You really took the metaphor to heart, huh? I think you took it far outside its comfort zone, only to let it die (deliberately?) in the Australian desert.

But it’s my metaphor, so let me restate it: this particular garden will not grow without the attention of the governmental level (light), as otherwise there’s not much reason for anyone to make a contribution to it (nutrients).

Now there’s plenty of room for everything from (well-built) brochureware sites to Communities of Practice in there, using any technology or social-media-platform-of-the-month you want… but we need the conversations to flit across them all, as otherwise you end up with a series if hermetically sealed echo chambers (see groupthink). I chose to call pollination, but whatever you call it it’s a real issue in the EU online public space, where there are many linguistic and cultural barriers preventing the transmission of ideas. So it’s definitely cross-pollination.

And I find it interesting that you say “we should assure ourselves that junior european members don’t over feed or drown the budding shoots, or (more likely) bugger off when it gets a bit hot. Many northeners members have little experience of an Aussie or African summer”. That’s not the first time I’ve seen Europeans’ and Australians’ online sensibilities contrasted – as soon as I reply to your other comment (also languishing in my spam queue), I’m off to reply the comment by Ryan Heath (EC spokesman and fellow Aussie-in-Brussels) on my latest post, where he discusses how EU Institutions should be able t “give as good as they get”. Join us there?

I do like gardening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There
Not sure about the analogies though.
Light is the attention citizens pay to their institutions; eyeballs.
Nutrients are the attention lavished on a plant; a response might deliver fertilizer or manure.
Pollination is the conveyance of content between of the same species of plant; not their ordering in a row.
Cross pollination does the same between different species. So where a monoculturalist might order their blogs in a row, another will tend to a garden full of other species such wikis, moodles and other fashionable web (2.0) variants.

I’ve found that some people want to eat where others just want to admire. Regardless I wouldn’t let anyone in my garden without some basic appreciation of aethestics. You know what happens when your tasmanian cousins are let loose. (I’m sure this doesn’t apply to your domesticated self).

That said, if we are to have a gang of gardeners tending a communal garden, we should assure ourselves that junior european members don’t over feed or drown the budding shoots, or (more likely) bugger off when it gets a bit hot. Many northeners members have little experience of an Aussie or African summer. The light and heat are very intimidating for tender northerners, as much as it is for their preferred cultural blooms. Both wither and die on a vine.

But don’t believe that any climate hasn’t the same challenges. Sure, in the more informal gardens of Oz we have more creative gardeners. But that’s only because they have a passion for keeping their indigenous gardens alive in the bushfire season, not just a training for the rare jobs in the well-controlled hothouses up north. So some of them will try all sorts of combinations of tools in attempts to feed themselves and impress their boy/girl friends. http://www.katelundy.com.au/2011/09/06/the-digital-culture-public-sphere/

Maybe we should, with some of your hothouse dwellers, attempt some cross pollination. I’m bit concerned though, not so much for their highly sensitive EC blooms as their delicate complexions. Get em hat wil ya mate.

This is actually a debate I and a few BloggingPortal editors had a few years back – you’ll find the tail-end of that discussion in No dazzling projects required of December 2009. And in it:

“all I’m suggesting is that we use the standard suite of Web2.0 technologies already out there, and perhaps bloggingportal if anything centralised proves necessary.

And as I’ve said earlier this week, I do think bloggingportal is necessary, and that it needs some reasonably advanced technologies to play its role.

Apart from that, the focus should not be technology. This is echoed in Christophe’s comment, above (“one should focus more of the online discussion on actual policies rather than on the tools & process”), and is why I very specifically said that “this is not a call for yet another failed Web2.0 EU website aimed at the wide public”.

Why? Because an ecosystem like this cannot built on any one technology (excepting web basics like HTML, RSS, http, etc.). Such an approach is centrist – i.e., someone in Brussels deciding “this is how it’s going to be” … and then trying to impose that vision on everyone else.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen that approach fail. Instead, we need to create the conditions for growth, and then let the EU online public space grow like all gardens do: bottom-up.

