“Naked Conversations” - highly recommended reading
In the latest chapter of their book - Naked Conversations - Shel Israel and Robert Scoble profile a number of PR professionals who “get it”, including Café friends Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. By “it”, they mean
PR professionals who understand that blogging has already disrupted the status quo of their professions, and have adapted to the change to the benefits of their clients and themselves.
And what do they have to say about PR professionals that don’t “get it”?
More traditional members of their trade sit with arms akimbo insisting that they can continue to do what they’ve always done, which is to command when announcements will be made and to control who makes them as well as what they have to say. Personally, we think many of them may find their futures in the restaurant service industry and the world may be a better place for it, even if the restaurant industry is not.
Ouch. Now you see why this is highly recommended reading.
As chief cook, bottle washer and barrista extraordinaire here at the Café, I take some exception to the authors’ reference to the restaurant service industry but their point is clear. As I have previously confessed, I am a recent convert to the power of the blog. Like many people in the profession, I am stumbling along somewhat as the earth shifts beneath our feet. While I am still trying to understand all of the implications (along with many other communicators, I might add) one thing that is abundantly clear is that fundamental change is “blowin’ in the wind”. Open, honest, transparent, unrefined, unmediated, plain language, raw, real - the head spins but I know I want to be a part of that action.
Beyond it being my professional obligation to understand the implications of the changes taking place around me, I can assure you the real restaurant world will be much better off without me. Now, who needs a refill?
May 21st, 2005 at 5:33 am
About PR professionals dealing with bloggers….
And maybe other non-blogger and semi-blogger intrnet based publications.
I suggest that there are a lot of lousy blogs that will run any old crap, but in the world of PR people writing for PR people and other folks too, lots of good blogs are happy to pass on, reprint, write about, etc. GOOD CONTENT.
So is it safe to assume that tied to the IABC world conference, the incoming IABC world chief will present a barnburner of a speech focusinging on the actual life and death issues around the world that excellent communications is involved with.
And then the IABC’s brand new PR woman — is she actually allowed at the conference this year? In the past PR people were left at home — will not only make sure that Tom Firedman, invited and encouraged to attend and thus in the rushing to get this story printed around the world.
And the Nevons and Roasted Coffees and Shels of our elves and O’Dwyer and me, and assorted other web-based folks will have the full text sent to us, plus some comments from people in the audience about what parts resonated best with them, for us to run, too?
I don’t really care about drivel from some HR consulting firm about asymetrical face to elbow first line supervisore inter-factual exchange paramters. But the boss’s speech about how people die chained to the ceiling of prison cells in Afghanistan because internal communications does not work in the US Army? Now we’re getting somewhere.
There are probably journalists in Washington from at least two-thirds of the 67 IABC countries.
How many are even on an IABC distibution list, let alone already notified of the date and time of the incoming world-wide chairman’s keynote speech?
BAK