There’s been a ton of ‘wither the press release’ discussion here and elsewhere and I won’t even bother to recount it. Safe to say that some folks, like Todd Defren at SHIFT and Tom Foremski have taken the lead in defining not only the problem but the solution.
So, what’s the next step?
Chris Heuer has stepped forward and is asking for those of us who care about this issue to join in the effort to redefine the press release for the social media era.
I have a lot of ideas on how we can move this discussion forward but am still really in a “discuss and decide” mode on most issues – the most important of which are how do we get broader community involvement and how do we avoid the political wrangling that has killed so many other well-intentioned standards efforts in the past.
Chris has started a Google Group to get the discussion going. I’m signed up.
Congrats to Matt Podboy and his team of click fraud slaves he keeps down in the basement at Voce.
One more win and we’ll all start to suspect there’s some sort of Voce World Domination Plan at work here.
I just wrapped up a panel with B. L. Ochman, Robert Ricci, Peter Himler and Eric Schwartzman (who moderated) for the PRSA Tech Section in New York.
The panel was the perfect mix of wide-eyed enthusiasm vs. experience with B. L. and myself hitting Peter for calling Kryptonite a crisis when it hit the mainstream media. Turns out he meant it was a crisis for the company only when it hit the mainstream media – or at least that was when their communications folks realized something was wrong. So, Peter was right.
The audience on the other hand, with a few exceptions, seemed to be stuck in the ‘blogs are bad, control is good’ mindset I thought they left behind two years ago. You know, ‘what if a blogger says something bad about my client?’ There were some good questions and comments after the program though. Obviously we’re getting through to some people.
Maybe it’s just the crowd the PRSA attracts because I’ve met plenty of agency folks who ‘get it.’
Memo to the PRSA – WiFi is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Which is why I’m at Starbucks right now catching up on everything I missed while I was waiting for my panel to start.
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