{"id":4491,"date":"2024-12-09T09:35:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T08:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4491"},"modified":"2024-12-09T09:45:07","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T08:45:07","slug":"week-46-mbbc-meetings-eureka-chamber","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4491","title":{"rendered":"Week 46: MBBC meetings, Eureka chamber"},"content":{"rendered":"

The main event in the third week of November was the twice-yearly meeting of our governing bodies, the Management Board and Budget Committee, collectively known as MBBC. The two bodies consist of representatives of the EU member states, and meet twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. The autumn meetings are the most important ones, since they approve the work programme and budget for the following year. <\/p>\n

Another important meeting was the monthly meeting of our reading club, and we finished the week with a drink in the office, in my new department. <\/p>\n

46_1<\/strong>
\nThe meetings started Tuesday, and that evening we had a gala dinner at this nice restaurant in the centre:
\n\"DSF4464\"<\/p>\n

46_2<\/strong>
\nAs I approached the restaurant, I came across a group of local Ukrainians, marking the 1000 days of the fascist Russian aggression against their country:
\n\"DSF4463\"<\/p>\n

46_3<\/strong>
\n\"DSF4460\"<\/p>\n

46_4<\/strong>
\n\"DSF4461\"<\/p>\n

46_5<\/strong>
\n\"DSF4465\"<\/p>\n

46_6<\/strong>
\nThen the dinner started. First, our Executive Director, Jo\u00c3\u00a3o Negr\u00c3\u00a3o, made some short remarks:
\n\"DSF4466\"<\/p>\n

46_7<\/strong>
\nAs a new feature of the MBBC dinner, our office choir was going to perform a few songs. The conductor, Janet, introduces the choir to the audience:
\n\"DSF4468\"<\/p>\n

46_8<\/strong>
\nThe choir was led by Janet in her usual animated manner:
\n\"DSF4472\"<\/p>\n

46_9<\/strong>
\n\"DSF4477\"<\/p>\n

46_10<\/strong>
\nThe audience was listening attentively:
\n\"DSF4473\"<\/p>\n

46_11<\/strong>
\nMy Danish colleague Kirsten. She heads the facilities department (in general, only the management team of the office is invited to the MBBC dinner):
\n\"DSF4486\"<\/p>\n

46_12<\/strong>
\nThe next day, back to work, the meeting continued all day, and I had my little Ricoh GR with me as always. During a break, Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Antonio from the Spanish Ministry of Industry, chairman of our Budget Committee, chats with two of the ladies from our office who run the practical side of the meetings:
\n\"R000648\"<\/p>\n

46_13<\/strong>
\nI got the two ladies, Ver\u00c3\u00b3nica and Valeria, to pose for me:
\n\"R000646\"<\/p>\n

46_14<\/strong>
\nI was not the only photographer present, of course, these two ladies had the job of taking pictures and videos throughout the 2 1\/2 days of meetings:
\n\"R000665\"<\/p>\n

46_15<\/strong>
\nOn Wednesday evening, the WeRead club met at the Pynchon book caf\u00c3\u00a9 in the centre. We were discussing our book of month, “The Centre”, the debut novel of Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, an English-Pakistani writer. Here, Tina and Maria in discussion:
\n\"DSF4497\"<\/p>\n

46_16<\/strong>
\nThe leader of the reading club, my Dutch colleague Caroline, dressed appropriately:
\n\"DSF4500\"<\/p>\n

46_17<\/strong>
\nEri, giving me a suspicious look:
\n\"DSF4495\"<\/p>\n

46_18<\/strong>
\nAs usual, Eri came well-prepared, and here she quotes from a particular passage in the book:
\n\"DSF4498\"<\/p>\n

46_19<\/strong>
\nThe MBBC meetings ended Thursday at lunchtime, and is the custom, our Executive Director held a speech to all staff to update them on the outcome of the meetings. This time, we had a new speaker, someone I have known for several years and like very much. Edyta is head of the Polish Patent Office in Warsaw until the end of December. As from January, she will be our new Deputy Executive Director, elected to the post by the European Council. This was her first opportunity to introduce herself to the staff of the office, and she gave a lovely, personal speech:
\n\"R000671\"<\/p>\n

46_20<\/strong>
\nOur office underwent a reorganisation back in July. As part of this reorganisation, a new department dealing with strategy and foresight was created, of which I am the director. Since the new department also includes the Chief Economist unit which I still also head (so the office gets a two-for-one deal on my salary), I brought a few people with me from my old department, merging them into a larger group that was already in place. Part of the cultural change that I am making in my new department is to transfer some of the habits from my previous department, especially when it comes to working together across units, and having fun. In that spirit, we inaugurated a new small meeting room on Friday. It is a room that was previously someone’s office, next to mine. After I took over, we transformed this office into a small informal meeting room, and held a contest in the department for name. The winner was “Eureka Chamber”, chosen by popular vote. Here, JuanMi who proposed the name, is giving a short speech while we partake of various munchies and drinks:
\n\"DSF4507\"<\/p>\n

46_21<\/strong>
\nSome of the new and old people in my new department–Rodrigo (Spanish), Micha\u00c5\u201a (Polish, one of the people I brought with me), Ursula (Finnish), Gabor (Hungarian), Patricia (Spanish) and Camila (Romanian). A nice international group:
\n\"DSF4508\"<\/p>\n

46_22<\/strong>
\nThe conversation and the munching continued for about 1 1\/2 hour, just the thing for a Friday:
\n\"DSF4510\"<\/p>\n

46_23<\/strong>
\nI finish with a couple of random images from my daily movements, starting with a beautiful dawn sky over our beach:
\n\"1040574\"<\/p>\n

46_24<\/strong>
\nThe last image is a grab shot from a local shopping centre. This dog was so patient, he just stayed up while his human spent several minutes at the counter of some shop:
\n\"R000673\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main event in the third week of November was the twice-yearly meeting of our governing bodies, the Management Board and Budget Committee, collectively known as MBBC. The two bodies consist of representatives of the EU member states, and meet twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. The autumn meetings are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4205,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4496,"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4491\/revisions\/4496"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}