Enterprise underlines Commission’s naked ambition

I am sure this video shall spark debate, as I guess it is supposed to.

Alas the story would have been so different had Sarah passed the concours.

Is it me or is the idea of the Commission putting out a video (even a good one) to promote careers in the private sector ironic on so many levels?

James

Rubbish ideas and the future of Europe

Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr

Elections are in the air, as is the Commission, its President and the European economy. So what better way to get a strategic direction for where Europe should focus its efforts than an online survey of citizens. After all, we can’t make more of a meal of it than 20, or for that matter 27, heads of state and government.

A rather Jed Bartlett looking* (hands in pockets, relaxed look about him) President Barroso asks you to tell him what you think at tellbarroso.eu

Undertaking to “tell Barroso” is, I found, a relatively painless experience and could be described more as an online brainstorm than a survey. You are asked to write down the first things that come to mind tp a simple question about what Europe should be concentrating on. Now remember folks, at this first stage in the “ideation” process it’s quantity not quality that matters. Stick to individual words or phrases and keep ‘em coming. As with your traditional brainstorm, you then get the chance to expand upon your ideas in the comments box. Lots of opportunity for the ramblers amongst us to ramble, at length.

Finally and perhaps most pleasurably you get to see other people’s brainwaves and then place those you don’t like in a rubbish bin. Fantastic – there was lots of trash and I was sorting it (for energy recovery, you understand).

Now I’m a little bit of a novice at netiquette, but in normal life one is not allowed to commit such a heresy as binning ideas once they’ve been written on a post-it and placed on the wall. In traditional brainstorms ideas are all good and should be generally built upon, expanded, challenged and improved through debate and discussion. Under no circumstances should one suggest that the idea your colleague has just come up with is infantile rubbish deserving only of the waste paper bin/recycling tray. It got me thinking though, if such a heresy were allowed within the EU institutions wouldn’t our legislation be just a little bit better? Now that’s an idea someone should tell Barroso about.

James

*It occurs to me that Jed Bartlett does this at the end of Series 2 of the West Wing – when he decides to run for re-election. Apologies to all readers who are not addicted to the West Wing. May we suggest picking up the box set of all seven formidable seasons on Amazon for 50 quid, you’ll never be stuck for an evening’s entertainment ever again.

Green Week goes live

Word up to the European Commission’s DG Environment, who launch this year’s Green Week shebang with obligatory webpages on Europa, YouTube channel (featuring as yet a review of 2008), blog (Dimas fittingly recycled) and a Flickr page. It also features handy buttons to download in the press corner.

The event takes place 23-26 June in the Charlemagne building on Rue de la Loi and the topic in this year of Copenhagen is of course climate change.

You can find out more here.

Digital Tools in Public Affairs – presentation and links

Image by TPCOM via Flickr

Last week I presented at the inaugural European Public Affairs Summit on digital public affairs. What was billed as a workshop quickly became an empassioned plea for more consideration of the use of digital tools in Brussels based public affairs.

Thanks in any case to all those souls who attended, engaged in questions and answers and gave feedback to me or other FHers. All much appreciated. Any questions that have arisen since, please feel free to post in the comments section and we shall do our best to answer.

In the session, I promised that I would upload the presentation on the blog, instead I put it on SlideShare. You can find it at this link:Digital Tools in Public Affairs Presentation

For those not at the event, I apologise that reading the presentation makes little sense without me speaking to it. It is also not the most beautiful presentation ever created. This said, please check out the article I wrote that sums up in prose some of what I said in person. Alternatively, pass by for a coffee if you are in the area.

The links to the sites referred to during the discussions.

