The European Environment State and Outlook Report 2010 (SOER 2010)

Organization: European Environment Agency (EEA) (Agency of the EU). Copenhagen, Denmark

• Purpose: This is the EEA´s flagship product, launched every five years. SOER 2010 provided a set of assessments of the current state of Europe’s (39 countries) environment, its likely future state, what is being done and what could be done to improve it, how global megatrends might affect future trends… and more.
• My role: Overall coordination of communications and editing.
• Strategic approach:
  • Introduced new project management and strategic communications processes at EEA from the start (this was a first for any EEA project).
  • Led a series of widespread consultations with in-house experts (scientific and communications), managers and external potential users (e.g. European Parliament, national ministries, NGOs) to inform development of my SOER 2010 Communication Strategy. I co-managed its implementation which included chairing the SOER Production Team and guiding/supporting ‘communication implementation teams’ (e.g. web, media, multimedia, targeted dissemination).
  • Highlights:
    • This was the first time the SOER was fully online (> 1 million words)
    • Targeted dissemination to 10,000 individual makers and influencers of policy
    • Summaries of all European thematic assessments, and of entire SOER
    • SOER 2010 promotional animation (award winner)
    • Lists of Key words and Key facts
    • Products targeted specifically for policy makers
  • Editing coordination included editing (and often co-authoring) the Synthesis Report, thematic assessments and summaries, as well as managing human resources and proofreading.
  • Introduced `mind mapping´ to EEA staff as a tool for organizing information and improved writing and editing.
  • Provided guidelines and storyline development support for experts, presented SOER to numerous audiences, and supported its launch.
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