Come fly with me at Lobbynomics

It’s funny how once you start blogging (even if I am the first to admit that I am a very sporadic blogger), the limits you have set yourself in terms of blogging initially soon start to become burdensome.

Now in all fairness, I put very few limits on myself when I started blogging on LobbyPlanet, except for the fact that each of my posts should remain (1) light and possibly funny (2) about my job as a lobbyists but not about the dossiers I deal with.

Not too constraining you would think…except it’s very difficult not to feel that tingling to write about a subject you are working and breathing most of your waking hours about..and yes you work on it for clients but also because you happen to be interested in that matter…or worse, care about a dossier (I know, caring and lobbyists without a chequebook involved seems extremely counter-intuitive to most).

So to make a long story short, I have decided to launch a second blog in parallel to this one, that talks about the subject matters I deal with on a daily basis, i.e. the wonderful world of the Internet and telecoms.

Yet again, I have set myself the following limits: (1) funny might be aiming too high but let’s try to at least not be depressing (2) if it’s not thought provocative, I shouldn’t write about it (3) being unbiased is a fallacy, as I am clearly biased by the fact that I am a woman, mother of three, rather a dog person than a cat person, born and raised and Africa, thankful for the fact that we live in a free and democratic society in Europe, lover of the early Internet without necessarily grasping on to the past, etc.

As to why it’s called Lobbynomics? Go find the explanation here.

Me to client: “So are you OK with me mentioning you in my acknowledgments as you really helped me go to my limits in lobbying on your behalf”.
Client: “Huh, well, I didn’t do much and you know, on this side of the Atlantic, we don’t like to be associated to the word lobbying”.
Me: “What do you mean? There’s a zillion lobbyists on the Hill… You guys invented the word and now you don’t like it?”
Client: “I didn’t say we were not hypocrites. I’m just saying I find it odd that you would write about lobbying as something you do and are proud of…I mean frankly, what a bizarre idea”.

So the word is out: I’m at it again with my bizarre ideas about lobbying being a legitimate and useful job (if done well by professional that like to sleep soundly at night)…At least I guess the second part of iLobby.eu is a bit more ‘respectable’ as it talks about social media and EU 2.0. And even there, what a struggle to stop adding to the book at every small change in the EU 2.0 landscape. It is very frustrating when your book is finished to see everyone suddenly get excited about Reding’s announced “Communication revolution”…But then again, having read the entire document, I guess revolution may not have the same significance in EU corridors than the places I go to ’cause dragging journos on trips and having Barroso as EU poster boy certainly wouldn’t make me feel like a major shift is underway in terms of EU communications…and certainly wasn’t worth updating the “social media” bit of the book much!

So anyway: it’s on pre-order here and info about is can be found here.

And, as a side note: I know that Switzerland is not part of the EU but the Swiss army knife on the cover was designed in the EU, commercialised by the Swiss and made in China

As always, I am a bit late at reacting to a discussion (well actually, i usually stay out of discussions in the blogging world ’cause that’s what I do as a living), but it has been a fascinating thing to look at two parallel and complementary discussions in the Euroblogosphere this week: on the one hand, the epidermic reaction by eurobloggers to the ivory tower report by Waggener Edstrom ranking the influence of euroblogs in what was quickly referred to as #bbs10 (depending who you ask, this refers to the acronym of the title of the study “Brussels Blogger Study 2010″ or “Brussels Bull S***”) in some lively Twitter exchanges and blog posts (by Jon Worth, Blogactiv, Mathew Lowry, Open Europe, The European Citizen, Bit More Complicated, Lacomeuropeenne (FR), and Ralf Grahn for the ultimate summary); on the other, the discussions initiated by the French blogger @samuelbhfaure regarding the need for a new/better collective European blog, and which is neatly summarized by @europasionaria here.

Good advice

All of this lead also to the nomination of the top 30 Euroblogs by the team of editors at Bloggingportal, with your not very humble servant’s own blog being included in the list.

OK: so now I’ve summarized it all, what is my point you will think? My point is that I am not even sure what a “euroblog” is, and am slightly worried at the idea of “organising” and “specialising” things…dear I say it: “professionalising” it?

I blog as a cheap means of therapy. I don’t have time for a shrink, I am too polite too shout my frustration or worries in front of my kids, so WordPress and my PC are my two sanity vents when used in combination. I write in a not very professional way, with as little research as possible, and with no intention to influence anyone, because that is what I do as my day job and it’s the last thing I want to do when I write. I write to get things off my chest. And I self-censor myself by not writing about the dossiers I handle and the subject matters I deal with professionally just because my blog is not a lobbying tool to me. Except if you consider that a lobbyist writing about lobbying is actually lobbying for lobbyists (I know: I had a headache too when re-reading this).

Ranking blogs, discussing influence…why not…if it creates a buzz, that’s fine. But should we truly care about the “influence” of euroblogs? Is the whole purpose not to create an image of EU stuff that removes a bit of the dust and shows it can be fun, interesting, important, a source of a job, etc? Or is that influence and is my definition of that concept too tied to my professional perspective where influence = power = uses and abuses = egoland? Bloggingportal provocatively titled its post “My Euroblog is Better Than Yours“…hmmm:  mine is bigger than yours? Let’s hope the Euroblog does not become the Egoblog cause then I will have to find a new place to do my therapy

Regardless of the title of this post, please don’t read this thinking I have suddenly become very hairy with a tendency to drool and jump very high whenever someone says something half nice to me.

No, this title is all about my job as a lobbyist.

I always thought being a lobbyists made me have this mysterious and, dare I say it, intriguing job. After all, lobbyists wield this massive power, no?