US introductory bit:

• Obama website
• Obama transition website
• Fight the Smears website
• Design for Obama – more chances to see visually creative works
• Our own post on the “Yes we can” pop video
• TubeMogul – extremely useful tool for uploading and tracking videos online across platforms

Statistics on internet usage:

• European Commission figures on EU Member States
• Post and link to FH Digital survey on the power of the internet in Europe
• Our post on recent Ofcom survey on communications environment in UK and key European markets and link to the report itself
• Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008
• Survey on social media by Universal McCann

European Union references:

• MEP bloggers list
• Commissioner bloggers
• European Commission howling sex video shocker

Tools for tracking:

• Technorati and Google Blog search
• Tracking Wikipedia
• Check out Steffen’s post here for other ideas

EU campaigns:

• Our post on grassroots in Brussels
• enviro.aero campaign about aviation and climate change on Twitter
• Pesticides Information – revision of Directive 91/414 – and an interview with the great lady behind it
• Award winning oneseat.eu campaign, our post (1) and post (2)
• Vattenfall campaign post and link
• 50/50 Campaign post and link
• Quadrature du Net post and link

James

Digitization of cultural content – Commission enters into unknown territory

In ancient times, the library of Alexandria was said to contain up to 70% of all human knowledge. Aiming to reap the benefits of the digital age, the European Commission wants to do even better than that.
It was against this background that the Commission launched the EU’s digital libraries initiative in 2006 aiming to make Europe’s cultural resources and scientific records digitally accessible to all. This project saw daylight on 20 November 2008 with the launch of the Europeana.eu website.  During the official launch ceremony in Brussels Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. However, Europeana seems also have offered the European Commission a lesson in web-page management.

One the first day of its launch, with more than 10 million hits an hour, Europeana simply crashed and the European Commission had to shut it down. The Commission is now working on to reopen the site in a more solid version hoping to reactivate it before the end of 2008.

Despite these intial problems the Digital team at Fleishman Hillard would of course like congratulate the Commission for this initative. The idea of combining multimedia library, museum and archive into one digital website combined with Web 2.0 features is just fantastic and we are eager to see how it will work in practice. It remains to be seen if the Commission will achieve its objective to digitalize and make available ten million objectives on the website by 2010.

Magnus

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Can the net help companies plant roots in Brussels?

Image by loungerie via Flickr

A post last week on the website Wired got me thinking about the use of grassroots in Brussels. The author highlights that GM has sought to use its own employees to lobby federal US policymakers for the money it needs to stay afloat as a company.

It reminded me of a recent dinner conversation about whether grassroots – digital or otherwise – can work in Brussels when conducted by corporations. The conversation was sparked by the Vattenfall campaign that has been running in PLux (see our recent post).

Principally our dinner conversation focused on two points:

1. Whether contact from concerned individuals would have an effect in Brussels
2. Whether it is acceptable for a corporation (as opposed an NGO) to undertake such a tactic

I’ve already argued, and continue to believe, that such contact can make a difference. In fact, I’ve even taken it to the extreme and argued that given our Brussels sensitivities about being in touch with citizens and the fact that direct contact with citizens is a relative novelty that it may be more powerful when done well.

Of course, when grassroots tactics have been used here they have tended to have been used by NGOs. Even a chemical-head like me has to take his hat off to the campaigns run by NGOs during REACH. Who could forget postcards featuring Barroso and Verheugen feeding chemicals to a baby through a test tube. Or delegations from the jam-making WI turning up in the European Parliament. Industry fights on fact, loses on emotion (again). Life ain’t fair, is it folks?

Thus, while I don’t buy the statement that just because it works in the US it can work here, I equally don’t buy that it can’t work here. It’s just going to be different. See some examples we’ve already featured in this blog (here, here and here).

Europe to lead Web 3.0?

Image via Wikipedia

This is indeed the aim of the European Commission which has just launched a public consultation on web 3.0 “the internet of things” (IoT). The consultation is part of the Commission’s preparations for a communication on IoT which is due to be released in the 3rd quarter of 2009. According to the Commission the communication plans to “propose a policy approach addressing the whole range of political and technological issues related to the move from RFID and sensing technologies to the Internet of Things”.

