable achievement for Latvia). We have put a lot of effort to develop Youtube and Flickr account. But the question probably remains the same as for the European Parliament – how to sell this all these good products that we produce to the general public?

There is no simple answer to this question. But in my view one thing should be done for sure. There is a need to explore internal communication between the different units of the European Parliament. We cannot expect people to know and use all these wonderful products if even our colleagues from the third and fourth floor have only a remote idea about our work. In my opinion this is the general problem in all public institutions, in Latvia as well. We could ask a question in the Latvian Parliament – how many of you know that for almost a year the Parliament is in Twitter? And presumably not even a one sixth of all staff would be informed.

I understand that for such a huge institutional body as European Parliament to make it happen is even more complex task but still it’s worth trying. Only by working as one united body one can expect better results.

I want to thank all the people who were involved in my education process here in Brussels. I was positively impressed about the things you’ve done in a couple last years. And hopefully I will be able to take this good experience to Latvia.

Lāsma Lapinska

I’m honoured to work at this project, and I want to invest myself to make it bigger, nicer, and more powerful. It is a lab of experimentation and creativity, as it tests the potential (and pushes the limits) of institutional communication. Nowhere else, as far as I know, there is a community from so many different countries discussing political issues among them.  I was literally touched by the post on Thailand, when we talked about the riots in Bangkok. Some Thai people commented on it and many, many Europeans expressed them their solidarity and their sorrow, but also discussed the political situation there.

With over 76.000 fans, each post seen at least 100.000 times, and over 1.000 interactions per week, I think we shouldn’t be shy and say that this is one of the most successful experiences of communication on EU affairs ever.

Football time: the genius of Fred "en jouant avec son 'toshop"

Positive feed-back

In fact, we don’t need to auto celebrate ourselves, because we have a lot of positive feed-back, from inside and outside the House.

The other EU Institutions consider us frontrunners, and want to exchange experiences. The last example: a communication officer from EuropeAid at the Commission said he is “a big fan of the Facebook editorial team of the Parliament” and he would like to share with us some best practices.

After the chat with Heidi Hautala on human rights on Facebook, her assistant wrote to me that the results were “very impressive” and that the MEP “was very happy to participate and would do it again for sure :)”, encouraging us to “continue the excellent work!”.

FB fans appreciate our work, and they expressed it many times. Just over the last week, Marcello Toni thanked us for organising the chats, Tremopoulos Michalis encouraged us to “keep up the good work!!”and Mark Valdam said he likes “funny organisations like the EP :-))”.
…and some secrets to reveal
So far so good. Of course we can do much better, and I’ll write another post on what we can and should do in the future. For the time being, just two little confessions.
1) It is a serious thing – When “the pillar” left, I didn’t sleep for one week. I was given more or less informally the responsibility of coordinating the magic Facebook team, and this gave me a good dose of stress. The page took off and grew thanks – among others – to the creativity, restless effort and “geekiness” of Christian. I don’t know if I can keep up, but I will do all my best because I believe that this communication platform has a great potential to get Europe a little bit closer to citizens, but also to get citizens closer to European decision makers, and maybe most important, to get Europeans closer to each other.
2) But you don’t have to take yourself (and the others) too seriously. Do you know how the best posts that we publish see the light? Normally we exchange tonnes of emails, and at some point somebody comes up with a funny, sometimes hilarious email, that the others – crazily enough – take seriously. And then it goes on Facebook and gets a lot of comments and “likes”: the magic of Facebook!

For me, the important thing is to keep this spirit alive and…enjoy your work!

Looks impressive... In many ways it is impressive too

So this is what it’s like? After more than a decade and a half as a journalist, I am now a source… Not a real source, you understand, I will gladly leave that to those thus inclined or employed, but one of the many invisible hands behind the EP’s web page. One of the… yes, one of the “faceless bureaucrats”. What the true “sources”, the MEPs, say and do, we publish.

Wait. Isn’t that journalism? No it isn’t, for the simple reason that we are actually employed by our “source”, but it’s certainly as close as it gets. What we publish, citizens read, either directly on the site or because journalists use it as a source for what they publish or broadcast.

