european parliament
Help! It’s a blank sheet moment…
It’s a classic fantasy. You can start with a blank sheet, your options open, all choices yet unmade, no idea too crazy, no limits except the limits of your own creativity… I refer, naturally, to designing a website (what else?).
That was the year that was
One year ago. December 2008. I just remember being incredibly stressed out; and, remarkably, that Tibo was even more so. We were up against the deadline for signing the “online” contract with our agency. We maybe didn’t realise it at the time, but in that contract the shape of WebCom’s annus mirabilis could already be discerned.
Professional chatterboxes
Already thought by some of our colleagues to pass our working hours in ways that are not quite serious, we have just started a new line of work which will give them another stick to beat us with. Yes, we now – officially – spend our time chatting online.
The photo man, seen but unseen
A quick plug for Pietro, our photographer. His is the most visible work in our team, as he illustrates just about everything we produce, and indeed provides even more illustrations without us producing anything to go along with it. And yet, poor lad, he’s not very visible himself. Perhaps it’s his shy retiring nature…
Lisbon and how to sell a Treaty with a new Parliament
Selling chocolate and soft ice at the age of 15 was not a challenge. The customers came, graving for it, and happily paid for their sweet treat. Now, over 20 years later, the challenge is of another scale. I’m working on a tough sell – Lisbon, the EU’s notorious reform treaty, and the new EP in the making.
Post-match analysis: Personal Democracy Forum in Barcelona
Conferences are like London buses. You go for ages without one showing up, then they all come along at once. Suffice it say that, thanks to an improbable number of internet/politics conferences in a very short period, I feel I am becoming something of a connaisseur of the genre.
Meeting Mr Rasmussen
It is quite a heady experience to sit in the office of the head of the world’s largest military alliance and ask him questions about global geo-politics. Geographically, at least, our questions ranged from Brussels to Moscow via Washington and Kabul.
Guys in black and no ties
Dilemma. The sartorial angst of the eurocrat-turned-web-dude can become a major preoccupation, especially when facing a new oh-so-cool peer group in public. Damn! I haven’t a thing to wear…
European Parliament “Question time” – can it deliver?
Many people are hoping that question time at 3 pm this afternoon will deliver a lively and memorable debate when Members bowl questions at Commission President José Manuel Barroso. To move things along and prevent waffle they are limited to 1 minute – for the question and response. Questions on any subject will come from [...]
Make your step on an unknown path
A few days ago I was discussing with my colleagues about how and why we came to Brussels. I filled in my application for auxiliary agent (temporary limited employment) the very last evening before the deadline. I found it by accident on some Czech government page. Few weeks later I received a phone call from [...]
The day the system broke down
This week started with a huge system failure. The first thing we noticed was that “Outlook” was not responding anymore. It left – for half a day as we discovered later – with no mention of when it would come back, and we couldn’t write e-mails to each other anymore. It became a day of [...]
A blogging guru visits
It was truly fascinating to meet – in the flesh!!! – euro uber-blogger Julien Frisch this week when he paid a visit to our humble faceless office block. Rarely-seen editors emerged blinking into the light to proffer a hand, impressionable young web-editors jostled for a sighting of a local myth, glamourous young ladies solemnly vowed not [...]
Britney and the top five
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, I went and checked.
We are all history-makers
I was thankful when someone once told me that “when you surround yourself with people who never want to advance in life, you will be exactly like them”. “You have to surround yourself with people who have a plan in life, in other words with people who are “a life”, because when one has no [...]
New technologies: Keeping up without being killed in the attempt
Today is a big day in the life of the ep-webeditors blog. Nay, a rite of passage, a coming of age, an arrival in the sunlit uplands of Parliament bloggerdom. Today, our big boss, Jaume, Director and EP official spokesman, no less, appears for the first time on this blog. What’s more, he wants to talk about us!
Squeezing just a bit more toothpaste out of the tube
Hardened followers of Parliament’s website may notice some differences about how the news pages cover the plenary session this week…
Big worlds and small worlds
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.
Friends from work
The European Parliament is probably an institution with the biggest numbers of friendships at work. Why? One would say there is no other choice. Other would say there is a very clear choice. At one point Belgians and other friends appeared but lion’s share of my friends were still about to pass by in my work [...]
The history of the world is the world’s court of justice – Friedrich Von Schiller
Moscow and Warsaw have been trading verbal blows over the circumstances of the outbreak of WW II – the opening of which began 70 years ago this week. To anyone who follows the European Parliament it seems that historical disputes are never far from the surface. The arrival of countries from central and Eastern Europe [...]
May and June most read stories.
Our (recently established) monthly edition of sharing with your our monthly most read stories has suffered from too much work (between May and the Election) but also from too much rest (as I flew away as soon as the last ballot was counted). In order not to let the late posts piling up on my [...]
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