Posts Tagged fleishman-hillard
Posts I’ve enjoyed on this blog
After nearly eight years in our Brussels office and coming up to three years posting on this blog I’m off to our Washington D.C. office for a couple of years at the end of the month.
Before I leave I thought it not a bad idea to indulge myself just a tad, forgive me folks, and point to some of the blog posts I’ve enjoyed writing or reading on this blog. I say enjoyed because, as my wife (sorry, my luv) will testify, relaxation of an evening has become me on the laptop tinkering with this blog, the twitter feed or various other websites that are in some way work related.
Which MEPs use Twitter?
Part of our hypothesis when we started the blog was that digital communications was changing how policy-makers were interacting with voters and stakeholders. To support our view we created a long list of MEPs, the good folks at Europatweets aggregated them a couple of months later on their nice website, Digimahti had another go at listing them and finally we’ve now created our own Twitter lists to categorise them by Committee on our twitterfeed in recent weeks.
65% of MEPs use Wikipedia at least twice a week
Spotting MEPs that tweet was one thing, but we wanted to go a little deeper in understanding how they use the internet and how we may be able to use it to communicate to them. Our EP Digital Trends study sought to do this in 2009. The results led to three conclusions on how our results influence our thinking on public affairs here. It also turned out that MEPs aren’t the only ones who rely on Wikipedia – seemingly the Commission services have a penchant for it too…
Grayling’s EU office starts it’s own blog
We are known to say that to be a thoughtleader one has to have thoughts and they have to be leading ones. Well one measure of thoughtleadership may well be that others follow where you have gone. Grayling’s team has a super blog. We wish more agencies in town would join them (and us).
Helen Dunnett explains the value of blogging for trade associations
Helen’s views on how ECPA was using its blog in Brussels was enlightening and uplifting. It underlined that there are organisations out there who do recognise the value of using digital tools in Brussels.
Scoop: European Parliament talks about European Parliament
Wordle is a great tool. Never more so than when reminding us of the fact that the Bubble likes to talk about the Bubble. The outgoing EP President’s speech was a classic.
Parallels between a Mel Gibson film and the President of the European Council
Sometimes it’s just been fun writing. No more so than one Sunday morning over coffee when I delighted in the fact that the nomination of the President of the European Council was like a seen from a 1980s US action film.
James
3 comments April 9, 2010
Who said what last week on energy?
We’ve flagged our conference last week on financing Europe’s energy needs shamelessly on this blog in recent days and weeks. You’ll be happy to know, no more. This is the last reference to it we shall make. Just to note for the 150 souls that didn’t make it off the waiting list to gain entrance, many of the principal speakers agreed kindly to repeat some of their main points to camera post their conference interventions.
You can find everyone from Sharon Bowles MEP to Philip Lowe of DG Energy speaking on energy, climate and Europe here.
A highlight was hearing Dr. Fatih Birol from the IEA contrast the good that could come from Europe reasserting its leadership role on climate while warning Europe about the impact such leadership could have on European competitiveness. Jos Delbeke from the Commission perhaps unsurprisingly argued for a renewal of EU leadership in the field. Today’s Commission work programme suggests he may well win out.
James
Add comment March 31, 2010
Combating climate change: it’s a marathon
At the Financing Europe’s Energy Needs conference on Wednesday, which, I might add (and completely impartially), was a huge success, speaker Russel Mills (Global Director of Energy & Climate Change Policy for Dow Chemicals) described the climate change mission as a ‘long marathon’ and profoundly questioned, ‘how do we win this marathon?’
In an attempt to inspire the pessimists and sceptics amongst you I wanted to take Mr. Mills’ incredibly apt metaphor and extend it somewhat. I wanted to describe the efforts of those who have started us all thinking about this global problem and educating us on how to begin tackling it as the coaches training us all before the big race. I wanted to talk about the need to invest in the proper equipment and the need to have strict rules because, after all, we can’t be taking shortcuts. I even had ambitious plans for a pun on pre-race carb-loading/pre-Copenhagen carbon-loading.
However, whilst searching for a motivational picture to accompany such descriptions, I came across this rather interesting article which led me to a new train of thought: Thinner is better to curb global warming, study says.
The conference brought up a number of ideas on how to deal with and finance climate change and future energy needs, from Emissions Trading Schemes and Clean Development Mechanisms to EU FP7 funding for non-nuclear clean energy research, to name but a few. But whilst these measures are of course essential to managing the big picture, it is still important to consider the role that we as individuals can play in combating this problem.
So, what a pleasure to now know that each of us can do our bit for the environment not just by turning off lights and keeping the heating on low, but by cutting out the chocolate, avoiding the chips or, say, by running a marathon.
Jess
Add comment March 26, 2010
Insights from the home front
With an election by all accounts little more than a month or so away, yesterday’s UK budget is perhaps a key marker in a national election that will no doubt further define one of most reluctant member state’s relationship with the European project. True to form our UK colleagues led by Nick Williams and Julie Harris have turned out not only a blog post on the budget but also a Budget Insight Special 2010 briefing paper.
To paraphrase Churchill one has the feeling that this marks the beginning of the end of some UK political careers, while it may be the end of the beginning for others. My UK colleagues are betting on Conservative victory, as they’ve also launched Conservative Insight as a means to help us all understand what a Conservative government in the UK is likely to mean across a wide variety of policy areas.
James
Add comment March 25, 2010
Follow ‘Financing Europe’s Energy Needs’ online
Tomorrow sees our conference on financing Europe’s energy needs at the Bibliotheque Solvay. Alas, we reached the 200 delegate limit some time ago and so there is around 100 of you that won’t get to attend in person due to Belgium’s pesky fire regulations.
Fear not. You can follow discussions on our Twitter feed www.twitter.com/eurotwittering or using the hashtag #euenergy If you are there in person, feel free to join in the conversation online.
We shall be tweeting the comments from speakers such as Jos Delbeke, Philip Lowe, Sharon Bowles MEP and Lena Ek MEP throughout the event.
In addition, members of our team shall be posting on this blog in coming days with their own reflections on the discussions from the event.
James
Add comment March 23, 2010
