Delivering the new PR: London, Fri 10 November

Posted Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 10:05am in Blogging, PR General | 5 Comments

Happy to say I’ll be attending the fifth and final Delivering the New PR: How Blogs, Podcasts and RSS Can Work For You this November at the Marriot Hotel in Regents Park, London. For anyone that doesn’t know, the series of conferences is the brainchild of my old university lecturers (Note: that’s ‘old’ as in they don’t teach me anymore) Philip Young and Chris Rushton from the University of Sunderland.

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The first conference was held at Sunderland Uni while I was studying there (see Flickr pics) so I had the opportunity to meet Philip and Chris’s fellow speakers: Tom, Stuart, Neville and Elizabeth. In fact, November’s final conference will almost be a year to the day since the first so it will be great to meet everyone again and interesting to see how people’s perceptions have changed within the space of 12 months. Oh, I’ve also promised Neville I won’t fire any tricky questions at him. Heh! :)

Tickets are priced £195 + VAT for bookings prior to October 13 and £250 +VAT thereafter

Like the previous four conferences, the event is being organised by Nicky, Andy and the rest of the team at Don’t Panic Projects and you can find out more by visiting their website or just download the pdf booking form. As mentioned, this is the final conference but a recent post by Tom Murphy says that the event, content and format will be reviewed with the view of launching a follow up series in 2007 so look out for bigger and better things.

Sidenote: Speaking of conferences, my employer (thanks Stuart) is sending me to the European Corporate Blogging Summit this Monday (25th) at the Radisson SAS Portman Hotel. A number of speakers from different sectors of industry will be covering various topics regarding blogs and blogging. Expect a post on it shortly.

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Let’s get rid of RSS

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 8:58am in Business, Technology | 7 Comments

An attention grabbing headline I know. And of course I don’t mean let’s dismiss the technology behind RSS but last week I attended a discussion event held by New Media Knowledge in Soho’s local Pitcher and Piano, and a few comments got me thinking. The event, named Beers & Innovation 4: RSS Frontiers, was an informal discussion on the future of RSS and what the current conditions are for UK based RSS start ups.

Speakers from three UK RSS based businesses were each evangelising the technology, giving their thoughts on the future of it and, of course, detailing the benefits of their own company’s product. One thing that struck me though, which hasn’t really before was the idea of moving away from using the term ‘RSS’. I’d heard bloggers talk about it in the past but I’d dismissed it straight away. Their thoughts were it would help the less-technical people become less intimidated by the acronym. “Hmmm.” I thought. “Consumers have never had problems with acronyms before. Think DVD, VHS, USB, CD, TV, MP3 to name but a few.”

But the point Ivan Pope of Snipperoo made was that when he’s listening to the radio, he’s not concerned with the name of the frequency that’s bringing him his favourite songs. And come to think about it, neither am I. Do you? When you’re watching your favourite news programme (it should be news if you work in PR ;) ) are you bothered about the technology that’s bringing it to you? I’m not.

Two things: RSS is a fantastic new technology. But it’s all about integrating it seamlessly so the end user doesn’t have to think about it - it’s just there. Much like your TV and radio channels. Second thing: Start thinking about the content and less about the technology. Content, content, content.

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Get past the excitement of the shiny and new

Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 5:17pm in PR General, Technology | 11 Comments

I like shiny new tech toys. I do. Whenever a new web app is released I tend to sign up for it in eagerness and wonder of how this new tool will help me in my life. I’m a bit like Neville in some respects. I can’t help it. It’s the excitement of the shiny and the new. Added in the fact that the older I get the geekier I become and you’ve got a recipe for CPU usage overload.

Of course, before I can make a decision, all web apps must first go through the Davies Test. What’s that I hear you ask with excitement and curiosity? Well it involves a couple of things: How cool it is, how often will I use it and, last but not least, will it help me in my day to day job. I tend to try something for no longer than a week and if it hasn’t met two out of the three stringent sub-tests then it’s gone.

But you see, not everyone is like me. Not everyone gets excited when eBay adds RSS feeds to specific searches. Or when the Sun newspaper revamps its website to include more interaction. Or when e-consultancy reports on the rapid increase of CGM content in the UK. Quite frankly, some people (including PR people and their clients) simply don’t care.

To put it another way. Not all are affected by the geek gene (I don’t believe I am but I could be in a state of denial, I don’t know) so the shiny and new isn’t going to appeal those that aren’t I’m afraid. Does it make your colleague any less of a PR practitioner if they aren’t? No. Does it make a client less informed than you? Of course not. They just don’t get excited over technology ’tis all.

Not all are affected by the geek gene so the shiny and new isn’t going to appeal those that aren’t.

My point is this: when explaining the new developments in social media and the new technologies that go with it, you’ve got to do it in a way that gets them on their level. Show your client their Wikipedia page, set up RSS feeds of interest that relate to your colleague’s expertise, demonstrate who’s linking to your client’s website via Technorati. And better still, dig out what they’re saying.

You can talk about RSS until the cows come home, bore them to tears with how great Flickr is and, quite frankly, they don’t care how many videos are hosted on YouTube. However, show them something that gets them on a personal level and a communication/reputation level and watch the glaze suddenly disappear.

The trick is to stay focused on the communication aspects of the technology and not the technology itself.

I tend to get excited about the shiny and new at times and god knows I’ve wasted plenty of timing experimenting with them. But the trick is to stay focused on the communication aspects of the technology and not the technology itself.

That said, CoComment is ace. I’ve been testing it out for the last couple of weeks (thanks David) and have to say it’s a necessary tool in the blogger’s armoury. I used to try to tag each blog I’d left comments using del.icio.us from an idea I got from Kami but kept forgetting. There’s a handy Firefox extension which automatically tracks every comment you leave (provided you want it to) and alerts you whenever additional comments have been made. How did I live without it?

There’s still a couple of bugs in the extension it seems. For example, at times it doesn’t alert you when others have left comments after yours and at other times it alerts you when no additional comments have been made. Weird. Still good though.

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