// The team

http://www.ep-webeditors.eu/2012/02/discovering-europe-through-erasmus/This is the common blog of the Web Communication Unit of the European Parliament, but you knew that already, didn't you? On this page, we will introduce ourselves to you.  Let's shake hands, by alphabetical order.

Annastiina
Annastiina is an enthusiastic writer from the land of a thousand lakes and the Moomins  - ie. Finland. She loves travelling all around Europe and beyond, taking photos of clouds and trees, talking about her parents' cats and wearing woollen socks of every colour of the rainbow  - be it winter or summer.

See all Annastiina's posts.

Anete

Anete is our Latvian editor. She leads the team covering of The World. That makes her our own Great Leader of the World.

See all Anete's posts.

Asta
Asta- our lithuanian supporting editor. Maneuvres among some of social media platforms, as she is responsable for Youtube and blogging. Virtuality is reality and vica versa:)

See all Asta's posts

Bárbara
Bárbara comes from Madrid – Parisian girls can start to worry, Barbara knows what fashion means. She used to be the youngest of the team, but since then Florent has arrived and things will never be the same.

See all Barbara's posts.

Cristina
There are three Cristinas, one with a C, one with a K, one with a z somewhere in the middle of her name. She's the C.  Cristina writes in Romanian but also monitors the stats. She knows what you've done last time you visited our main website and she tells us.

See all Cristina's posts.

Dan
Computer illiterate social media producer, former journalist of 12 years, bon vivant, lovable black sheep, snappy dresser by 1930s standards, a guitarist without a band (for the first time in 20 years) and amateur(ish) home movie producer/writer/director.

See all Dan's posts.

Evita
She's Steve's right arm. She makes sure he is where he should be, at the right time in the right meeting room. She also provides the team with Feng-Shui advice, colour theories ("I feel purple today" – er, sure) and super smart tricks ("Why don't you write it down so you won't forget?"). Damn she's good!

See all Evita's posts.

Florent
Mesdames et messieurs, Florent belongs to an old and rough tradition of sailors, coming from the far west of France. Just give him the direction and he will navigate there… Even if it's on the web!

See all Florent's posts.

Frank

I’m Frank – the Estonian editor, and I used to be a stagiaire in the same unit. I hope my blog  entries will describe me a bit. Creative writing let’s go!

See all Frank's posts.

Fred

"I'm one these guys who put colours on the webpages. And yes, I'm a pixel freak." says Fred. He doesn't belong to our Unit but he does belong to our team. He's the keeper of the graphical charter of the EP's website. Now, that's a serious job.

See all Fred's posts.

Giulio
Giulio, the Italian editor, likes Mark Twain, post-it, photography, the Smiths, his computer, the beach, fajitas, sad songs and happy people. He's Italian ("whatever it means").

See all Giulio's posts.

Hanneke
Hanneke, the Dutch language editor, has turned the reconciliation of professional and private life into art.

See all Hanneke's posts.

Istvan
Also known as Istavn, Ivan, Istuan, Istwan. He is the Hungarian editor in the team. He realized what an exotic name he has when he moved to Brussels.

See all Istvan's posts.

Kostas
Before joining us as a Greek editor, Kostas was a Brussels correspondent for years. He knows the place better than any of us, gets all political gossips before everyone and finds his new job easier because it's a team job.

See all Kostas' posts.

Kurt
Kurt is from Malta. When he's not making or listening to bleeps and beats, scratching his head at contemporary art or films he believes are way too long, supporting atrocious Belgian third division football teams, quad biking, wandering around cities and/or forests or evangelically trying to turn people on to HBO's 'The Wire' he'll be hard at work. Or daydreaming. Or both.

See all Kurt's posts.

Lena
Our Swedish editor, Lena, is a synopsis super-pro, a pro-gender equity, an equitable colleague, a league of honour in team building, a ding-a-dong song by Abba, yes, I made it up!

See all Lena's posts.

Marko
Marko has cut his teeth as the editor-in-chief of a small niche newspaper in Slovenia, until he decided to trade the thrills of negotiating with increasingly thrifty advertisers for a calmer, yet more thought-provoking ecosystem of the Parliament's web unit.

See all Marko's posts.

Martina
This Slavic girl of German appearance is undoubtedly the most organized person ever. She has just a file for everything, even for the well-tried cooking recipes:) After some short trips she has finally returned back to secure waters of the EP administration. She has surely enriched our cool team of web-blog geeks….

See all Martina's posts.

Nadina
Changed from editor to coordinator, Nadina is now involved in the new digital strategy of the Parliament and handles galaxies and planets. We know she likes travelling and playing djembé, yet we are very grateful she hasn't yet showed us how much.

See all Nadina's posts

Nicolas
Nicolas belongs to the same Unit as Fred but we still consider him as part of our team. He's a functional analyst. The job covers two main tasks: 1°) to answer "No" to all our requests for developments of new features on the website and 2°) to go and tell the IT team he said no. Then, they drink home-made beers and play videogames.

Nicolas hasn't posted anything yet.

Olav
As a Danish editor, Olav makes sure there is nothing rotten in his own editorial kingdom. His name has only four letters, but very few manage to pronounce it correctly.

See all Olav's posts.

Petra
Editorial coordinator, she demonstrates she has patience by the barrel when confronted with some demands from editors.

Petra hasn't published anything yet.

Petra #02
Steve noticed once that there is only one of our female team members whose first name doesn't end in "a". I'll let you find out who – obviously not our second Petra, Slovak editor coming from the Visitors' Unit and really eager to please her new readers.

Petra hasn't published anything yet.

