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.