The mind boggles

I wonder sometimes…

what drives someone to enter the same incorrect URL over fifty times in a row?

why would you try two dozen variations of an address that doesn’t exist? like /poeple/name, /people/name, /ppl/name, /peeps/name, peoples/name, name/people/, staaff/people/name, name/staff/people?

if /something/images/name.jpg doesn’t exist, why try /something/images/images/name.jpg? and if that doesn’t exist, why try /something/images/images/images/name.jpg?

why does Google try combinations of URLs that patently don’t exist, have never existed and never will? like /ourdocs/template.asp?pagename=welcome?

how long do pages really stay cached in Google’s cache? we’ve got some that haven’t existed for at least three years in there!

 

We made an error! You idiot!

…that’s more or less what most websites tell you whenever something goes wrong. Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and try for yourself.

Try to get a page that doesn’t exist on Europa (www.eu.int) and you get this error message:

Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it.

Do the same at the United Nations (www.un.org):

Not Found
The requested URL /english/qsdfqsdfqsfd was not found on this server.

Still, these are relatively benign. If we take a look at institutions a little closer to the College we’re made to feel downright stupid. Try the European Institute of Public Administration (www.eipa.nl) in Maastricht:

Error 404
Not Found

Terse. To say the least. And scarcely helpful.

Enter an incorrect address at the EUI in Florence (www.iue.it) and you’re hit with

File Not Found
The requested URL /unknown was not found on this server.
There was also some additional information available about the error: [Fri Oct 7 19:51:44 2005] access to /home/stronghold/htdocs/unknown failed for dd5763d8b.access.telenet.be, reason: File does not exist

Quite. Give them credit: they try to be helpful, even if the help isn’t really, erm, actually helpful.

I’ve been around the internet for quite a while and I’ve seen my share of error messages, so I’m pretty much inured to them. But they’re neither friendly nor helpful. And what they’re really saying (or at least implying) is that you, the user, did something wrong. That you are to blame.

Which of course may be the case—I monitor the errors that occur on the website very closely, and you do see people just try anything and everything in quick succession, blindly hoping that if they enter enough strange URLs they’ll hit on that one address they almost-but-not-quite remember.

However more often than not the error lies either with us (for removing something that used to exist or for adding a wrong link to a page) or with other people (for adding out of date or plain wrong links to their pages). And in those cases it’s even more counterproductive to saddle the unsuspecting visitor with a blunt error message.

So, what are we doing about this on the College site? Well, for starters, no technical mumbo-jumbo. No mention of Error 404s or server this and file that. And we try to offer help:

Page not found

You entered or followed a link to the following address:

http://www.coleurop.be/somepage

We’re sorry, but we couldn’t find the page you were looking for.

Click the back button to return where you came from, or alternatively you may find what you were looking for on the College of Europe home page or the College A-Z.

If you are receiving this message and you suspect you shouldn’t have, something else may have gone wrong. Please get in touch with the webmaster—he may be able to help you out.

The wording needs some work, I know, but hey, at least we’re being really apologetic. We’re practically groveling we are.

Ah, I kid, I kid.

Sill, where the error page really comes into its own is when I know about the address that throws the error—be it a web page, or an image, a PDF file, a Word file, Powerpoint file, etc. Two cases there: either the non-existing address has a one on one replacement, or it hasn’t.

In the first case we never even stop for an error message and shunt the user onwards. So when for some reason the Development Office “home page�? has been moved from /dev.htm to /template.asp?pagename=devointro and then to /development, either one of those addresses will forward the user to the correct page, no questions asked.

In the second case we do stop and inform the user of what is going on, as with everything to do with our HR Studies department:

Page not found

You entered or followed a link to the following address:

http://www.coleurop.be/HRD/somepage.htm

We’re sorry, but there hasn’t been a Human Resources Studies department at the College of Europe for a quite a few years now. Please see our Study Programmes page for more information on our current academic programmes.

At the moment there are close to four hundred “special treatment�? URLs in the database.

I think I’ll only need to stay on top of the errors that are generated every day for a few weeks more, adding them to the database as they occur, to get our errors down from literally hundreds per day to practically nil.

Nifty, no?