And as the absolute newbie of the team (well, Marko our Slovenian editor with whom I share my office is technically even newer, but only by a fortnight, so it doesn’t really count) I can vouch for one thing: everything here is as conscientiously and objectively researched before it gets published as anything you will read in your newspaper. We don’t express our own opinion through what we write, but then journalists really shouldn’t either, should they? After all that’s why all newspapers have a dedicated “opinion” column and dedicated “columnists”.

A few people did actually ask after my first few days with the unit, not what I thought about the job (everyone asked that) but if something surprised me. Well, if I had to point out just one thing, it would be how similar it is to my former job, from the actual reporting to the very warm welcome by everyone when I first arrived…

Ok, its is my first jab at this and it isn’t supposed to be profound, - I formally dislike expressing profound thoughts unless they are really, truly profound- But it certainly is de profundis…

So, want to know exactly what happened in the EP today, yesterday or last week? It’s here. Want to know what is coming up? It’s here as well. Want to know both sides of an argument in the hemicycle? Yes, we usually offer that too and if we didn’t write about it ourselves, check our links, we have you all set up and ready for the jump.

Anyway… hello everyone, good morning and good luck.

I am, so they say, a eurocrat. I work for a European Institution, which means, in the popular imagination, that I am not only a eurocrat, but also a “faceless bureaucrat”. So, as I go about my business in the outside world, I should look the part, shouldn’t I? Meaning (at least in North-West Europe) I should don a nice anonymous business suit and a tie to face my audience. But wait; the event I am attending tomorrow in Dublin is a “Web Summit“, focusing an New Media, Social Media, Online Campaigning, and other hip things that are often written with excitable capital letters. The list of speakers is intimidatingly full of dudes, techie guys who do cool things with internet and wouldn’t be seen dead in a suit and tie. Yep, I’m talking the black polo-neck and designer jeans brigade here. *

Three delegates on their way to the Web Summit

Me, I’d struggle to define myself as fashion conscious. More like generally clueless, leavened somewhat by over twenty years exposure to lots of Italians, who have at least made me aware of some basic no-noes. Nonetheless, true male Brit of my generation, I feel utterly out of my depth when the sartorial going gets tough. Hence the deep insecurities I have suffered since being precipitated into the world of the social internet, especially when faced with gatherings of new media types who live at the interface between state-of-the-art tech and media, thus doubly cool. Suddenly, the office uniform just won’t do any more; there is a different dress code to consider, but one which creates the dilemma I mentioned above.

The worst thing would be to be the eurocrat-trying-to-be-cool, surely?

Clothes send messages, that I know. But what message should I be sending? The worst thing would be to be the eurocrat-trying-to-be-cool, surely? It’s like your dad trying to disco dance… But I don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb either, the poor benighted Web 1.25-er who probably hasn’t aggregated his twitter feed with his LinkedInFaceSpace yet… Intimidated, moi?

So, do I go hell-for leather, all out for an improbable Keanu Reeves/Matrix look, or do I go for wimpy compromise? When push comes to shove, do I wear that tie I put in my suitcase or not?

If you could let me know by 7.45 am tomorrow, Irish time, that’d be really helpful.

* By the way, I use the terms “dude” and “guy” advisedly. Of 28 speakers, only three are women. I’m pretty sure they won’t be wearing ties.

I have asked myself several times who I am, why I am here and why just during this time and I quickly realised that it is me who decides who I am, why I am here, where I want to go and why I ‘m doing it. Yet I have to keep in mind that it is not every dream that come to past, some do, but other never will.

Every person is a champion to me and that includes me, being the only one beside my “siblings” to win the course to my mother’s egg in her womb, I would otherwise not be alive today. Unfortunately some champions realise their dreams and other never do.

The most amazing thing with this position is that I m a little fish, but still I m a fish, because a fish is a fish….

In Sweden, before I came to Web Communication unit, everybody – especially my friends and relatives – was so amazed by the fact that I will come to the EP, they did not recognize the fact that I was about to be just a simple stagiaire – the smaller fish in the sea. The most amazing thing with this position is that I’m a little fish, but still I’m a fish, because a fish is a fish….

Never underestimate my imaginations and dreams, they can become true.

