Well I was up nice and early for a Satuday for a drive down to the lovely city of  Kilkenny to attend PodCamp Ireland.  There’s been a number of new media events in Ireland over the past year or so.  It’s great to see the emergence of a growing number of people in Ireland with a passionate interest in this subject matter.

I’m have to admit I’m always a little uncertain with the whole “unconference” theme.  Being an old corporate fart I like my structure 🙂 The event – even for an unconference – was well organized and of course as it goes on you become more comfortable with it.

I’m delighted to report that Neville was in attendance and it was good to catch up with a range of people including Bernie, Krisha De, Michele Neylon and Dean Whitbread – as well as my colleagues Clare and Martha who I hadn’t seen in over 14 hours…

While Ireland isn’t leading the way in bringing new media to the masses, there is clearly a lot of passionate people innovating, evangelizing and most importantly thinking about the potential of these tools to reach and communicate.

I couldn’t help thinking that there’s a lot of value for – in the absence of a better term – traditional marketers – to attend these events – in a delegate capacity.

There’s great discussion and everyone is open to sharing opinions and ideas – which in my book is incredibly valuable in helping to broaden the mind on the potential of new media. 

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it even if everyone hasn’t yet discovered the joy of Live Search. 🙂

A PR practitioner* once told me that when you start to get bored with your message that’s when it’s just started to reach your target audience and that’s when you have to stick with it.

It’s a wise nugget to remember.

When you think of Web 2.0 (snooze…) you don’t often think of blogs – they’re boring – they’re not on the bleeding edge.

But that’s a good thing.

While investors and entrepreneurs are hosting 2.0 love-ins across the world, the humble blog is continuing to be quietly and efficiently adopted.

Recent research – I’m coming to it late but that’s the great thing about holidays –  from the UK of 300 companies with more than 250 employees, sponsored by Inferno PR, found:

• 50% of UK companies now undertake some form of blogging
• 64% of UK corporate blogs have been launched in the last 6 months
• 86% of companies that have a blog credit it with generating more business opportunities for their company
• 66% of managers in the survey have visited blogs in the last 12 months
• 80% of blog users visit blogs during working hours
• 33% of blog visitors will access a blog on a daily basis

Find out more (and how to get your hands on the full report) here.

 

*Last week I was talking to a friend of mine who was recently doing interviews for someone to facilitate business meetings, and he made the comment to me that every single one of the people he interviewed (most had a mixture of broadcasting, lecturing, sales backgrounds) claimed to have “done” PR.

Sigh.

 

Link to the original cartoon on Dilbert.com.

 

Update: Apologies for the cut-off image, I’ll have to change my WordPress template when I have a few spare hours…

Heading off for a week’s holiday to sunny (I hope) Spain.

As always the rush is on to get everything done before heading off, but is there a more beautiful sight than this:

Yep, that’s my inbox, and that says “0 items”.

My mother would be so proud – and no I didn’t just delete them. [I’ve posted this screen shot to prove I did manage it once 🙂 ]

See you in a week.

It’s September 2007. What’s that all about?

The years are just whizzing by.  If you don’t stop for a moment, have a look around, and enjoy the moment, it just slides by.

We are living in a pretty interesting time from a “media” perspective.  Every organisation is having to learn to deal with new media while successfully managing the traditional elements of their business.

That’s pretty interesting in my book.

Unfortunately there’s also a lot of noise that doesn’t really deserve the bandwidth, but that’s the beauty of this new media I suppose.

Don’t believe the hype – unless your audience tells you otherwise.

Some things remain true regardless of the media or channel. 

For example good communication is just that, regardless whether it’s at a bus stop, pitching to a beat reporter or writing on a blog.

Want to become a trusted advisor or expert in these interesting times? Then be realistic. Don’t over promise, don’t believe the hype and don’t spoof.

Focus on your personal productivity.  How are you managing your information overload?

Finally, don’t be too precious. Get over yourself. Spam happens, bad pitches happen, bad advertising happens. As Shel outlines, this is life, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. 

The more we all take a deep breath and think about what we’re doing, the more we’ll enjoy the moment, be successful and build for the future.

There are too many evangelists, and grumpy bloggers out there.  Avoid them and focus on what matters.