"The European Endowment for Democracy has been created to promote the European values of freedom and democracy. A joint effort of the Member States and European Union institutions, the European Endowment for Democracy remains an independent private law foundation with its seat in Brussels. Fostering - not exporting - democracy and freedom The Eur…

"If we want a powerful innovative culture in schools which is self-sustaining we have to empower system-aware practitioners, working ever more closely with the service users, to create it. And to avoid simply creating interesting but isolated experiments, we have to design in collaborative ways of learning and enquiry between professionals – a “pu…

Apart from the obvious platitudes ... "If Open Innovation is not seen as a long term capability building exercise then it will fail.... The NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome is a big barrier and should never be underestimated." ... there's some interesting case studies in here - e.g.,: through "TechnoWeb, our internal social media tool, we …

Opera release a new browser, offering users to "Choose your level of corporateness... Use the slider to choose between super-geek and super-suit. If you really like buzzwords, go full corp..." Very clever. Not only do they cater to all tastes, they ensure wider coverage by helping the geeks to laugh at the suits and PR hacks, and making the lat…

How nice to see the Brussels Bubble meme continue to spread ... ;) "In a damning indictment of efforts in Brussels to promote stronger public attachment to the EU through the European Year of Citizens 2013, Emily O’Reilly said the campaign was “not succeeding”. ... the new office holders needed to be courageous enough to address the union’s demo…

Yet another tool. Sigh. Apparently: "Tackk allows anyone, to create anything, and share it anywhere. There is no software to download, no login required, nothing to join + no special design or development skills needed. In fact, those who have used Tackk, literally call it "ridiculously simple." And we agree. Simply visit the Tackk home page and…

The forward of this book, by Brian Solis, made me want to substitute 'citizen' for 'consumer' and 'customer', and 'government' for 'business': "The future of customer engagement requires a more thoughtful and localized approach. Connected customers aren’t complacent, fickle or unfaithful, they’re focused on what’s important to them. As they’re al…

Reason 1: "To many, it just seems like noise. " They discover this only now?

Neat use of Twitter and Storify storytelling, used by 2 different people to tell the same underlying (and inspiring) story in different ways.

"I think companies such as Asana (which I love) will be the future of business consultancy. They will substitute the big consultancies leveraging big data, just like Coursera will displace traditional course providers by leveraging information on how people use training and using this information to design more effective training. Business consult…

"The idea of the stream has become so dominant that it is easy to think it is the natural state of things in a networked media environment. "Of course we have the stream: this is the Internet after all." That's why it's so important to look back at 2009 (just 2009!) and remember that the stream is a creation of particular companies and thinkers. Y…

"Flow provides a powerful and flexible technology that addresses a range of real-time information challenges"

One of the reasons I created this Tumblr was to use it as a 'first draft’ of a Content Hub (see post), an idea which crystallised after reading Sloan’s original content strategy piece on Stock and Flow.The Hub is basically my way of saying that there’s more to life than the Stream. Unsurprisingly, Alexis Madrigal’s piece in the Atlantic caugh…

Today's online news environment is ideal for spreading bullshit. As someone like HuffPo's Washington bureau chief puts it: “If you throw something up without fact-checking it, and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views. That’s a problem. The incentive…

Nice data visualisation: " This Index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life."

Data-driven storytelling, sharable journalism in a British skunkworks. What's not to like? From NiemanLab: "Data-driven storytelling and web-native, sharable journalism are two of the biggest trends in media at the moment. If you locked the two together in a room, Ampp3d might walk out the door ... As a news site, Ampp3d keeps its output fairly …

"What colors have you chosen for your marketing materials? What were your reasons for making that particular choice? Was it because you liked those particular colors, or did you have a particular marketing message in mind? While visual appeal is an important consideration, your color choices could be sending a specific message to the people who vi…

When designing a logo for your business, it's important to take into account the way people interpret color. It's the right time to ask, what kind of emotion do I want my brand to convey?

Nice example of a hub, this site

"The disconnect is that Drupal is not a Content Management System (CMS), nor has it been one for some time. Drupal is a Content Management Framework (CMF), from which you can build a CMS tailored specifically for your needs." A good intro to where Drupal is now, a thoughtful exploration of the issues surrounding its development, and a necessary c…

"watch leading European politicians and experts carry out actual, real-time negotiations over the UK's relationship with the EU in a so-called war-game." Clever idea from Open Europe.

Most stuff on my TumblrHub tagged 'content strategy' are also tagged 'content marketing', so I've been pondering the distinction for a while. Quite like this take: "Content strategy is a field of practice useful for content as marketing and content as a product or service. In other words, the practice is distinct from the purpose."

Exactly 11 years (give or take a month) after we figured out how thematic architectures on EUROPA could support online conversations with what we called the 'interested general public', the EC rediscovers it all over again: "This would give us the opportunity to reach interested audiences, and create a space for real engagement. It also means shi…

"Changes in Google’s search algorithms have twice hammered the young company in recent years, leaving its brands ... hemorrhaging traffic." Variety writes like this is a bad thing? Thank Google for rewarding quality.

“Having a convenient way of getting 3D models of everyday objects, users will now be able to copy real-world objects by scanning a full 360 degree model of an object. The resulting 3D model can be used for visualization or augmented reality applications, or even be used for 3D printing, potentially at a remote location, effectively enabling …

This video is aimed at developers interested in combining machine translation, automatic semantic analysis, human curation, faceted and federated search, and social media to create a machine-assisted multilingual longform content curation engine.

Gratifyingly, the preview of the Hashtag Europe wireframes seemed to do the job, and allow people to understand just what this tool could do...

"we’ve created five fully customizable infographic templates that will give you the inspiration and foundation you need to build your own infographics right in PowerPoint. "