Thinking about this unit, I can see that  everyone is a champion even here. They have realised their dreams by working at the EP. I m happy to surround myself with these history-makers, and I can hear myself thinking: “if they did it, so can I”. I often remind myself of the fact that my dreams are not suppose to die just because I’m a simple trainee. I suppose that the web-com-history-makers probably had dreams about one day being able to work at the European parliament and realised it, but I can not stop thinking that they maybe have other dreams that they would want to see realised. However, are they now my inspiration, they are making me comprehend that my dreams can also be true if I just never forget about them. They are the ones that keep me a life.

Great dreams often lead you to other discoveries

The greatest thing about this dreams-theory is that, by pursuing them I know that I will realise other even greater things that I had not in mind when I started dreaming my dreams. The fact is that I wanted to be a journalist since 2 years of age and when I was admitted to the programme of media and communication it was for me a great moment.

However, after all most 2 years, the other student and I were told about the fact that it was included in the programme to study something else under a period of 1 year. I was really disappointed and decided to try with International Relations and quickly realised that it was an even greater experience than media, it was a non-but-come-true-dream, because I afterwards fall so deep in love with it. The whole world seems suddenly to be open to me, nothing could stop me now, I learned about thing that always wanted to know, such as the foreign policy of the US for instance…

It is hard sometimes to believe in oneself when every thing around seems so dark, but I know that even when the night never seems to end, the day will always come and the sun will always shine.

Soon I will be like these history-makers that I found myself surrounded with. I just have to accept the fact that I am at this the moment a simple trainee in this unit, even so I believe that I’m a person that others will want to be surrounded with, because I’m a big dreamer and have a lot of crazy but probably interesting ideas in my mind. I believe that together we can help each other’s dreams come to pass.

A history-maker does not have to study history at a PhD level, he can be someone like Ikea’s founder who started is business by repairing furniture that he founded abandoned on the street. Today IKEA is one of the most visited furniture’s companies in the whole world.

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?

Sic transit gloria elegi or something like that – but was it worth it? From our professional point of view, and taking in account the fact that our job is mainly to publish news about the European Parliament in 22 languages and in a way my Latvian Grandma can understand, yes it was. And I am not only referring to the professional fun we had, despite the stress and the really heavy load of work. No, I am refferring to concrete figures: the stats of our website. Now, I will not give any figures, but I can provide some comparison.

This was the night.

In the first six months of 2009, the European Parliament’s website welcome 93% of the visits, 97% of the visitors and dispatched 87% of the viewed pages it had during the full year 2008. Had the Elections been set up a week later, we would have had in six months the equivalent of last year frequentation and consultation.

During this first semester, our monthly average number of visits was 1.85 times the monthly average for 2008, visitors average was 1.94 and viewed pages 1.74.

Well, not so bad for a *boring* institution and *complicated* elections.

May – best month ever
May 2009 will remain for ever not only as the first month in which I became closer to my forties than my thirties, but also as the month with the highest frequentation we ever had: 2.92 times our 2008 monthly average for the visits, 3.15 times for the visitors and 2.09 times for viewed pages.

In the first six months of 2009, the European Parliament’s website welcome 93% of the visits, 97% of the visitors and dispatched 87% of the viewed pages it had during the full year 2008.

And what did all those visitors read most? Here are the ten most read articles on our Headlines in May:

1° United in diversity: Rules for the European Parliamentary elections

2°- “Internet has to be free, but not regulation free” – Harbour on telecoms package

3°- FAQs on political parties and party politics

4°- No agreement on working time directive opt out

5°- Mums and dads at home with newborns: how long should they have off?

6°- Election countdown: 10 things you should know about the European Parliament

7°- You decide what tomorrow’s news will be

8°- European elections – Delicious!

9°- Quick A- Z of MEPs’ duties and obligations

10°- Animals used in science, seal ban debated Monday

What I like in this top ten is the fact that the digital crowd which came to visit our website because they, somehow, have heard about the European elections took the opportunity to read some stories on other subjects. Half of those most read stories deal with news from the Parliament and not specifically with the elections themselves. It’s one thing to repeat and repeat that the European parliament actually decide on every day’s life issues, it is another to read it on the website.

June: almost as good as May.