Revue de presse

Hé ben, ça nous change des accusations de (shh!) mafia: Le Monde de l’Education de cet octobre 2005.

Pas mal, pas mal. Je me demande si on ne pourrait pas mettre cet article quelque part sur le site. Téléphoner le journaliste demain. Mouais.

What, me busy?

Eeyurgh. It’s been one of those plate-juggling days: a dozen equally important, equally needed to be done by, um, let’s see, yesterday things, punctuated with cursory glances at the 404s every half hour or so—can’t let them sit for a day and do them all at once or I’d never get on top of them—and of course the constant e-mail barrage, phone calls every so often, my weekly trip to Verversdijk, the weekly IT/Communications meeting, a briefing to (of all people!) The Reference this morning, a reply to a reply for a call for tender (which come to think of it I still need to redo seeing as I’d done it in French and it turns out they need it in English), et caetera.

Still. Could be worse. Managed to clear up quite a few loose ends on the website, managed to get a couple of misunderstandings out of the way, managed to set a meeting date to add more information about our campus buildings and residences, got some student event info from Natolin, reached an agreement about the new student website (more work I’m afraid, but still, nice to have an agreement).

And I managed to reduce the amount of newsletters I have to send out tomorrow by two. From three: this morning I knew I had to send out one newsletter for our Malaysia project, another one for UNU-CRIS, and a third one—actually a press release in the form of a newsletter—for our latest round of EU Policy Workshops. Fast forward a couple of hours, and the press release will be proper press release plus a section in the regular Development Newsletter, the UNU-CRIS thing has been upgraded (or downgraded, depends on how you see things ) to an intranet item.

Which leaves the Malaysia newsletter. Which I’ll do first thing tomorrow morning. Right after my meeting with the student representatives. And just before my redoing the ACLT pages. Good thing the afternoon meeting for tomorrow has been cancelled (even if nobody seems to have done anything about the actual meeting request yet, ha!).

Um. Ah yes: welcome to my new weblog, auf Englisch und Französisch.

Meet the staff

You know you’re working for the right place when…

• you can put a name to the roles–so you’re not dealing with “the nightwatchman” but with a person
• you can put a face to the names of the people, so it’s not just a name but you know what the nightwatchman actually looks like
• the website tells you a nightwatchman is an internationally renowned artist

Good stuff. I think you can tell a lot about the organisation by looking at their who’s who.

From our who’s who you can find real people. With publications, with academic interests, with past job experiences, sure. But also with hobbies, children, side projects, personal information.

Mind you, we’re still feeling our way around this, trying to find the right balance. Of course we won’t publish really personal stuff or potentially damaging stuff (either to us or to the person involved). Who’s going to judge? Erm, well, the webmaster will be the first judge, I guess. And if he’s in doubt the head of the department. And so on, all of the way to the top of the organisation chart.

Are we going to make these personal profiles compulsory? Are we going to force everyone to put a picture on “their” page? No, of course not. That would totally defeat the purpose. This is about free choice too. We may decide to put up a minimal “mandatory” profile (who, what, where, contact), but all the rest is up to the people themselves. Do you want a picture? Fine, I’ll come and take one. If you want. If not, do you have a better picture? Fine, I’ll take it and scan it in. Don’t want a picture? Too bad, but hey, them’s the breaks.

And whatever the gray areas, it’ll be people, not functions. And that makes all the difference.

New website

So… we have a new website.

I’m just a teensy wee bit bushed right now, but I’ll get a What I Did Why And How I Did It And What I Plan On Doing up as soon as I gather my wits. 

Great stuff

How often is it you can casually announce to your intranet users that oh yes, the Director of the European Department of the IMF will give a talk on “Prospects and Strategies for the Euro Area�? and all staff and students are very welcome?

Well, if you work here, that’s more or less par for the course any given week.

Tee hee

Tum dee dum

Well, what do you know?

Made the beta at TypePad back in the day, and here I am with a Golden Ticket to WordPress.com.

If one things is pretty clear it’s that the interface, even at first glance, is streets ahead of TypePad. I could actually see myself editing my weblog in the web interface without having to resort to BlogJet.

[and oh yes, am I the only one who's getting seriously tired of all those CamelCase NaMes?]

Corporate?

