MarCom Professional

There's quite a few subscribers to this blog now, so I thought it would only be polite to let you know that I'll be away next week and won't be blogging.

I'm away running a holiday for children with cancer in Chamonix, France. The charity I’m volunteering for is Camp Quality UK - their website is here and you can donate here.

Thanks guys and have a good week - just don't blog or tweet too much so that it doesn't take me long to catch up when I get back!

kthxbai...

In the pub the other night, over a few beers (where all the best ideas happen), a group of Twitterers / footballing-wannabees came up with an idea for a tweetup, bringing together the disparate worlds of Karaoke, Twitter and the Harvest Festival.

The result? The Harvest Twestival!

The event will happen on 25 September in a mystery location in deepest darkest London (which means that we're still sorting out a venue...).

As well as meeting the faces behind the Twitter avatars (and checking out whether they really are as good looking as their online appearances), there'll be plenty of songs to be sung with karaoke classics and, while you're at it, do some good for the world (kind of like Band Aid but without Bob Geldof)

In the spirit of our schooling days, we'll be holding a food drive, where everyone's invited to bring a few cans of food, dug out from the back of dusty food cupboards, which we will be donating to a central London soup k More...

Mr. PR Blogger, Stephen Davies, was kind enough to tag me in a blog meme around an up-and-coming event called New Wave PR. Organised by Andy Wake from event management company, Don’t Panic, the meme was started as:

 

“a fun way to create some buzz, identify potential speakers and find out who you feel the visionaries, mavericks and pioneers of PR really are.

The idea’s simple. We’re asking you to list the three communicators living or dead who have most influenced your way of thinking professionally and perhaps personally too. Who do you think the real innovators are? Who’s been most responsible for kicking the industry forward? And just who are the communication PRunks?”

 

Andy’s listed his three (Malcolm McLaren, Bill Drummond, and Banksy) and Stephen listed his (Muhammad Ali, Richard Branson, and the PR blogosphere). More...

Last week Tim Bradshaw, the Financial Times' intrepid Digital Media Correspondent, wrote an article called "Silicon Roundabout", about an area near Old Street tube station where a whole menagerie of internet start-ups are based.

It started when Matt Biddulph, CTO of Dopplr, plotted his fellow Roundabouters on Google Maps to lend credence to the idea (see http://bit.ly/siliconroundabout). It was soon picked up and spread around the blogosphere (see here, here, here and here.)

Well, I'd like to be so bold (if I may) as to offer up an alternative to Silicon Valley, Silicon Roundabout and all the other Silicon Somethings out there (is there such a place as Silicon Implant?)

It's called "Silicon Seaside", and is otherwise known as Brighton. More...

Not wanting to start of this post sounding like an episode of Sex and the City, but what are the rules surrounding PR practitioners talking about their client work in the online space? Does it annoy the people not in PR have to put up with our occasional promotional tweets in between personal messages? Should we be posting/tweeting about or client work at all?

Etiquette would have it that most people would be perfectly happy to put up with a few plugs from a PR person, as long as there was a disclaimer stating that it was client work. I've done it a few times on Twitter (with a disclaimer), but I've seen a few people being pulled up for tweeting about client work but not disclaiming the fact. More...

Companies are having trouble keeping up with Generation Y consumers, according to a recent article on Silicon.com.

This is a worrying fact for some companies as it is these Gen Y consumers that are increasingly setting the technology agenda and becoming a vital audience to reach in determining which products and services will succeed in the tech space.

Gen Y consists of 18- to 28-year-olds who are leading the way in technology adoption and are the most internet-savvy group, spending more time online than they do watching television.

Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research said Generation Y is the audience companies are most struggling to understand - a key issue due to their importance for future revenue growth. More...

Hotwire recently blogged about a recent change to UK media law that makes a certain practice of ‘fake blogging’ against the law. What used to be just a faux pas is now more than just that. In plain English, the law means that organisations should not pretend to be consumers.

To prove just how relevant this issue is, an article appeared on the front page of the US edition of PR Week, describing an incident where New-York based agency 5W Public Relations acknowledged that a senior executive was involved in misconduct by impersonating a client when leaving a comment on a blog.

The incident arose when 5W Senior Vice President, Juda Engelmayer, left comments under a client’s name on the Failed Messiah blog. More...

... and that's exactly what journalist Sally Whittle has been doing.

In a post titled "I'm not cut out for PR", Sally describes her experiences as she takes on the role of a PR for a short while.

"In a slightly odd turn of events, I have been doing some PR and copywriting for a business in recent months (nothing to do with what I cover as a journalist), and I have to say: journalists suck."

She pitches a story idea to one nationals journalist who rather snootily sent a reply saying: "That's not a story." Next, she pitched the story to a hack who told her that her story was rubbish, but then came back saying her editor liked it, and could Sally write up 800 words for her to customise slightly, which then ran in a paper under the journalists byline. More...

The CIPR needs to update their event booking process so that people can book online. Amanda Rose has been complaining about this for months, as months is how long it took for the CIPR to cash a cheque from Amanda from an CIPR event that took place over 3 months ago.

At the moment if you want to book an event or training course with the CIPR, you must send a physical cheque more than a week in advance, which is a bit rubbish. Does anyone actually own a cheque book anymore?

Amanda has started a petition that says the CIPR should integrate an online booking system for their events, a system such as Eventbrite. More...

I popped down to MoMo London (Mobile Monday London) last night, which was held at the CBI Conference Center in Centre Point Tower.

Titled “Enabling Location in Applications”, the evening was sponsored by Skyhook Wireless. Whereas the last MoMo London featured a high-level panel discussion on current mobile trends from a media and marketing perspective, this event was more of a show and tell.

The people presenting their ideas were:

• Ted Morgan – Skyhook Wireless
• Ben Ward – Yahoo! Brickhouse
  
• Charles Wiles - Google Gears
• Andrew Scott – Rummble
• Justin Davis - BuddyPing
• Mark White - Locatrix

There were also some special guests in the from of various representatives of MoMo from around the world, including Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, Boston, Italy and New York. More...