I’m the web strategist at GOPA-Cartermill, an EU communications consultancy. However, this is my blog – it’s not sponsored in any way.

Like all such companies, GOPA-Cartermill has a ‘golden page’ for each staff member (a sort of CV at a glance) for our documentation. Here’s mine, copied and pasted with blatant disregard for good taste or copyright (with a few comments):

Mathew Lowry (UK) trained in theoretical physics before becoming a scientific press officer and then a science freelance journalist in the 1980s. He has been working in EU communications since 1991, when he launched the English Editorial Department for European Services Network. He edited several major multilingual magazines as well as countless brochures, reports and other publications and websites, in addition to developing and organising the company’s internal and external editorial resources.

In 1995 he launched the company’s Web Department by running a research group from the Université Libre de Bruxelles to publish www.eureka.be in early 1996. The first database-driven site by a public organisation in Europe, it could do then what the EC equivalent (CORDIS) still cannot do today.

After three years running the Editorial and Web departments simultaneously, he focused on the Web department exclusively from 1998. This period saw ESN become the first company in Brussels to use XML in the HTML production chain (1997); to implement a ‘web first, paper later’ publication strategy (1998); to conceive and define a thematic approach to online communications for the Commission (1998); and to launch an extranet-based content management database for the Commission (1999).

After a year as a broadband content strategist in his native Australia, he returned to Europe and moved to the Commission’s DG Information Society and Media (2001-2007), where he developed their overall communication strategy and oversaw the implementation of the online part of this strategy. For the last three years he led INFSO’s webteam and was responsible for all major web projects. Many are considered ‘Commission best practice’ – e.g.,:

• a pilot thematic portal project, explored the editorial, linguistic, organisational and technological issues in reorganising EUROPA’s upper levels along thematic lines for non-specialists (more);
• the Newsroom application (2002-): manages, shares and publishes news, events, publications, videos and more, on web and via RSS and email, across organisational boundaries. The first use by the Commission of RSS. Since adopted by several other DGs (and now being ‘corporatised’, apparently);
• the Event in a Box application (2002-): the first version of this was the first ‘community-driven’ site on EUROPA to feature user-generated content (e.g., personal profiles, contributions, comments, competitions), two years before the term Web2.0 was invented. It also featured back-end e-logistics integration. Currently being adopted by other DGs (or so they tell me – more);
• International Roaming Charges (2005-): probably the first – and possibly still the only – site on EUROPA to tap popular support (via sheer user traffic) for a new EU regulation. So next time you get a roaming bill, utter a prayer of thanks to the INFSO webteam who built the site, and the policy guys who spent their weekends filling it with data collected from the web!

While at INFSO he also obtained a first class Open Honours degree, specialised in international relations and environmental affairs.

In September 2007 he became the Launch Director of Blogactiv.eu, which went live in November, and then moved on to GOPA-Cartermill in March 2008, where he is Online Communications Department manager and a member of the Management Board.

He is also an editor of BloggingPortal.eu, the aggregator of EU-oriented blogs, and is an administrator of IABC Belgium’s “Web2EU” community, which he helped launch in May 2009.