From Bubble to Beltway

So. A start has been made. This is my new blog. As opposed to the old one. I have finally plucked up the courage to sit down at my shining new iMac. I have posted. Before the comments come in (you know who you are) I have to admit to not being very good at managing expectations, or indeed working out how much is on my plate. It turns out that moving one’s life and that of one’s family is not quite the hop, skip and jump one may hope it to be. Things just take longer than one expects. Those things tend to come in multiples of multiples.

So to this blog. The idea is that I am here in Washington D.C. for the next 24 months and I want to both keep a record of my experiences over that period as well as share them with others. If you’re reading this, my first post, at present you’re counted in others. If you’re interested in coming back, I intend to write about the difference between the US and Europe in terms of public affairs, politics and policy and of course observe life in another country in general. All of this with due regard to my employer, Fleishman-Hillard and its client base.

Before leaving Brussels, I picked the theme for the blog, bought the domain name and set everything up. Alas, all I missed was time and of course content. What the hell am I going to write about in this first post I thought to myself? It was then that I saw those three circles in the theme supplied by the good folks at WordPress. It reminded me of the three circles diagram I created post a global public affairs meeting. You can see it here.

My thinking in Brussels was that to become more effective in achieving our goals we need to expand beyond an automatic reflex of going meeting people directly (i.e. government relations) and harness the full range of tactics available to communicate to our audience, policymakers (i.e. public affairs).  Now I’m in D.C. What I hope to learn is whether the D.C. system, with its lobbying registration rules and increased public connection with decision-makers is something we can learn from in Brussels? Or perhaps, God forbid, D.C. can learn something from Brussels?

Let’s see.

James