I’ve had another weblog for quite some time now but I’ve never written (for) a corporate weblog.

So what’s going to be different?

For starters, there’s so much going on at the College of Europe, and there’s so much I’m going to be doing there that I doubt I’ll ever run out of things to say.

I’ll try to think a little more about what I’m writing. Things here will be (marginally) less stream-of-consciousnessy. I’ll try keep rambling on for the sake of rambling on to a minimum.

The entries here will probably be somewhat less whimsical than some of the things I would write on my personal weblog. I’ll watch my language more.

This is obviously still a personal weblog, any opinions I express are most emphatically my own and in no way do I pretend or aspire to speak for my employer. That said, I’ll most probably refrain from things like personal political opinions. Except perhaps when things fly in the face of the European Constitution:

L’Union est fondée sur les valeurs de respect de la dignité humaine, de liberté, de démocratie, d’égalité, de l’État de droit, ainsi que de respect des droits de l’homme, y compris des droits des personnes appartenant à des minorités. Ces valeurs sont communes aux États membres dans une société caractérisée par le pluralisme, la non-discrimination, la tolérance, la justice, la solidarité et l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes.

Which segues nicely into… je promets de faire un effort d’écrire aussi bien en français qu’en anglais. En théorie, je suis bilingue français/néerlandais, mais depuis que je ne vis plus chez mes parents, et comme je ne parle le français qu’avec eux et que notre télé est pratiquement verrouillée sur la bbc, je crains avoir perdu la majorité de mon vocabulaire. Et de ma grammaire. Temps d’y rémédier!

Je ne sais pas si j’aurai le temps d’écrire tous les jours, et ma première priorité sera toujours le site du Collège même, ce qui veut dire que je vais probablement devoir trouver une routine, comme D. Keith Robinson. Quelque chose dans le genre de lundi-actualités / mardi-interview / mercredi-histoire. Peut-être. Parce qu’il se peut naturellement aussi que soit je n’aie pas assez de temps du tout, soit que j’aie trop de choses à dire pour suivre un schéma.

Je compte suivre le manifesto de Robert Scoble, webloggeur officiel chez Microsoft, bien qu’en première intance je n’ai pas l’intention de publier l’adresse de ce site, ni même d’en parler avec mes collègues, avec les enseignants, l’administration, les étudiants ou quiconque au Collège.

Je me réalise naturellement qu’il est inévitable que je serai “découvert” un jour, mais je suppose qu’on verra bien ce qui se passera ce jour-là

Cérémonie d’ouverture II

Back from my first opening ceremony ever. I only got there just in time, so I was sat right at the back, but still… impressive stuff.

The entire Hallen were filled to capacity with what looked like all students and staff of the College, politicians, ambassadors and representatives of various governments.

Guests of honour, from left to right:

• Yves Roosen, acting Mayor of Bruges
• Paul Demaret, rector of the College
• Jean-Luc Dehaene, president of the administrative council of the College, former Belgian Prime Minister, Minister of State, MEP
• Paul Breyne, Governor of the Province of West-Flanders
• José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission

Not in the picture: Yves Leterme (Minister-President of the Flemish Government) who gave a speech at the unveiling of the foundation stone of the new Verversdijk buildings of the Bruges Campus.

[note to self: bring tripod to next indoor event]

Mr. Dehaene was the compère for the day, and he acquitted himself of the task in his usual gruff but very competent way. And I don’t think too many people noticed he broke protocol by actually formally opening the academic year before introducing Mr. Demaret instead of doing so after Mr. Barroso’s speech

The Rector’s speech combined a short “State of the College” and a somewhat more extensive overview of Montesquieu’s life and work, including his taxonomy of république, monarchie and despotisme and obviously his views on the trias politica.

[note to self: get a seat closer to the action next time]

Mr. Barroso’s speech, his first official one as president of the European Commission (on his second oday in office), set out to give his views on a strong and fiercely independent Commission at the heart of the European institutions, and I for one am looking forward to seeing what the press and the analysts make of it.

European anthem, signing of Golden Book, reception, I was introduced to more people than I’ve seen in the entire previous year and it’s going to take me ages to remember all the names, but all in all: a splendid time was had by all.

[note to self: do not, repeat not, let go of glass next time]