GUEST BLOGGER: 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! I read words like: “mischievious”, “smurfs”, “irresponsible” – but I’m reading nothing into it! Anyway, as they say, we are honoured to welcome onto our humble stage… The Director.

Keeping up without being killed in the attempt

One of the scariest moments in the professional life of the European Parliament’s Media Director comes when the people in charge of the Web Communication team storm in his office with the faces of mischievous children and a folder marked “new project” under their arms. It could be anything ranging from some doubtless vital overhaul of the website’s on line archives to the appearance on his desk of a group of strange blue-and-yellow little dolls resembling overweight smurfs that answer to the cryptic name of “YaBs”.

When the Director is introduced to a new internet project is a double test for him. Firstly, in relation to his capability or incapability to understand what the topic is. The Director is aware that he needs to understand at least one out of every three concepts and avoid letting his facial expression unmask his enormous ongoing neuronal effort.

Nevertheless the Director soon developed the conviction that a poor knowledge of the topic in question is often an advantage when it comes to proposing solutions which are acceptable for all the parties involved.

Secondly, because he will feel obliged to decide where to set the limits when it comes to accepting undoubtedly attractive proposals that however do not always reflect the degree of seriousness required of institutions such as the European Parliament.

The famous T-Shirts for the new website's launch

With regard to the first challenge, the Director is already the lucky survivor of a similar experience when, some years ago, he supervised the construction of a new press room full of electronic gizmos, hardware and software. Sounding intelligent in permanent discussion with audiovisual technicians, IT experts, architects and representatives of the press is not something you generally learn in any prestigious European Academy, nor would this ability be requested in a European Personnel selection competition.

Nevertheless the Director soon developed the conviction that a poor knowledge of the topic in question is often an advantage when it comes to proposing solutions which are acceptable for all the parties involved.

The second challenge is much more complicated because web teams, following their instinct and their duty, are continuously proposing tools that in most cases have “just arrived from the other side of the Atlantic” and which haven’t quite been used yet in institutional communication, let alone in Parliamentary communication. The Director will find himself quickly trapped between a rock and a hard place. The rock being those who rightly think that we have to adapt to new times – “Boss, Obama is doing this” – and the hard place being our hierarchy in the Parliament who do not necessarily accept ipso facto,the use of tools that don’t seem to correspond, a priori, to the solemnity of the Parliament.

Back in time it all started with something as innocent as overseeing the redesign of the main website so that it paid more attention to the ordinary citizen and less to European experts. But then it was about launching the new website surrounded by people in black t-shirts with surreal messages on them such as “A hemicycle is not half a bike”, or as militant as “Who cares for Europe? I do”.

In less than five years the way the European Parliament communicates has dramatically changed. It has become more modern, more accessible and more plural. Probably more coherent as well. But there is still a lot to be done and to be improved, especially if we don’t want to miss the train of the internet – one that resembles a Japanese bullet train.

Next came the production of audiovisual content (“Why should a Parliament be able to send press releases but not videos?”), or organising chats with the Parliament’s President. Later, taking advantage of the everything-is-possible principle of the European elections, a (partial) transition to full Web 2.0 interactivity took place. The Parliament explored social networks, blogs, wikipedia, online questions and debates. It also had viral campaigns with hysterical girls and gregarious cyclists and the use of all kinds of multimedia platforms. The majority of these instruments have demonstrated that they are valid and, after the elections, have been integrated with almost no discussion in the spectrum of the communication services of the Parliament.

In less than five years the way the European Parliament communicates has dramatically changed. It has become more modern, more accessible and more plural. Probably more coherent as well. But there is still a lot to be done and to be improved, especially if we don’t want to miss the train of the internet – one that resembles a Japanese bullet train.

Don’t worry. One of these days the Director’s desk will be filled once more with strange projects and his screen with intriguing slideshows. All the while, several expectant eyes in his office will try to guess from his face if he understands anything of what he sees, if he likes what he sees – and if he will be irresponsible enough to accept it.

But next time I will tell them the truth, I promise.

By Evita & Anete. Before the elections we had the opportunity to carry out a project that was a repetition of an experiment made 50 years ago. We already wrote about the recipe of this experiment and now it is time to summarize the results.

7 YaBs completed their mission

Overall we can say that it has been a blissful time – stressful, but very interesting.
 
• 7 secret agents out of 27 reached their destination and will become real agents as promised: Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Maltese, Spanish, Bulgarian and Estonian. 2 countries of Iberian Peninsula, 5 “new” Member States. Is there any connection?

• Some celebrities complained about not being informed beforehand officially.  Sorry, there are some things you don’t inform about. Did they inform us that they would become famous before they did it? For this reason or another, the Italian, Latvian, Greek, German and Luxembourgish secret agents got stuck one step before reaching celebrities.

• 2 secret agents got lost from the very beginning. Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Swedish secret agent made a virtual completion of the mission – Erik met his celebrity through the TV screen. Typically Swedish – reminds us of the jolly book of Astrid Lindgren about the best friend ever Karlsson-on-the-Roof who believed there was a man sitting in the TV box.

Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Remaining 13 secret agents travelled around from hand to hand, but at some point they got stuck. Why? Lack of motivation and interest? Fear of looking silly? Fear of being involved in political matters? Not knowing what to do exactly? Procrastination? The reasons could be more than many. Some movement followed after slight pushing from our side although we didn´t want to intervene during the mission. But still… Well, would somebody like to write a PhD on this?

• The first one to leave was the Italian YaB, the first one to arrive: Polish. Does it say something about the mentality or work culture?

• We received many funny and imaginative photos picturing the YaBs in diverse environments and situations — meeting mimes and military men at the Brandenburger Tor, bathing in the sea, having lunch or a drink, partying, having a medical check etc.

• Facebook page for Travelling YaBs now has 554 fans, out of them 61% are woman. In the web we found an article that says that 98% of women love James Bond. Of those 98%, 95.7% of them have had erotic dreams involving at least one of the Bonds. Is it something similar here or are the mother feelings stronger in this case because they are so small and cute?

• The Polish, Latvian, Danish, Greek, Italian and Portuguese media covered the missions. Strange enough: the most of the journalists involved were also women.
 
Conclusion: only 7 YaBs arrived but… sometimes the road is the destination. We hope you enjoyed.

Thinking about this coincidence I remembered that a few months ago I also had an unexpected meeting: a girl with whom I used to play basketball in Madrid when I was 12, or maybe 13, at the swimming pool of my gym in Brussels. I have more and more the feeling that this is a small world.

A friend knows a friend…

It's a small world... (photo from Flickr by kosmonautica)

It is true that Brussels is a kind of a melting pot that reunites many different people from many different profiles; but even taking that into account I still think that if I could know where all the people I have met in my life are, I would have some surprises. Maybe one of them got married with someone I met in a totally different circle, or another one is working in the most original place in the world… who knows!

That brings me to the title of this post, which fortunately does not refer to the temperature now in Brussels, but to a theory, the six degrees of separation. I am sure most of you know what I am talking about: that every single person in the world is separated from, and connected to, everyone else by just six others.

This idea constitutes the core principle of one of our initiatives for the elections campaign: the YaBs, Yellow and Blue want-to-be secret agents that have already infliltrated the 27 member States searching for one particular celebrity each of them. This blog has already talked about them: departing from Brussels, with 27 different missions, they have to be given from one person to another until they reach their objective. I am sure many of them will succeed in their mission with the power ful weapon of  “a friend knows a friend that knows a friend…”

Making the theory a bit more complicated, that would also somehow connect Audrey Tatoo and Iker Casillas, as both of them will receive an agent that departed from Brussels on the 9th of May. And that would also connect me, and all my colleagues, to them, as we saw how the agents were born; in a way they are our little creatures.

Many of them will (I hope) reach their destination after meeting some other European citizens on the way, to whom we would also be connected, as well as Casillas and Tatoo and all the other celebrities YaBs are looking for… this is starting to be a bit complicated!

In any case, the success of the YaBs’ missions would be a nice way of proving that the degree of proximity between so many different people is really amazing. So I propose a change in the name of the theory… six degrees of separation?? Better say six degrees of proximity!

Pimping the secret agents (or YaBs)

As our work does not leave our minds as soon as we are leave the building, one evening I was talking to our Latvian editor Anete and she told me about an idea that had crossed her mind. She wanted to prove that the world (in our case we’ll stick with Europe) is smaller than we think and we are all connected in one way or another. Today her idea has grown into an experiment that we are opening this week.

Here is the recipe (in case of repetition modify amounts and/or steps accordingly):

1. Take 27 figurines and give them to your team colleagues who afterwards turn them into YaBs (yellow and blue, you know).

2. Assign them their nationality.
Each of ours comes from a different EU Member State.

4. Give each of the secret agents their real name and their own code name.

All their code, name and nationality.

5. Choose the starting date of the mission.
The YaBs will start their on 9th of May in the European Parliament’s Open Day (we will be handing them out at Web Communication stand on the 3rd floor in the European Parliament)

Naked YaBs

6. Make some rules to make it more fun.
6.1. Each YaB should travel from one person to another, and should be passed from hand to hand until it reaches its final destination.

7. Make a buzz about it

Fully dressed (hum, body-painted) YaBs

 8. Wait for the results

And this is how you create your own experiment!

P.S. Idea is based on the Six degrees of Separation theory which states that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.

9. The YaBs project in a nutshell

1. We will release 27 YaBs on Saturday 9 May in the EP buildings at Brussels during the Open day. You want to be one of the first link in the chain? Drop us an e-mail at WebComm@europarl.europa.eu now!
2. Each YaB has a target and a destination. Your role is to give it by hand to another link in the chain so each YaB can reach its target and its destination before 4 June 2009.
3. All YaB travel’s steps must be illustrated with photos of the YaB and names or nicknames of their guardian (and as many photos of you and the YaB as you wish). You can follow the Yabs travel on their Facebook page.
4. It’s all about fun, degrees of separation and solidarity! Help a YaB, carry a YaB, give a Yab!  

10. P.P.S. Thanks, Nadina, for inspiration!