But then again, a lot of my work consists in preparing dossiers, analysing lengthy consultation documents in order to produce even lengthier responses. As I am freelance, I obviously do this on behalf on clients (no one would do this as a hobby, believe me). Which means that, a lot of my time is also spent understanding my clients’ business, what matters to them and what doesn’t , what could impact them and what is less likely to do so, etc. In terms of drafting responses, this also implies a lot of back and forth of versions 1, 2, 3, N, final, Final2, etc.

I did not quite know how to qualify this process, until my husband brought back a toy for our new Labrador today, and I happened to read the description of what I would call an orange ball on the cardboard label attached to it (see picture below).

So the “thing-I-consider-an-orange-ball” has a name (it’s called Huck) and the guidelines for use are: float, bounce, chase, chew, repeat…with the additional guarantee that “We guarantee Huck against “Dog Damage”. A customer may return the toy to a local representative for a free one-time replacement”.

Hmmmm…Why does this sound so familiar? Wait a minute: float, bounce, chase, chew, repeat…that’s exactly what happens with every paper I write for a client... Oh my God: I’m a Labrador, and my every day deliverable in life is Huck, the “orange ball”! Just a clarification though, to any zealous client reading this: I don’t do one-time replacements (but then again I’ve noticed you tend to replace the Labrador rather than the ball anyway). Oh, and for anyone waiting for other labrador analogies such as wagging tails and dumb love for anyone feeding them, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Wrong (and, by the way, I wish it were true!).

It is a funny misconception that if you want to have two months of holidays during summer you can either become a teacher (and do something useful for humanity) or become someone hovering around the European institutions (and do…well, what lobbyists do, I guess). I can’t comment on the former but when it comes to the latter, it always makes me wonder if people truly believe that if there’s no MEP around to lobby, we just sit at our desk waiting for them to come back….like robots in “off ” mode or very sad Labrador puppies left home alone.

Well, sorry to disappoint all those considering a lobbying career (or governmental affairs, public affairs, “something” affairs) for the nice summer holiday perks: there’s still a lot to do over summertime! And that is because policy-makers and regulators truly make the “jobs and growth” motto a central objective in the way they work. How so, will you ask? By creating a policy environment that stimulates employment and innovation? Well, maybe…kind of…but also by making sure lobbyists like me do not fall in a deep hole of nothingness over summer by issuing a zillion consultations at the end of June / beginning of  July, with a deadline for responses in September…Thou shall not stay idle by the pool, says the regulator!

Oh, and did I mention that slightly over-full folder on my desktop called “TO READ” in which I put every file, document, report, etc of over 60 pages that I am not bound to read but just know I should at some point in my life, if only to feel smarter.

However, I will do all of this whilst humming “in the summertime”!

So hum along!

I had the pleasure of being invited to speak about Lobbying the EU by EDRI (European Digital Rights) at a seminar organised for a bunch of NGOs and activists.

Obviously, aside from the nice feeling one gets being “The Lobbyist” amongst “The Nice Guys” (and actually they all were extremely nice, even when they knew I was an industry representative), I had a fun time talking about my experience in Brussels, especially as I built my entire presentation around quotes from Miguel Cervantes‘ Don Quixote in honour of the Spanish Presidency (which ended up being as fun as when I made a presentation under Swedish Presidency using ABBA lyrics), as you can see from my slides below.

The best part of these speaking gigs is obviously the Q&A at the end. I found a couple of remarks and exchanges especially interesting and worth mentionning in this blog:

• Lobbying Vs advocacy: I must admit, I find the whole labelling discussion a bit odd. To me, as soon as you try to influence a legislative outcome or process, regardless if you are a multi-national, an SME, a trade association, an NGO or Mr John Smith, a concerned citizen, you are lobbying (I even tend to consider that when my 3 year-old manages to convince me that I wil save her from doom by giving her a cookie, she’s one hell of a lobbyist). As you can imagine, NGOs have another view on this and we started discussing on what was different in their way of doing things and mine. They argued they were not doing “lobbying” because they did many other things, but that I found un-convincing personnally, as an argument. But then one argument in the discussion struck me as maybe holding part of the answer: activists told me that quite often, they consider they have reached their goal when on a specific subject, they have raised awareness in the press and amongst citizens and basically “created a stir”, even if the legislative text did not go their way. That is probably at the exact opposite of what I try to achieve in my job. Creating a stir is frankly not what I’m looking for and if a text is not changed in a direction that is “better” from my perspective (and my clients’), the ink dry and the paper printed in the Official Journal, I have achieved nothing. Yes, I do think that is probably the main difference I have found between the two approaches, and I’m actually happy to have been able to put my finger on it.
• The approach to lobbying the 3 institutions: I strongly believe you never lobby institutions but people. But still, it is true that each EU institution has its own “culture” and “approachability factor” (and even within an institution, there are sub-worlds, as for example one Directorate-General can be totally different to another in the European Commission). But summarising these cultural differences is difficult. To me, it ends up being an issue of “length of relationship”: the European Parliament is an institution where “short term relationships” and “one-day stands” in terms of lobbying are absolutly acceptable. You can meet an MEP once, explain an issue, maybe convince him, and never see him again and there will be no hard feelings. Council and Commission on the other hand, require a lot more long term relationship-building. Trust is a hard-earned currency there, based on technical expertise and coherence, and that is hardly something you can earn in a 30 minutes speed-date (see my post on speed-dating at the Mickey Mouse).

This is the second time I am invited to speak specifically about my job and I must say, in both cases, I have learnt valuable insights from my audience, so I really look forward to doing this more often!