Day: August 21, 2003

As you might have read in the comments to my earlier posting, about his anti-PR rant on the I-Blog discussion list, Rick Bruner has posted a long and detailed rebuttal.

He’s expecting a flame war, but I can’t give him one. Here’s why.

I still think his posting to the I-Blog list was insulting.  He calls it “irony” I don’t. I also have a major problem with Rick’s use of rash generalizations to carry his argument, e.g.:

“Sure, a handful of PR visionaries are blogging to date, but so far as I can see, they’re all blogging about PR. They’re not actually blogging for PR. IDC is using RSS to syndicate its press releases. But beyond that? “

There are loads of companies delivering news feeds over RSS, IDC is only a recent example and there are also a large number of examples of PR driven weblogs.  I don’t do a lot of self-promotion on this blog, but Cape Clear for example, has had exactly this kind of blog for over a year.

However,  Rick’s posting is well written and well reasoned and how ever much I wanted to disagree with it, I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what he wrote.

I agree that we are behind the ball on the Internet in general and blogging in particular.

What his writing does not recognize is that PR people are stepping into the breech. I agree it’s not fast enough, I agree we should own the web, be experts on search engine optimization etc. etc. You can’t argue with any of that. Fair play.

I just wish he’d stop kicking the poor old dog. In the words of my compatriot Oscar Wilde:

“If they have not opened the eyes of the blind, they have at least given great encouragement to the short-sighted, and while their leaders may have all the inexperience of old age, their young men are far too wise to be ever sensible.”

PS: Rick also correctly points out I referenced the wrong Cow in my earlier post, it is of course the Raging Cow, not the Purple Cow.  Seth Godin wouldn’t be a happy camper. But I am sticking to my guns that the Raging Cow incident sucked.

Thanks for Niamh who forwarded me this story from Australia’s The Age newspaper about the trials and tribulations of an Australian computer journalist attending a computer conference in Denver.

To sum up, if you’re a journalist attending an event in the United States, make sure you’ve applied for an I-visa.

Well I’m sure if you use e-mail you have been inundated with the latest Virus attack. I think this is the worst one since the “I love you” Virus one a couple of years back.

But there is an upside to these Viruses.  I’ve had e-mail this week (albeit Virus delivered) from friends and colleagues I haven’t talked to in a long long time.  Going through all the Virus e-mail was like a trip down memory lane.

Furthermore, it’s always interesting to see who has you in their address book, very interesting.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record (too late!) but I am amazed at the proportion of these Virus e-mails coming from PR people. I’d say thirty percent of the Virus e-mail I’ve had is from people in PR.

This means that even though e-mail communication is key to our business, we’re still not updating our Virus checkers and more importantly, we’re still keeping our contacts in programs like Outlook where the Virus knows how to find them.

I suggest you all check your Virus software is up to date!