13th April 2017 Vienna, Austria
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall enter a room in Vienna’s magnificent Hofburg Palace as guests of the President of Austria, Dr Alexander Van der Bellen and the First Lady, Mrs Doris Schmidauer Around 70 journalists are present to record the event. A flurry of camera […]
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1st February 2017 London, UK
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is always front and centre of the UK government’s response to an overseas crisis. They’re always high pressure events and lives are often on the line. Depending on the scale there’s a whole set of processes and teams that swing into action, all centred around our Crisis Management Department (CMD), […]
11th October 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
Last week I joined the Ombudsman of Macedonia and Sakam da Kazam to officially mark our three-way cooperation on a new project Speak Up for the Ombudsman. From this autumn until spring 2018 this project will provide one more channel to give voice to citizens of Macedonia who need help from the Ombudsman. The aims […]
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26th February 2016 London, England
It is pretty rare these days for a British Ambassador or equivalent not to engage in social media – something that sets us apart from the vast majority of other countries’ emissaries (with notable exceptions). But at a time when diplomacy has progressively less to do with government to government (G2G) interaction and more to […]
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18th December 2015 London, UK
At the start of 2015 the Digital Transformation Unit set itself an ambitious to do list. After the euphoria of celebrating our first anniversary, the year has been defined by hard graft as we’ve worked with colleagues across the FCO to begin work on how to deliver digital services to British people across the world […]
23rd October 2015 London, UK
Approximately 50% of users 18 or under. Real-time images and videos that disappear once viewed. Messages that only allow 37 characters of text. At first glance Snapchats vital statistics do not appear the ideal fit as tool to communicate the nuances of diplomacy but its relentless growth encouraged some further examination. Like the channel itself […]
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7th September 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia
If you ever you get the chance to speak to students at the Preparing Global Leaders Institute (PGLI) course, snap it up. Few weeks ago I was back in Struga, on the shores of Lake Ohrid in Macedonia’s sun-blessed south, to do just that. Actually, any opportunity to speak with a group of students is […]
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26th December 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Nowadays, communication includes the freedom to express opinions in the Internet information environment and the freedom to discover them. That is to say, the freedom to speak and to hear. Moreover, this online environment gives a new perspective to what was once referred to as “word of mouth”. Now we might be tempted to call […]
13th January 2012 Washington DC, USA
Long before I knew I was coming to DC, I saw Alec Ross, Senior Advisor on Innovation to Secretary Clinton, give a talk at the London School of Economics on foreign policy in the era of social media. He argued to an enthusiastic London audience that high speed Internet is the infrastructure of the 21st […]
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22nd December 2010 Ottawa, Canada
In this post our guest blogger Elin Gwyn, a research analyst from OMAFRA, speaks to her experience attending the “Improving the impact of development research through better communication and uptake” workshop in London. Over to Elin! Elin Gwyn On a frosty morning on November 29 I found myself crossing Westminster Bridge, looking down at the boats […]
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