Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Fellow New Communications Forum attendee Phil Gomes points out what he sees as the biggest challenge facing our industry right now. As Phil sees it, PR practitioners are so enticed by the bright shiny toys offered by social media, that they are missing the larger cultural shift – and the bigger implications for business, our industry, etc. etc. etc.

Phil points out that the New Communications Forum panel on the Social Media News Release was standing room only while a panel on Net Neutrality garnered three attendees. Similarly, a session on localization and language issues had four attendees.

You simply can’t convince me that the 250+ attendees were already so familiar with the details of the net neutrality debate — and it is a debate, keep in mind — that the discussion we had would’ve bored or insulted.

And what about global trends in corporate Web site localization and translation? The Web’s Anglo-centricity isn’t going to last forever, people. We should consider ourselves lucky, for now, that the domain name system works on Roman characters and that it relies on TLDs like “.com” rather than ““. Sooner or later, that’s going to change.

Phil’s full post is here.

Disclaimer - I was at the New Communications Forum but not at either of the sessions in question. So as regards to the specific point made by Phil, I can only go on what Phil said.

Todd Defren, who with Maggie Fox of the Social Media Group, led the session on the Social Media News Release, responded to Phil:

I think that for many of the NewComm attendees, “Social Media” is, by itself, a Big Picture issue.  Although to the PRESENTERS at the Forum, Social Media is still exciting – but somewhat “old hat” – to the ATTENDEES it’s still all too scary, new, and just plain weird.

Full post here.

To Phil’s larger point, yep, yessir and indeedie do. I think we’ve all come a long way in the past four or five years and there is a great deal of understanding and acceptance of the tools of social media in the marketing and PR universe. Or at least the waves have reached their high water mark and the folks who are still putting their fingers in their ears aren’t going to change in any case.

So what’s left to do is to educate our peers on the larger cultural shift going on here. To make them aware of the dangers from entrenched business interests like carriers and old media as well as the political sphere. In other words, not only to show them Twitter but to explain to them why it is important. That’s what I’d like to see more of from organizations like SNCR (of which I am a member and rabid supporter) and others in our industry.