At last, an opportunity to blog about gardening and EU comms in the same post. Those who managed to sit through some or all of my Prezicast on the EU online public space would have picked up the fact that my day job involves helping various parts of the Commission communicate their policies and programmes. [...]

A few weeks ago I was asked to give a training on the EU online public space to a group of political science PhDs taking part in the EXACT Marie-Curie training programme (pre-session discussion here). Being a sucker for flattery I agreed, but being short for time I based it on the Prezi I did [...]

In response to @SocialEUJ, because Twitter sometimes (usually) doesn’t give you the room one needs … On November 8, MEPs will discuss ’10 concrete political proposals’ for creating the European public sphere via digital media, developed by IHECS (Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales) and their partners via Socialeuropeanjournalism.com. The site looks good. At [...]

Last year, in the runup to the first EuropCom conference, I gave it a bit of a hard time. My cynicism was confirmed by many I knew who went, describing it as a conference about Web2 and social media which allowed little or no participation. Oops. The organisers of Europcom 2011 seemed less ambitious, at [...]

The subject of Klout has come up a few times on Twitter, so I’m posting this so I can point people toward a few articles I’ve found useful. Something I can’t do in 140 characters. Which proves my eventual point. [Update (12/11/11): I wrote this post before Klout renovated their algorithm in a very opaque [...]

“The Filter Bubble”, by MoveOn.org foreign policy director Eli Pariser, shows that the forces creating the Brussels Bubble are about to be reinforced by technology, operated invisibly – and with impunity – by a handful of companies. When I launched Blogactiv in 2007 I had some interesting experiences engaging with eurosceptics of the more rabid variety. [...]

The answer to this post’s title may be so obvious that you wonder why it needs writing, but Jon Worth’s idea to get a Blogging Day for greater European Parliament transparency together got me thinking beyond the knee-jerk reaction. One of the tenets of transparency is full disclosure, so this is where I point out [...]

Another attempt to dash off a post without making it an epic, based on whatever’s in my Inbox/ToDo. This time: Facebook, Twitter: are these the unavoidable tools for the future of European democracy? (pdf*, 9 pages + annexes), by Pauline Desmarest, Internet Communication Manager for the Robert Schuman Foundation, and presumably @Fondation Schuman (* Yep, [...]

If you’re like me and almost everyone else I know, you’ve got a To Do list overflowing with emails starred in various colours, Twitter favourites, starred RSS items, stuff bookmarked ‘Do’ or ‘In’ on diigo or delicious, unlistened-to-podcasts, unread books, unwatched documentaries, scribbled post-its and more. And you certainly haven’t got enough time to read [...]

Time for my second Annual Review. Try to curb your enthusiasm. The idea of an Annual Review started last year with the BloggingPortal-inspired EU Blogging Carnival, held in May. I thought then it’d be interesting to look back over the preceding 12 months of posts and to reflect on if and how my thinking on [...]