Welcome to the live blogging portion of the PRSA International Conference. We hope that you join us as we mingle with you around the halls and in the sessions. We also hope you will visit here often and get into the conversation by commenting on posts. We have a fantastic volunteer blog team that consists of Josh Hallett, New Media Strategist, for Voce Communications; Eric Schwartzman, host for On the Record podcast and president of iPressroom; and Amanda Vasil, PRSSA president at Kent State University.
We will also link to contributions by other veteran public relations bloggers that are attending and speaking at the PRSA International Conference such as Katie Paine, of KD Paine and Partners; Peter Himler, of Flatiron Communications; Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis; Paul Gillin, author of the New Influencers and hopefully, from you.
This site is only as rich as its conversation. Feel free to speak your mind, add to the knowledge, ask questions and debate the points of any given post. If you haven’t done this before, don’t worry, just jump right in.
However, please follow a few simple guidelines or your comment can be removed:
- No profanity, this blog should be treated like a professional office, the dress is decidedly business casual, but the language should be suitable for the CEO’s office
- Be courteous, no name calling or personal attacks
- Stay on topic, if your comment is not related to the post send an e-mail to me (click on my name “Kami Huyse” above) and I will make sure your e-mail gets to the right person in PRSA, since I am but a humble volunteer with no power to right any wrongs.
- Use your real name. We will not accept contributions from anonymous posters.
- If you have some thoughts about the governance of PRSA, that is perfectly fine with us, even healthy, but this is the wrong forum for it. You might want to press the leadership to eventually launch such a blog and I might be right behind you in the chorus. This blog is run entirely by volunteers, not PRSA staff or board members.
How to Share
Now for the fun part. Part of social media is the democratization of content. I am sure that many of you attending the conference are already engaging in social media through blogging, photo sharing sites and video sharing sites like YouTube.
We would love to link to you since more voices lead to better perspectives, and here is how to make that happen.
The topic of this blog is professional development. We hope to make a rich record of the learning opportunities at the International conference and look at the many different ways that the conference has sparked your thinking.
If you want to share, here are the places and ways you can do it:
Flickr Photos
If you have a Flickr account, just click on the link and join the group, 2007 PRSA International Conference, then mark which photos you want to share with the group. Also, tag photos PRSA07. Photos in the group will show up in the photo stream at right (keep them clean).
Blog posts
Write your best blog post about a session or your overall impressions from the day. Then link to this blog or tag your posts with “PRSA07.” We will make a daily search and link to the best.
YouTube Videos
Upload your YouTube Videos and join the “2007 PRSA International Conference” group, upload your videos from you YouTube account to share with the group. I have uploaded a few to get us started. We may embed a few here.
If you already have a Twitter account, you can follow me by clicking on this link. If you don’t use Twitter, now is your chance to try it out. I will be micro blogging the conference on Twitter, and you can too. Once you sign up and start following me, just send a message “@kamichat Joining PRSA chat” and I will add you. Now we can talk in real time via SMS/texting or on m.twitter.com about the sessions – join the fun.
I’ll be seeing you around the Web and the conference.
By Kami Watson Huyse, APR, principal of My PR Pro, is an Ad Age “Power 150” blogger who writes about public relations and communications at Communication Overtones. She has an extensive background in crisis communication and reputation management, executing social media campaigns, focus group research and media relations. She has garnered coverage for her clients in media outlets such as the Washington Post, theWall Street Journal, the CBS’ “The Early Show” and the San Antonio Express News, among others.
Those of us not at the conference will be following you as well. Looking forward to hearing about the program and sorry I cannot attend in person.
Hello again Kami, Thanks so much for volunteering and taking this task of conference blogging on with your team. I’ve already been enjoying the posts and look forward to following along. Again, appreciate your hard work and dedication to advancing the profession. 🙂 Lorelie J.
Lorelie; It was good to meet you today and learn best practices for our chapter from you. The great thing about conferences like this is what we learn from each other.