Now and then the question arises: how can we get a transnational discourse on European topics underway, or create a European online public space? The two phrases in bold, above, both come from one of the latest posts on the topic, this time from Julien Frisch. They follow initiatives like Steffan's Bloggingportal.eu, which aggregates Euroblog…

Quite a few people look at me in quite a puzzled way when I mention how the techniques and approaches of online community management 'may have something to offer' the EU in terms of communications, but that this may require 'a change in mentality'. When they look like that, I say "You know, something along the lines of the…

Following rapid and significant expansion into new markets and sectors of governance and policy, innovative union of nation states ("European Union", or EU) seeks an experienced Online Community Manager to gain buy-in at all levels throughout our 27 Members, as well as with external stakeholders on a global level.

I stumbled upon a short video on the BBC of Tim Berners-Lee trying to explain the importance of the data web, aka semantic web, again. He himself says that he can't say where it will lead us, as it is paradigm changing. True - but I can think of a few applications that anyone interested in the EU should know about. I can't embed the vide…

OK, so sue me - I haven't posted in months. But I will post again soon, because the twittering is driving me nuts. I've been on twitter for around 18 months (since 7:24 AM Oct 18th, 2007, to be precise), and hardly ever used it. Didn't get the badge, didn't buy the t-shirt. Hell, if I can't find the time to blog on the blo…

When you want to create a community, asking uses what they need is the best way to start. We launched the 1-page website, with user survey, newsletter signup and social, inside two weeks of winning the project. Everything we developed the following year (2010) was based on the results.

[Note: this has been republished after it was lost during a software upgrade. Unfortunately, comments were lost. ;-( ] ReadWriteWeb published at the end of last year a thoughtful look at how the financial crisis may impact innovation in the online world:... we're clearly now at a point where the financial problems of the world will have a big…

I was discussing online communities and the EU with some friends before Christmas, when a few interlinked thoughts and ideas popped up, stemming from an earlier post about "trust2". I thought I'd commit them to screen while they were fresh in my mind, and ask for some ideas.Trust and (election) turnoutGiven that election turnout is …

I was reading Laurent's post What does it mean to become human?, but it was so long that I skipped to the end, illustrating exactly the point I wanted to make in this post. Laurent writes, amongst other things, about interiority:the capacity to reflect upon ourselves, others and the world, the whole of realityIt put a name to something I'…

So I thought it would be interesting, as the hysteria fades, to take a short, unrepresentative tour of how EU-oriented bloggers greeted Barak Obama's victory.This is by no means a scientific or exhaustive survey - just a few quotes and links - and it's highly unrepresentative because, of the acres of blogprint dedicated to the man, I…

Over on iBlog, Claus used a term that caught my attention:Networks such as ERRIN, which is funded by membership contributions and invests in what I would call “TRUST 2.0.”, help to establish that collective understanding and culture of cooperation and facilitate successful involvement in EU projects.While he freely admitted that "Trust 2.0 do…

By my reckoning, Blogactiv had its first birthday today... what really sticks in my memory was the eurosceptics. It led to an interesting experiment in handling certain types of online debate... The Pyjama People's immediate assumption was that Blogactiv was an EU-funded front company... CIA-style

I lead the team that created Blogactiv.eu, the first blogging platform focused on EU policies

Project manager and architect of a successful pilot to reorganise EUROPA along thematic lines, so people could figure out What the EC did, Why and How, in areas of interest to them, without studying its labyrinthine internal structure.

Of course, when we launched the first interactive website for the IST Event (IST 2002) we didn’t know it was a Web2.0 site. That term only appeared two years later

Part of the pilot Thematic Portal project I ran while at the EC’s DG INFSO, the Newsroom CMS was the first cross-EC CMS, and involved launching user ‘INFSO accounts’ before Google had 'Google accounts’.

The first – and possibly still the only – site on EUROPA to tap popular support (via sheer user traffic) for a new EU regulation.

The comm strategy for DG Information Society revoled around a segmentation of the target audience based on their level of interest in - and hence understanding of and motivation to visit/read/learn/share - the work of the DG.

At one point I was editing something like 200 research project profiles, 4 editions of EUREKA News (5 languages), 7 editions of Innovation & Technology Transfer (5 languages), several annual reports and brochures, on paper and online, as well as (from 1995) designing, creating and managing their websites.Not that this was all single-handed. In tho…

EUREKA's website was the first database-driven website by any European public organisation, and could do things other sites took over a decade to manage, such as integrating project database with journalistic content my editorial team had been producing for years.

Tagged bookmarks can easily be imported to get your Hub online quickly.

Every collection of resources and search result on your Hub is available as an RSS feed: simply insert "/rss" in front of your @username in the URL. Click the title for more details,

Hubs help your visitors easily find the content they're interested in. Your Hub's Homepage shows "All the Stuff you Like, Think and Do about Everything, Anytime...": - ie everything. Your visitors can alter that 'navigation phrase' to find what they want.

Whenever you see something you want to Hub, just select some text and click the ‘bookmarklet’ button you’ve dragged onto your Browser’s toolbar.

The chatbot you can find on my example Hub is a pale imitation of what Beta users should get.

Update (15/5/2022): the default Hub Homepage is now "All the Stuff you Like, Think and Do about Everything, Anytime...", so your HomePage will not be empty as soon as you publish your first item.Original post follows:---The content you're creating is not showing up on your Home Page because your Home Page only shows Highlighted items. So click the…

Apart from using the bookmarklet to curate the Stuff you Like, Think and Do, you can publish full-length posts on your Hub.

MyHub’s AI engine automatically tags any content you put in your Inbox, Queue or Hub, in the process learning from you and your visitors.

You can currently edit your About page and the social links in the banner, create Categories in your Hub’s navigation and (optionally) Services to describe your offer. This list will grow.

Your Hub’s navigation is a natural sentence - the 'navigation phrase'. The word “Everything” in it is the default choice from a dropdown list of Categories. Each is a bundle of tags, allowing you to organise your content in overlapping groups.