So what is Web 3.0 and can the European Commission really be at the cutting edge of it? According to Wikipedia, Web 3.0 is “the term used to describe the evolutionary stage that follows Web 2.0″. That as much as probably obvious to most. The term Web 3.0, also known at the “semantic web” was first coined by Tim Berners-Lee who created the internet in 1989 while working at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research). Nova Spivack a proponent of Web 3.0 who also prefers the term “semantic web” describes Web 3.0 as an attempt to overhaul the internet so that it actually understands the infinite amount of information contained within it and can make links between it. An Internet with a brain perhaps?

The ideas about what Web 3.0 will consist of include:

• ubiquitious connectivity e.g. broadband for mobile devices
• increased interoperability of web services
• “intelligent applications” i.e. the use of artificial intelligence to develop web applications that “almost think like humans”

However, Wikipedia goes on to say that there is as yet no agreement on what the next stage of internet evolution will be….

The European Commission would like Europe to be at the cutting edge of the next evolution of the internet, which is no doubt why it is trying to get into the game early with the recently launched consultation. The policy documents published with the Consultation include a Communication on Future networks and the Internet and a staff working paper on early challenges regarding the Internet of things. It will be interesting to see who responds to this consultation and in particular if it attracts the key protagonists of Web 3.0.

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EUTube goes from sex to science

Eureka! EUTube’s newest clip is geek-tastic. Even though the European Commission brought us this clip, which we discussed in an earlier post, it is still unexpected that they have shown such agility on EUTube. Even more shocking that they are making public service videos which aren’t lame.

It seems that the video is promoting science research in the EU, though the web site it sends viewers to, Marie Curie Actions, could do with some work. It is supposedly “”The People Programme under the 7th Framework Programme”, but we’ are lost as to what that is.

With the desperate need for Europe to foster (and finance!) innovation, new technologies, and protect its industrial knowledge base, we hope that this video is just part of a bigger project.

How many politicians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Image via Wikipedia

We’ve been trying to find out the answer to this question all day in the hope that the punchline might make us smile again after yesterday’s dramatic change of weather.

We saw the ad for the latest online campaign from the Parliament’s Liberal group tucked away on page 39 of this week’s European Voice over coffee this morning.

Alas, the ad is not that clear (or we are just stupid? btw – any comments in support or our intelligence or the ad’s misleading nature are welcome) as we’ve been typing into the address bar “www.changers.eu” all bloody day only to find that the address is www.thechangers.eu

Annoyingly despite now having the correct address, we still don’t know the punchline as the site is not officially launched until 21 May.

Any suggestions of amusing punchlines to brighten a dull weekend are gratefully received.

Why do letters on the size of sow stalls move MEPs?

Source: WikipediaWe highlighted the success of the online petition and social media activities of the Burma campaign last year and it seems that Tibet has also sparked a similar online movement. With the digital world potentially lowering the barrier to entry for those wishing to gather support around an issue, a Friday morning coffee corner conversation overlooking a cold Square de Meeus got us thinking about whether “expressed” public opinion counts more in some policy areas than others.

Why is it that a petition like oneseat doesn’t have an effect, while a regular handful of letters on animal welfare issues get UK MEPs of all political colours speaking in unison in favour of larger sow stalls? It could be of course related to the fact that the site of one of the EU institutions is an intergovernmental decision and our directly elected representatives in the EP have a say in the comfort of the humble pig. The latter are perhaps more suceptible to “public opinion”, after all they are the only elected EU institution. Or perhaps our politicians make a distinction between issues the voting public have something to say and issues that should be left to those that know? They may of course have a point.

In any case, the animal welfare example just goes to show that one doesn’t need a supporting cast of millions to sway policymakers in Brussels and thus targeted online digital grassroots could be an effective way of getting a result, depending on the issue of course. Thankfully, our clients are more likely to be interested in swaying the size of sow stalls than the locations of institutions – small things tend to have big impacts. As such, a cast of millions may grab the attention of Commissioners, but is it needed?