The Green online hearing of Barroso - and its problems

This week the current President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso met with all political groups in the European Parliament to discuss his programme for re-appointment. Only the Green European Party decided to make the hearing available via the Internet. Unfortunately the project was not the success which it could have been.

What happened?

Days before the meeting several MEPs and party secretariats sent out press releases and alerted people on the internet about the live streaming link. Everything was coordinated on a European level. The link was widely spread in the internet community. You could even post questions to raise to Barroso on the live stream page beforehand. So far so good.

But when the hearing finally started today at 16:30 the servers for the live streaming had severe performance problems. Many people had not much more than a few first minutes until the audio become uncomprehensible and the connections finally broke down.

Now you could say that this is a good sign because so many people were interested that even the server broke down. But the fact that the performance of the servers wasn't tested before lead to a situation where probably most if not all viewers had a bad viewing experience.

To be honest, already when I looked at the webTV portal of the Green European Party before the hearing today I was sceptical if the choice of the supplier has been made on technical reliability and user-friendly interface or more on fancy visual effects which quickly convinced senior decision makers.

Where is the on-demand video?

Finally, the biggest mistake was to do no follow-up at all regarding the live stream. Neither does the live stream page provide any message about the difficulties during the streaming nor is there anywhere a link to an on-demand version of the video. Even the main page of the Green webTV portal has as last item a Strasbourg bike action but no word about the Barroso hearing.

Don't misunderstand me: I liked the approach of the greens. Involving the citizens is a really must for Brussels' politics. But it is also a challenge. This hearing was a first opportunity to learn for the future and to avoid the same mistakes in future web transmissions.

Let me know in the comments what your experience was in case you have watched the hearing online.

Also in Brussels - a picture tells more than thousand words

Yesterday, two stories on Brussels' online media caught my attention.

EurActiv has an article about the logo of the upcoming Swedish EU council presidency. And Honor Mahony of EUObserver blogged about a design competition for Brussels' EU quarter.

Both articles did not include any images.

Now you could argue that on the EurActiv story there is a link to the presidency website which features the logo. And you could say that Honor Mahony's writing style compensates the need for any visual illustration of the design proposals.

But it is still undeniable that any reader reading a story about a logo or a design competition would be interested to see how the logo or the design respectively look like.

EurActiv and EUobserver are largely text-based online media. And that is not a problem. They should, however, upgrade their content management systems to allow for some pictures, when useful.

And if one listened to the presentations given yesterday at the Digital News Affairs 2009 conference in Brussels then it seems that system (and editors) should quickly become ready for quick implementation of video too.

PS: See the logo here, the EU quarter designs can be viewed here.

Milkshaker: EU election website gets election date wrong (updated)

Brussels has a new website dedicated to the European elections in June 2009.

The site is called "milkshaker" and unfortunately it has not only a confusing name but is also confusing in itself, as Julien has already noted.

Finally, the makers of the site seem to have put in a wrong date for the countdown to the EP elections. It currently says 143 days, but in fact 7 June (the date on which the majority of EU countries will hold the European elections) is only 117 days away.


I wouldn't complain if the content itself would be interesting. But it seems to be an automated mix of Google News results blended with some RSS feeds from Brussels-based media like EurActiv and New Europe. This is too little for journalists and too confusing for everyone else.

The European Journalism Centre has already produced good websites, including www.eufeeds.eu and the excellent blog competition Think About It. Milkshaker, however, does not convince me yet. The only attractive part is is the logo and name of the site.

Update 16/2/2009: after beeing offline a few days now, the milkshaker site is back online today, with the correct countdown!

Update 2: EJC responded, see the comment link below.

How many web TV projects does the EU need?

The EPP has launched today a new web tv project called Dialogue TV. Some comments on the flood of new EU web tv channels.

The EPP-ED already has an ambitious web tv project (EPP-ED TV) so why does the EPP add another portal? Dialogue TV is branded as the “EPP European Election website” so maybe there will be more to come than just videos?

“EU political parties can’t buy airtime on big networks like BBC, CNN or Euronews, so we decided to create our own web tv channel instead,” EPP deputy secretary general Luc Vandeputte told EUobserver.

But let’s not forget that apart from EPP-ED TV there is also Europarl TV which should get the conservatives in the EP some considerable air/web timeshare.

So how many web tv channles do we need? And wouldn’t it be better if all those channels are somehow centralised somewhere instead of creating just one more website that you visit once and then forget again.

I think it would be far better for EP candidates to make their own little videos and post them to Youtube, Facebook and Europarl TV.

Major redesign of the Financial Times website, including the FT Brussels Blog

The Financial Times has relaunched its website. As the FT is not only a UK business newspaper but also one of the leading Brussels' print media I had a look at their new design.

First of all it looks like the new design is currently only applied to the FT frontpage, meaning it doesn't affect the FT's Europe and Brussels sections.

You can see here a commented version of the new design, with explanation of all the new items: http://www.ft.com/newlook


Good:

• The new layout is much clearer and uses more white-space. This makes it less cluttered than its predecessor.
  
  
• I think the use of "Financial Times" is a better choice than the previous "ft.com" - especially as most users will now know the FT's web address.
  
  
• There is a new "most popular" section on the front page right-hand side bar.
  
  
• No more left-hand side bar. But needs to be seen how navigation is implemented on sub-pages. The "Brussels" section is at the third level (World > Europe > Brussels), so not easily accessible when arriving at the front-page.
  
  
• Overal, the new site looks far more like a blog :)
  

Bad:

• I do not necessarily think that the pink background is bad as such. But grey text on pink background is definitely not working well.
  

• While there might be technical constraints I don't think that having two (quite different) designs running at the same time is a good idea. The sub-pages should be migrated as soon as possible.
  

Interesting:

• Shorter teaser texts: The short summaries below story titles have been replaced by a sub-title with more or less equal length as the main title of the story. This will probably increase the possibility to quickly scan the front-page without having to really read whole sentences.
  
  
• The FT has copied more or less exactly the navigation bar from digg.com, a popular news sharing website. See this screenshot for comparison.
  
  

While I am writing this I see that the FT Brussels Blog has already been migrated to the new design. Have a look yourself: http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/

Facebook election features coming to Europe - not the EU

Facebook, which now already has more European users than US-based users (48 millions vs 41 millions) is planning to extend its election features to Europe, CNET reports.

But, surprise surprise, Facebook is not targetting the upcoming European elections (I wonder whether they are even aware of them) but national elections in the member states.

While the Brussels' Public Affairs 2.0 blog has already asked for volunteers for a freebie for all those who go to vote (in the US you got a free coffee at Starbucks) it is unsure whether gifts in the context of parliamentary elections are legal in Europe, especially the UK.

More focus on Europe is good for Facebook. But instead of offering an "I voted" button on Facebook profiles maybe they should start to make a "European Union" network a reality. Already more than 1.500 Facebook users have requested it.

Google In Quotes - Would love to see a European edition

Google has launched a beta version of a new project called In Quotes. It automatically indexes speeches and quotes by US politicians and puts the results in context.

I hope that Google will release soon a European edition of it. Imagine you could select all the political groups in the European parliament and compare their statements on different issues with the help of one click!

Maybe the bloggers from Fleishman-Hillard can lobby for it at a rumoured upcoming Google event in Brussels :)

Website: Google In Quotes