1. We don’t have any

None. Reason is: our significant others stay in Brussels, most of the time. Another incapacitating factor is also our condition of civil servant. Grey suits, parliamentary reports as main subject of conversation, eurojargon volapuk don’t rate high on the sexiness scale.

2. Those who have one don’t tell

Yes, I don’t think it’s very team spirit like, but that’s the truth. Although we know a lot (too much?) about each other, we still maintain a red closed curtain on our private sports. During October’s session, three out of eight members of our Strasbourg’s crew were in town with their significant other (either because he/she works at the Parliament or in a professional field linked to Parliament’s activity). The five others may have behaved like wild cats on a hot tin roof or like reclusive nuns, we have no idea.

3. There’s a dog involved

One of our colleagues, who comes to Strasbourg every month always comes with his girlfriend. And their dog. The dog squats 40% of our chats – which says a lot about our art of conversation.

4. Two girls, one guy, one bedroom

Two of our female editors were supposed to share a bathroom connected to two rooms while staying in Strasbourg. One of them had arranged the venue for her other half but… the hotel only offered them one single room (with three beds). So that must mean the lucky one shared a room with two of our female editors. And he doesn’t even belong to our team. This proves both the existence of God and His peculiar sense of humor. Wait, there’s worse: they refuse to tell us anything about their nights! How selfish one can be…

5. Pajama parties are for dummies

Of the same female editors mentioned above, one never wears pajamas and the other forgot her pajamas in Brussels. Is it me or is it getting hot in here?

Wait! You forgot your pajamas again! (c) Lastnightsparty

6. We have rules

The staff regulation is the civil servant’s Bible. Here what it says on the subject we are dealing with here:

“Officials shall refrain from any form of psychological or sexual harassment.

An official who has been the victim of psychological or sexual harassment shall not suffer any prejudicial effects on the part of the institution. An official who has given evidence on psychological or sexual harassment shall not suffer any prejudicial effects on the part of the institution, provided the official has acted honestly.

Psychological harassment means any improper conduct that takes place over a period, is repetitive or systematic and involves physical behaviour, spoken or written language, gestures or other acts that are intentional and that may undermine the personality, dignity or physical or psychological integrity of any person.

Sexual harassment means conduct relating to sex which is unwanted by the person to whom it is directed and which has the purpose or effect of offending that person or creating an intimidating, hostile, offensive or disturbing environment. Sexual harassment shall be treated as discrimination based on gender.”

So, we refrain.

7. We don’t have condom dispensers

The H1N1 threat has brought to all Parliament’s facilities tissue dispensers impregnated with some viral repellent, nice foam dispensers and smart instructions regarding best hand washing modus operandi, but no condom dispenser. That makes us less equipped than the average French high school but we don’t know if it has something to do with the staff regulations or with the actual and real level of our collective sexiness.

“It’s a pity there is no more European pornstars anymore, like Rocco Siffredi” complained loudly a male editor

8. There’s a wallpaper debate

One regular member of the Strasbourg crew uses a photo of Ms Kate Moss, topless, as his desktop wallpaper. Every time there are female nordic editors present in Strasbourg, he gets sharp remarks about it, which makes him stick to this wallpaper although he used to change it every month. Latin female colleagues don’t frown at him, though he suspects this could change, should he favour a topless photograph of, say, Ms Monica Bellucci.

9. The golden years are behind us

“It’s a pity there is no more European pornstars anymore, like Rocco Siffredi” complained loudly a male editor in our open space. Everyone nodded vigorously, expecting more. But he never elaborated. Men have the focus ability of goldfish.

10. So all the fun is in Brussels

While we are sweating and typing and running between meetings, we *know* that the fun is, actually, in Brussels, where we suspect the core of our team is having deliquescent orgies, lap dances and exquisite flirting just to keep us on our toes. Or maybe they just work and go home as usual.

It’s possible that you landed on this page by “feeling lucky” in Google while doing some university researches absolutely not connected in anyway with sex, p0rn nor foam dispensers. If this is your first visit on our blog, you may want to read our About page as well as our Team’s.

If you are interested in the October Plenary session, why don’t you have a glance at our 10 things we learnt during last plenary story?

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.

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.

If you haven’t read the first top-ten,  here how it works: every month, Cristina, our Romanian editor, collects the stats of the European parliament’s website and provides us with a full range of datas, tables, figures, just to impress us with her expert skills in using Excel (c) ™. From all this very well organized information, we all jump to the top 10 of the most read stories to discover what our visitors read. And we share this with you, dear readers.

To put things in context, in March we published 56 stories in 22 languages.  