We were all very happy when the European elections days finally came, because most of us had worked on the communication campaign and the editorial coverage since January 2008. It was a long expected Election night the one we had (and twitted in 22 languages) and we were relieved that it finally took place. Now, we have to deal with some kind of elections blues, but that’s another story.

But on a purely statistical ground, the elections days came too soon. One week later and June would have beaten May 2009. June made just 2% less visits and visitors than May.

The ten most read stories of June 2009 were:

1°- Getting ready for a new start — what’s on the agenda?

2°- Centre-right clear winners in European elections

3°- European elections: where to find the results

4°- After the elections – now what happens?

5°- ONE: 1 vote

6°- EU-twitter !

7°- 2009 Euro Elections- turning the tide against apathy

8°- Choice boxes – a conversation across Europe

9°- THREE: 3 main institutions of the EU

10°- More FAQs on the European elections

We reached the peak of the electoral dramaturgy and it is quite logical that “results” and “next steps” are found at the top of this podium.

Since the Elections, the traffics has come back to last year’s level at the same period. It’s a bit soon to see if we’ll keep some of our new visitors in our daily frequentation. We usually do: after our last major banner campaigns, we increased our daily average by 15-20%.

Summer time being definetely better spent in all other kind of surfing and outdoors activities, our daily frequentation will now enter its sleepy phase until September. During this summer break, we will publish some light contents on the European Parliament’s website and, possibly, totally different posts on this blog. Let’s keep in touch, as they say.

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

Frankly, I find all of this a bit of a shame. From a communications perspective it’s tragic.

It’s not that there isn’t real politics behind all this. The fight for positions and influence has been tough, the deals which result in the outcomes to be formalised this week come after tough negotiations and sometimes bitter fights. Heads of government across Europe even get involved. There are winners and losers. Some are in, others are out. For the well-informed observer, the process is a fascinating one. Yes, it’s even fun to watch.

Trouble is we can’t talk about it. At least not to our readers.

From the outside, it can be hard to tell what's really going on. (Photo EP)

In house, the rumour mill has been in gossip-fuelled overdrive. Unsurprisingly, the Parliament is full of people with a taste for political gossip, who love nothing better than to trade stories, even where they have no direct stake in the outcome, which, of course, in our little hothouse, they frequently do. Acquaintances in the political groups with titbits to offer about, say, what latest trade of a chairmanship against a vice-presidency is in the offing take on the aura of oracles, their delphic utterances propelling a new story into the heady swirl of speculation. For those thus inclined, the hard-core political geeks and anoraks, it is also possible to add some judicious number-crunching into the mix. One can for example immerse oneself in the arcane delights of the d’Hondt mathematical formula for the attribution of positions in a system of proportional representation (Parliament even has its own variation on this fiendish calculus: “d’Hondt continu“). Empirical Britishers, brought up on cricket stats and an unwritten constitution, may prefer to delve into murky precedents, long-standing gentlemen’s agreements and case law.

This is the messy end of democratic politics, at the same time highly technical and deeply human.

There’s no question that the whole thing is highly entertaining. This is the messy end of democratic politics, at the same time highly technical and deeply human. So it’s a pity we are unable to share the joy of politics with the outside world. I fully understand of course. It would be – from an institutional perspective – a highly risky enterprise to communicate on the ongoing shenanigans, to speculate on outcomes and to report the latest word on the street (word on Place Lux, in our case perhaps) to our avid readership.

Risky but fun. There is a serious point here. The fact that so much of the real politics takes place off camera produces the impression among uninformed outsiders (i.e. most people) that everything just carries on in the Parliament as if the elections never happened. Most of the cliffhangers, the battles, the political realignments and, above all, the personal stories linked with them remain invisible to the public, leaving the impression of a dull, technocratic parliament, where everything appears to be pre-cooked and most elections to positions of power seem to produce  North Korean style majorities endorsing the will of the men in grey suits. It’s not the reality, but it could stand as a metaphor for the EU as a whole: impermeable and technocratic seeming from the outside, fascinating if you can get under the surface. Perhaps, as many have remarked before, we need a European West Wing to tell people what this place is really like.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the week to come.  It’ll be interesting, but maybe not as interesting as it should be.