Tomorrow evening Web2EU aficionados are gathering for the third Open Beer. And it looks like there'll be quite a crowd packed into Le Break de l'Abbaye to hear the response of Barroso II to the call to use Web 2.0 for Europe. 

How can we initiate common hashtags for different institutional actors of the European Union? Ideas most welcome: http://j.mp/aBtzkJ #web2eu

Fortunately, Romania's Railway Insider has the story: http://rinsider.clubferoviar.ro/en/afiseaza_stire.php?id=5634

You need a strategic communication policy

There is an interesting op ed article in today’s Financial Times about the Afghanistan conflict by Alastair Campbell. He’s a controversial figure, and some would surely accuse him of being daring or even worse for publishing such an article on such a subject so soon after his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, but he nevertheless makes a compelling case. His basic argument is that whilst soldiers can win wars, ‘failure in the battle for hearts and minds can lose them.’ He draws three lessons from the Iraq conflict: first, take strategic communications seriously; second, ‘in a multinational alliance, you have to internationalise communications so that key aims can be communicated across… political systems’; third, ‘there is a need for a constant focus on the strategy and security reason for (the war)’ – ‘the arguments have to be put out there consistently’. Campbell is writing about Afghanistan but I can’t help but feel that his arguments apply just as much to the European Union. In that context, has anybody seen the EU’s communication policy? It was there all right, but it seems suddenly to have disappeared. Wherever it has gone, the need for it surely remains as strong as ever.

Watch it and then hug someone near you.

Happy holidays via the Web 2 (y) EU all!