Monthly Archive for June, 2007

DSC_0036.JPG, originally uploaded by david parmet.

With summer in the air, the Boy and I took the day off from our respective tasks – him the penultimate day of school and me a pile of client work and my budding campaign – and spent the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters. Full set of pictures here.

We saw mummies (and made awful puns), took in the European sculpture, late Medieval arms and armor, Greek and Roman galleries, Japanese and East Asian religious art and whatever else we could catch in between. It’s been said that it takes at least three days to see everything in the Met. I’d bet on at least a week if you linger.

Unfortunately, if you did try and see everything, make sure you don’t catch any of the staff when their lunchtime is approaching. Because when we finally found our way up to the American painting galleries (make a left at Dendur and go up the stairs) we were informed by at least 15 guards who were ushering the visitors out, that they were short-staffed and closing down the gallery. So no Washington Crossing the Delaware. Or no lingering – I did manage to force my way into a few moments to point out this important bit of American Iconography to the Boy. They weren’t going to deny me that.

Thomas Watson experienced this on Memorial Day. He pointed out that the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is also the owner of the company that provides the greater part of corporate donations to the Met to keep galleries open. The same Mayor of New York who is now making noise about running for President.

Thomas said:

Michael Bloomberg and the company he founded are major patrons of the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and the Met is letting them down, wasting their money, and giving the city itself a cultural black eye.

Full post here.

And that’s on a holiday, when you would expect there to be staffing problems. On a Thursday afternoon – with schools almost out and tourists pouring into the City, for one of the greatest museums in the World to have to shut down a gallery because there aren’t enough guards to cover is a shame.

Another day, another conference. I spent the day at the PRSA’s “T3 PR” Conference. I was on a panel on the d0s and don’ts of dealing with social media with Chip Griffin, Tony Sapienza and Don Bates. My role there was to discuss the SNCR’s Best Practices document.

The other highlight of the day was a panel on the future of Tech PR with Steve Rubel, Constantin Basturea and Richard Laermer.

My pictures are here. More to be uploaded later when I get around to it.

A couple of quick thoughts….

From now on, WiFi and the availability thereof is a prerequisite for any conferences I attend, let alone speak at. I can’t understand why the organizers of a conference on blogging and technology marketing don’t think to provide it. If there was WiFi there, you would by now have read three or four blog entries from me and others. Now I’m relying on memory.

About the level of understanding of social media among PR peeps, at least those in attendence today, I’m both encouraged and dissapointed. Encouraged that more and more PR folks are asking the questions, dissapointed that many of them are still bogged down in tactical issues. Is my video right for a videoblog? How long should my podcast be? How many times a week should I blog? But not is this the right thing for my client and how does it fit into their overall business. Steve Rubel made this point in his presentation – we’re not asking the right questions yet.

Here’s another way of looking at it. If all the cool companies jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you? So why are you jumping into Second Life without even asking yourself if it makes sense for your brand?