After the first top 10, I received some critics on the “from 10 to 1″ presentation I adopted in my post. Some editors having attended one of our internal training on “How to write interesting pieces of news and stop bothering people with European affairs”, made a point in reminding me that I should start with the most interesting part, to keep the reader (you!) interested. I won’t highlight the fact that, if I keep only the interesting stuff, my posts would be twice  shorter but I will, once more, demonstrate my ability to listen at our editors as well as my flexible mindset by starting with…

I will, once more, demonstrate my ability to listen at our editors as well as my flexible mindset by starting with…

Number 10: Swedish MEPs welcome Stockholm’s “Green Capital” award

Who wouldn’t read about happy Swedish people? This city, described by Lena, our famously objective Swedish editor, as “the most beautiful island in the world”, was granted with an award from the European Commission for all efforts made to improve the quality of life. Amongst those efforts:  car tolls and cleaning up the water. We asked two swedish MEPs about this award and they seem quite happy.

Number 9:  What’s on the agenda in the March Strasbourg session?

As our most faithful readers know, the Plenary sessions are our “prime-time”, with most of our visits taking place during those weeks. Every Monday, we publish an intro story to the Plenary week, summarizing the most important points on the working agenda of the Members.

In March, we had two Plenary weeks, to compensate the cancelled one in June due to the European Elections. This story concerns the first one (from 9 to 12 March) and some points were: G20 summit, transports, videogames, employment policies, online gambling, budget…

Number 8:  Rights for shoppers – MEPs back public consultation

This is an interesting piece: the Parliament’s Internal Market Committee hold a public hearing on how to boost shopper’s confidence on the high street and the internet. Then, they proposed to all European citizen to send their suggestions directly to them (in any of the 23 official languages) – yes, this is a public consultation. We don’t know how many people did so, but I’ll try to figure out. Promised.

Number 7: What’s on 2-8 March?

This article is the equivalent of our #9 above, except it concerns a “political groups” week. During those weeks, MEPs gather within their group to prepare their political positions ahead of the Plenary week. We use those stories to tease on what we intend to publish during the week on the website.

Number 6:  Iceland, other Nordic states cast an eye towards EU

I remember Pavel, our Czech editor who wrote the synopsis for this story, telling us there was so much to say about this event.  This first “Northern Dimension Parliamentary Forum” – eg when Members of Nordic national Parliaments meet MEPs – was about the financial crisis (especially in Iceland), the relationships with EU, fishery policies. The story comes with a small slide-show and interesting quotes.

Some say there are interesting studies on the back of those cereal boxes. Source: Aggtastic on Flickr

Number 5 – Hillary Clinton at EP stresses need for climate action in Q&A exchanges

Mrs Clinton’s visit to the European Parliament was a big event for us. The “Town hall” style of her debate (when everyone in the audience can raise one’s hand to ask a question, as Barbara, our Spanish editor did), the curiosity for the new Obama’s administration, the live streaming of the event (if you missed it, you can watch it here) made me think it would rank higher in our top 10. Hillary, somehow, you disappointed me, I’m sorry to say.

Number 4: EU hopes of Croatia, Turkey, FYROM under scrutiny Wednesday afternoon

This was published during the first March Plenary and is a typical “Keys to the debate” story. In those, we give the main elements of a report or a debate before it takes place during the Plenary, with a link to all the sources and a direct access to the streaming. Enlargement sells well, as our anti-spam engine proves everyday, and this story was no exception to the rule.

Number 3:   United in diversity: Rules for the European Parliamentary elections

This story was a request from a commentator on this blog. We were pleased to oblige, as it allows us to explain why the European elections are organized under a basic set of rules with most of the details left to the Member States. Hence the voting days which differ (from 4 to 7 June this year, by the way) amongst EU countries. Our dear trainees are working on a sequence of three to four stories we will publish in the coming weeks, answering to the FAQ received by the Correspondence with citizen, which is the official way to address your question to the European Parliament. But if you ask nicely in the comments, here, we usually reply.

Number 2:  Quick A- Z of MEPs’ duties and obligations

From A like attendance to Z like zeventeen, a quick review of MEPs duties. It warms my heart to see this kind of story so high in the top 10, as it seems to prove that some of our visitors do care about the coming European elections. On an editorial point of view, it’s also a nice illustration on how our editors write their stories in a different ways, working all from the same synopsis.  David, our British editor, is the only one who used the A,B,C format.

Number 1:  Poll backs more women in politics but not quotas: Tell us your views

My heart is so warm now, it could heat up a kitten factory. Judge by yourselves: the most read story of March is a participative story in which our readers are invited to leave comments – and they did. Good to see that the “more women in politics” line still grabs the attention. Cherry on the cake: users left comments to each others, my favorite extract being “I think I’ve read this research, wasn’t it published on the back of a cereal packet?“

As the name says, the top ten proposes the most read stories, all 22 languages summed up, by our readers on our Headlines.  Since writing synopsis for those stories and then writing them in their languages is the bread and butter of our team, we are always extremely curious about what our visitors chose to read. With drums and trumpets, here come the February most wanted stories on our main website (March top ten will be published after Easter. Alpha Centauri goes skiing, that’s why).