PS You’ll actually find in ‘No dazzling projects’ the beginnings of a few of the ideas I’ve developed since: language-driven network effects, the language bridges required to defeat them; policy bridges operating on the long tail, how bridging bloggers could build both, the possibilities offered by machine translation, etc.

The problem with “We need first and foremost a debate about a new vision for Europe” is that this requires the EU online public space, which we don’t have.

On the other hand, such a debate could form the seed around which such a space could grow, if – as you say – “all the social media innovations … already present (blogactiv, eubloggingportal etc.) … [are focused] on this essential debate … [leading to] the traditional media and the general public taking notice”.

Yes, but it’s not enough. If we just focus these existing instruments, we will only get a more intense debate within the Brussels Bubble. Multilingual bridges need to be built between it and the national online discussions if this is to be a truly European discussion involving people who do not live and breathe EU policy.

I have developed a few interrelated suggestions here over the past 4 years. In my recent Prezicast, for example, I discussed the role of ‘bridging bloggers’. We need to find motivations for people to take this up, particularly policy specialists (see Vacancies: Specialists required to build bridges.

As always, it’s chicken and egg – we need these bridges to form the EU online public space, but only when that space is alive and healthy will there be any real rewards for being a bridging blogger. Particularly as the EU Institutions pay no attention (light) to this garden, so everything planted in it simply dies for lack of sunlight. Where’s the motivation in that when you can just pay a lobbyist or a PR firm?

I’d also like to suggest that everyone involved in the Brussels Bubble support the use of the citizens’ agenda approach for the next European elections. I really think this idea rocks, so tell me what you think.

In both ideas, something like Bloggingportal.eu is essential – providing a guide to what people are saying about EU policy, and rewarding good posts. However, it needs more resources than the volunteers keeping it alive are able to give – it didn’t even win the EP’s bloody Charlemagne Prize, although it’s far more valuable than all the other entrants combined (although BP is not propaganda, which may be a clue).

BloggingPortal’s coming up to its 3rd birthday on January 26 (Australia Day, funnily enough), so you’ll be hearing a bit more about it pretty soon.

Apparently not. A friend of mine attended a ‘social media training seminar’ (sic) in “crisis communications in an EU context” … and noone mentioned the euro.

How is this possible? People in Brussels are not any stupider than anywhere else. How can one develop a social media strategy in the middle of an existential crisis, and ignore it?

Excellent post. I love your ecosystems metaphor as you will understand.

That said, I think Christophe is right and I have been repeating this also over the last ten years in all big “communication” debates. The EU project is not failing because of lack of or bad communication but of failing policies which people do no longer support. The vision of Europe 1992 with its exclusive focus on building the “internal market” which would lift all boats has led to where the EU is now and has estranged EU citizens (except those who profited from this neo-liberal vision and who are now trying to save “business as usual”). .

We need first and foremost a debate about a new vision for Europe: what is its role and place and responsibility in a world with shifted geopolitical axes and plagued by resource constraints and other “limits to growth”. To use your metaphor: we need to know first what we want to do with our garden: do we want to make it a flower garden, a vegetable-growing garden, a wild ecological garden? Once we have decided that, we can see how we have to manage that garden i.e. what tools and processes of communication to use.

This debate about the new vision for Europe (what I have called in my own blog “Project Phoenix Europe”) should be the focus of all the social media innovations that are indeed already present (blogactiv, eubloggingportal etc.). We have to focus these European chatting and twittering communities on this essential debate. Only then will the traditional media and the general public take notice.

Good thoughts Mathew, because based on practical experience.

I believe one should focus more of the online discussion on actual policies rather than on the tools & process (which I’m not doing just now!).

We have the EU in deep crisis, the indignados etc in the street, and – apart from frequent Summits on the euro-debt – EU policy making and communication is hardly changed… Do people learn?

More on this on another BlogActiv post, building on newsletter EurActiv et Vous, here:

http://euroman.blogactiv.eu/2012/01/13/au-dela-de-la-crise-%EF%AC%81nanciere-2012-%E2%80%93-2013-%E2%80%93-2014/