University of Sunderland Blog Conference - Result!
Posted Sunday, November 20, 2005 at 2:02am in Blogging, PR General, Technology | 16 Comments
Phew! What a pretty eventful weekend it’s been so far. It’s felt a bit surreal actually.
First-things-first, my blog has been down….again! My host was hacked and sabotaged resulting in all the blogs and websites hosted with him being wiped out. Apparently the hackers broke a 10 digit password to get in, and once they did, they deleted everything! Luckily I had a back-up of my blog files, and my ‘WordPress legend’ friend, Lee, helped me out yet again. **Side note** If you have a WordPress blog and need some help, Lee’s your man. He’s reasonably priced and sound as a pound. Anyway, it’s back up - still a few problems, but that aside, everything’s fine.
Right, onto the good part - the University of Sunderland blog conference. One word - “Fantastic!” Tremendous turnout, great presentations and incredible feedback. As Philip says: “If a successful conference means a full house, with everyone engaged and scribbling notes to the bitter end, this one worked.”
The blog conference was a first for me; in fact it was a day of firsts. I was interviewed on BBC Radio Newcastle with regard to blogging. My first ever radio interview, kindly nominated by Philip. Was I nervous? Yes I was. Marks out of 10? I’ll give myself a five.
I had a bit of a shaky start but once I got into the swing, I found my flow. Although, as every PR practitioner knows - you’ve got to get your key messages out. Sadly I let myself down on that one. Never-the-less, I got a lot out of it.
Anyway, back to the conference. Prior to the day, I, along with the Sunderland Uni CIPR student rep, was invited to the meal held for the guest speakers. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the PR bloggers I read so religiously. Also, any invitation for a free meal and I’m there!
Tom Murphy was probably five thousand feet above the Irish Sea at the point of taking this.
I also secured an interview with Neville Hobson for my journalism assignment. It’s amazing what some people will agree to after a few glasses of red wine. Eh Neville? 
The day of the conference ran smooth. People travelled up from London and across Europe. Now, getting Londoners to travel out of London is a feat on its own. So for them to travel way oop north for a one day conference, must say something for blogging? The interest and curiosity are there; it just needs the evangelism, which, in my opinion, is exactly what the conference did.
I won’t go into the ins and outs of each presentation, but I will say is that each tackled the different elements of blogging (and in Neville’s case, podcasting) that related to PR and communication.
Needless to say, there were one or two nervous comments from the audience about the fact that in blogging, you are letting your PR guard down. For example, allowing employees to blog about their company or organisation.
No doubt this will seem daunting to some PR practitioners, but for me personally, I think I’ve seen and heard about it so many times, it’s becoming normal.
As Philip says: Resovoir Blogs 
If you want to see the rest of the University of Sunderland Blog Conference photos, you can take a look at my Flickr pictures in the side bar.
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