10- Wednesday in plenary: Climate change, Mahmoud Abbas, car crisis

During the Plenary week, we publish daily summaries of what happened the day before. On this Wednesday, M. Abbas, the President of the Palestinian authority gave a speach to the MEPs, in which he underlined that “the longest military occupation in modern history” must end. Plenary weeks are our “prime times” in terms of visits and consultation.

9- EP Session: Guantanamo, illegal immigrants, Abbas, energy

Plenary again: we publish for each of those sessions a story highlighting the more ímportant and interesting issues that will be debated and voted. This allows our busy readers to organize their schedule so they don’t miss the live coverage of the debates. For those stuck in a meeting, there is always the nice possibility to use our video on demand section where they can browse by topics and speakers within our video footages – available in 22 languages. One can even download a speach one likes and sends it to a friend. And yes, some people actually do that – that’s how Mr Hannan became an Internet meme.

8- Hard times…on camera

This is a monthly project. We choose a topic (like “Hard times?”) and we propose to our readers to send us a photo to illustrate this topic.  The photo we like the most is published on the EP website – that was the subject of this story. The other photos we like are published on our flickr account.  March topic is “Pollution/solution” and we will publish the photos we chose on Friday 3 April. This will the day we will reveal the next topic as well.

Next time, i'll choose a nice photo. Promised.

7- Should Europe take in Guantanamo prisoners? Join the debate

Since we opened our Election section, in January 2009, we have proposed a weekly debate. We choose a subject we think is interesting and we call on our readers to leave comments in their language. This story was about the possible arrival of ex-Guantanamo prisoners in Europe, a question debated during the Plenary. It brought us a lot of comments, actually, that are all on line. You cannot comment anymore on this debate, but we have one every week, if you really feel like it’s time for you to say something. And you’re welcome to comment on this blog, of course.  We are quite pleased with this interactive feature on our website, even if it doesn’t go without raising some interesting questions regarding the moderation.

6- Climate change MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz responds to people’s comments

From time to time, when we close the comments of a debate on the Election website, we meet an MEP who has written a report about the issue and we relay to him the best comments left by our visitors. So did we for this story, where Mr Florenz answers questions posted by our visitors, like this one  “If our planet disappears, what will we do with the money?” (Pavlos, from Greece). And no, we don’t know Pavlos.

5-  What impact will sites like Facebook and YouTube have in the EP elections?

We all wish we had an answer to this question, dont’ we? In this piece, MEPs give us their (quite positive) views. The story was also open to comments for a week, but it didn’t meet such success in that respect. Incidently, we’ll be on Facebook and MySpace very very soon, promoting the European elections. More on this a bit later on this blog. Now, that’s what they call “suspense”.

This is a typical interesting work for our team, with a concrete subjet that concerns our readers, good quotes from MEPs, and the very touching photo found by Pietro, our photographer.

4 – Gas crisis highlights need for energy security say MEPs
Another story published during the Plenary week. Serious business, here, as the Russia-Ukraine gaz dispute affected 17 countries this winter.  This is a typical interesting work for our team, with a concrete subjet that concerns our readers, good quotes from MEPs, and the very touching photo found by Pietro, our photographer.

3- MEPs debate sanctions against employers of undeclared workers

I told you Plenary weeks were our prime time… This story was also published during February session. You’ll find here the number of illegal immigrants in EU, the yearly increase of this number and the best ways to tackle their employeers.  We wrote a lot of stories on the immigration topic, some of them are actually gathered in two of our Features. Immigration belongs to those important subject where the EP can make a difference, by the way.

2- Minority protection in Europe: “a great paradox”

Peter mentioned this story in his last post. I am personally surprised it met such an audience – but what do I know about minorities? The interview tells us all on the subject – worth reading, honestly, as many of our visitors already did. Regarding interviews, our editors love to do them but they don’t like to write them. It’s a bit too close to translation and they prefer it when they can work from a well bullet-pointed synopsis.  We keep scheduling interviews, though, because it’s a nice format for the website – and most of them are “stolen” by others media.

More drums, more trumpets, here comes the monthly most read story:

1- MEPs respond to call to protect Europe’s wilderness

No surprise: a Plenary story. Surprise: it’s about preserving the 1% of EU territory that is still untouched. 1% only. You’ll see that the story is on the short-side (we tend to sharpen more and more our angles to write shorter and to provide relevant links to more substance at the end of all our articles), which fits well with our concept of “tapas story” we developped in order to cover more subjects. However, if I had suspected this would be so popular, I’d have maybe pushed for more. Maybe we’ll come back later on this subject.

On a final note, all those ten stories here are linked to their English version. But, as I am sure you are aware, you can switch to one of the 22 languages we write in by selecting it in the list box at the right-top corner of all the European Parliament website’s pages, then click on the “OK” button and, voilà!, it’s in Maltese.