IABC Café

After a day of loading software and uploading from back up disks, I am back in business. Now if the recovery company can extract my old Outlook files and contact lists, I will be a happy guy again. For those of you that have gone through the misery of having a computer crash and burn, you can understand how incredibly frustrating it is. My new mantra - I will back up regularly, I will back up regularly, I will back up regularly.

Now, a review of the week that was. As you recall, I was in Jamaica for a highly successful PD conference and business luncheon and then flew to Indianapolis to begin a 7-city tour of the Heritage Region and a quick trip to IABC Dallas.

Monday
IABC Indianapolis (meeting with the board)
Tuesday
IABC Detroit (Top Ten Trends and Issues Presentation)
IABC Cleveland (Top Ten Trends and Issues Presentation)
Wednesday
IABC Pittsburgh (Top Ten Trends and Issues Presentation)
Thursday
IABC Columbus (Reputation Management Presentation)
IABC Greater Cincinnati (Top Ten Trends and Issues Presentation)
Friday
IABC Kentucky (Top Ten Trends and Issues Presentation)
IABC Dallas - US Southern Region (dinner with board and members)

I had great week meeting with members (and non-members, hopefully soon to be members) and and spending time talking about the profession we have chosen and the trends and issues we need to be thinking about. In my top ten presentation I asked everyone to do four things:

1. Become familiar with the blogosphere as it is fundamentally changing how we will interact with our stakeholders and audiences.
2. Review the IABC Code of Ethics because I believe governance and ethics issues will continue to have an effect on how we communicate. Open, honest and transparent. It’s harder than it sounds.
3. Find and champion the updating of their organization’s crisis communications/business continuity plans or become the champion for creating them. It is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when.
4. Take one hour every month to leave their desks (leave behind all pagers, cell phones and other electronic devices) and go somewhere quiet to just think about the profession they have chosen - what it means to them, how they can do it better and what it means in the “grand scheme of things”.

In fact, I would urge every communicator to consider adding these four activities to their “to do” list.

Thanks to everyone who was involved in organizing the Heritage Region tour and for hosting me in the various locations. I am looking forward to my return visit(s) when I will meet with the remaining chapters in the region.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 6:33 pm and is filed under General, IABC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.