Pietro
Our talented photographer illustrates most of our stories. When it's not a photo by him, he found it for us. His job is quite tough because there aren't so many ways of taking pictures of people wearing gray suits in meeting rooms.  Try, you'll see.

See all Pietro's posts.

Radka
She's Czech, she works hard, she is full of ideas and she has a very sophisticated sense of humour.

Radka hasn't published anything yet.

Rolandas
Rolandas, Lithuanian editor. Before joining WebCom worked as press officer in Vilnius for five years, talking and writing to journalists about the EP. Now switched to 'write' mode, though sometimes also talks. When writing, prefers 'KISS', keeping it simple and…
 
Rolandas hasn't published anything yet

Sofia
Sofia is our Portuguese editor. Studies: journalism (specialisation in legal journalism), languages. She loves music, sun, beautiful beaches, taking pictures, watching movies, meeting friends and go for parties. She played tennis for a long time, but she had to give up after seriously breaking her right wrist. She still knows how to smash the ball back though.

See all Sofia's posts.

Steve
Steve is the oldest member of the team (it's a young team!) and answers occasionally – and reluctantly – to "boss". These days, he counts as an old hand, but one who has rediscovered his youthful enthusiasm, thanks to the weird and wonderful world of the web.  He now obsesses daily about blogs, comments, tweets, social networks and all the rest of it.  A sad case…

See all Steve's posts.

Steven
English editor Steven worked as a journalist in England for seven years before moving to Brussels to join an animal welfare NGO. He then worked in communication at the European Commission for three years before finally making his way to the Parliament.

See Steven's posts.

Svetla
Svetla is our Bulgarian editor. She sometimes complains that, after one year in Brussels, she has not met a real Belge yet.  As a journalist, she worked, in chronologically order, for a newspaper; a news agency; a Radio; a TV and now for a web page. Is that a sign of progress?

See all Svetla's posts.

Tayebot (formerly known as Tibo)
Tayebot is the editorial coordinator. Nobody really understands what that means but, man, he does send a lot of e-mails, tables, schedule and stuff to the team. He likes to write on online trends, process, workflows and all that sexy kind of subjects. When he is not bothering the editors, he relaxes by bothering his cat.

See all Tayebot's posts.
Follow him on Twitter.

Thylo
Our new German editor seems to have a past full of adventures and mysteries. So far, we only found out he's a climber. Oh, and he is the first male editor who didn't wear a tie on his first day in the office.

Thilo hasn't published anything yet.

You can see the team in action in our self promoting videos on Vimeo.

 

Our trainees also sometimes post on this blog, and so do some colleagues from other editorial teams – we call them our "Guest bloggers" and we introduce them in the first paragraph of their post.

Kathleen

Kathleen comes from the south of France and is proud of it. She will never get used to the awful weather in Brussels as well as "Madame pipi". After having recently graduated from a Masters in European Studies, she is now a stagiaire and happy to be part of this team.

Kathleen hasn’t published anything yet.

Elena

Elena was born in Madrid and she studied her journalism degree at Complutense University. She loves writing, reading, social media, photography and everything related to communication. She tries to get used to the Belgian weather and she really misses Spanish food.

Elena hasn’t published anything yet.

Outi
Outi… Uti…or Audi is our trainee from Finland. Don't worry if you can't pronounce her name correctly, it happens all the time! She studied languages in Helsinki and EU studies in Parma and came here with a lot of enthusiasm for learning new things and for being able to order her morning coffee in French.

Outi hasn’t published anything yet.

 

There are also some major characters we should mention. They aren't  in the list above because they decided to leave to where the grass is greener. Marie, for example, the former right-hand of Steve,  is now in Ireland – tell her about green grass. Andrea, ex-Italian editor, works at the Commission. Gaëlle, French editor for years, now works at the BBC where she can bash us even more than when she was working with us.  Anna, our first Bulgarian editor, joined the Patliament's library.   Kristine, who was our Danish editor, has succumbed to the call of love - we couldn't hold her back. Eirini, our long time Greek editor and internal paparazzi, now cooks her strange coffee for better educated people who really appreciate it while Manja, Slovenian editor for years, has decided to go and meet her audience back in Ljubljana. So has Helle, our recurrent back-up in Swedish, except she headed to Göteborg 'cause it's a better place for practicing professional Ultimate Freesbe, or so she said. We also lost Sophie, former Fred's sidekick, who introduced butterflies and flowers in the graphical chart of our Headlines and is now casting her spells in other digital lands. Leszek now takes care of citizen for real: he joined the Visitors' Unit. Karim came to work with us twice, as a back-up Dutch editor, at different interval. You never know, he could well pop up in again. Christian, one of our team's pillars, has left for another cause: he still works in the Parliament and is in charge of spreading democracy in the world. We're aghast too. Josh emigrated few weeks after Christian to join the Environment Committee. David moved to another EU institution, more devoted to his long term passion: foreign  affairs. The most talkative Finnish girl ever,  Hannariikka, now works for a committee – expect longuer reports and accurate amendments…Raffaella left us for the President's cabinet.

Soon, this part will be longer than our actual team's list but isn't it natural? After a while, say three or four years, editors move to different jobs.  Peter our Hungarian editor, joined the Visitors' Unit to meet and welcome real citizens. He's been joined quickly by Pavel – are they trying to recompose the team there?

The Maltese Marie-Claire is now devoting her time to her family – they couldn't be luckier. Mindaugas left the coolest unit and still plays his loud music on the corridors of the EP.  Kristiina, former ET editor made a shift in her career and left Brussels.

Explaining how all the teams involved in the website of the European parliament interact, the process of technical development and all that sort of thing goes beyond the purpose of this page. We'll leave that to a future post.

 

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