CaseCamp is coming to Ottawa

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CaseCampHot on the heels of successful CaseCamps in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, the first CaseCamp in Ottawa has been scheduled for November 6.

CaseCamp brings the marketing community together to explore best practices and exchange tips with one another.

The formal program centers on the presentation of case studies.A case is presented in a maximum of 8 slides over 15 minutes. Following presentation of the case, the floor is open to the other participants to ask questions and offer comments and suggestions regarding the approach taken in the project under discussion.

CaseCamp Toronoto3 CaseCamp is the brainchild of Eli Singer. The driving force behind the Ottawa CaseCamp is Peter Childs.

The rules of CaseCamp are based on those of BarCamp. The spirit is one of generous sharing. I attended CaseCamp3 in Toronto and found it to be a great experience. I’m very much looking forward to the first Ottawa session.

Go to the CaseCamp Wiki to sign up for CaseCamp Ottawa. I hope to see you there.

Shel Israel in Canada to discuss social media

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Shel IsraelIf you live in Toronto or Ottawa, you will have a chance this week to meet Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble of Naked Conversations.

Shel will be speaking twice in Ottawa. On Monday evening, he will be kicking off the Third Monday series of Meet Ups for public relations types interested in social meda. On Tuesday at lunch, he will be the first speaker at this season’s series of OCRI Zone5ive gatherings of the Ottawa technology marketing community.Naked Conversations

On Tuesday evening, Toronto bloggers and podcasters will have a chance to meet and talk with Shel at the inaugural Third Tuesday gathering.

Register directly online to attend OCRI Zone5ive, Third Monday and Third Tuesday.

Join the conversation!

Stowe Boyd has some good advice for people taking the leap into solo consulting

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Stowe BoydStowe Boyd offers some sage advice on the FreshBooks blog that should be read by anyone considering solo consulting.

Stowe is one of the more successful independents. In his view, “One third of your time should be devoted to networking and marketing, that is finding new clients, or letting them find you; one third to talking up new projects, getting them into contracts, and managing the business side, up to and including getting paid; and one third performing billable work.”

And how does Stowe market himself?

I have a simple approach to marketing my services: I don’t. Or, perhaps more accurately, I don’t do any marketing other than blogging and attending conferences, which are the primary channels for potential clients. I leave the rest up to fate, the Tooth Fairy, and word of mouth.

Blogging is the centerpoint of my professional life, and in a real sense defines my professional identity. Many thousands of other consultants also blog, so I am not some outlier in that regard, and I believe that the benefits of diligently exploring your professional interests in the blogosphere can be enormous. Blogging is also relatively low-cost, although the time investment may be high. I know that there are some advocates of blogging who believe it is possible to get a solid return on a lesser time investment, but I try to blog daily, and often, many times a day. I have come to be considered an A-list blogger (whatever that may mean) but I think the key is to define a niche of interests that you write about that would allow a potential client to get an insight into your thinking. And then the email will start.

Marketing in the era of social media. This is advice you would not have heard even two years ago. But I have encountered several practitioners I respect who seem to have adopted this model. And judging from the smiles on their faces, I have to believe that it works!

Toronto and Ottawa PR meetups to discuss social media

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Public relations practitioners in Toronto and Ottawa have a new monthly forum to discuss social media from a PR perspective.

Ottawa meetup The Ottawa meetup is called Third Monday. The Toronto group is called Third Tuesday. And, you guessed it, they’ll generally be held on Mondays or Tuesdays.

A great group of bloggers and social media enthusiasts have come together to get these meetups going. Joining me in organizing the groups are David Jones, Terry Fallis, Ed Lee and Chris Clarke in Toronto and Colin McKay, Brendan Hodgson and Ian Ketcheson in Ottawa.

Toronto MeetupWe believe that public relations practitioners have a unique perspective on social media.  We look at social media as an extension of the conversations we have always had with journalists and stakeholders to now include a much larger group of citizen journalists and interested people whose online conversations lead to the formation of communities of interest.

Others groups have different starting points and different perspectives on social media. Advertisers, for example, start from the perspective of disaggregating mass media and the need to find new advertising vehicles and strategies that will replace failing mass media campaigns.

Because we have this unique perspective, public relations folks have different conversations than do those people who are grounded in other disciplines. First Monday and First Tuesday will provide us with the opportunity to talk about social media framed as a public relations challenge. We will be able to focus on its potential for and impact on our profession. How we can extend our capablities by embracing social media. How we can enhance our careers. How we can better serve our clients. And how we can then take our best thoughts forward into the broader discussion with others. Ensuring that public relations is well represented. Ensuring that public relations is in a leadership position in exploring and applying social media.

Shel IsraelWe have a great first speaker to launch our meetups. Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, will kick off the gatherings with back to back sessions on September 25 in Ottawa and September 26 in Toronto. I can’t think of a better way to kick off the discussion than with a man who hails from PR and who wrote THE book on blogging.

So, if you are a public relations practitioner who wants to meet other PR folks to talk about practical applications of social media, join the conversation. Sign up for Third Monday (Ottawa) or Third Tuesday (Toronto).

And, for those who’ve spotted a similarity to the SF Bay Area Third Thursday group organized by Mike Manuel, Jeremy Pepper, Giovanni Rodriguez, and Phil Gomes, you’re right. In looking for a model, we thought that Third Thursday was exactly what we wanted to replicate in Canada. Mike gave us the go ahead to borrow from the Third Thursday and that’s what we’ve done. Thank you Mike!

 

A great html primer

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http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/I’ve been blogging for almost a year. But I’ve been like the driver of a car who has never looked under the hood. I don’t understand the technology that makes my blog work.

Now, I don’t think it is necessary for every blogger to know how to write code. But I’ve felt the need to understand the essentials of the platform my blog is built on. In much the same way as I want to understand the fundamentals of my car’s engine – even if I rely on a mechanic to service it.

So, today I spent the afternoon following the tutorials on a great site, HTML Source. This site provides a practical, easy to follow introduction to html, CSS, JavaScript and other tools needed to develop websites. Ross ShannonIts author, Ross Shannon, is a 22 year old PhD student at University College Dublin.

I completed the first tutorial and at the end of it feel that I now understand basic html. I’m not pretending that I can begin to code my own site. But I now know how the basics are put together and I can make some simple edits and additions to my site using Notepad. In other words, I understand what’s under the hood and I can change the oil!

And all of this as a result of the kindness of a young computer wiz five time zones away. Thank you Ross. Your site has enabled me to do something I’ve wanted to do for years – gain a basic understanding of html.

PRSA Counselors Academy: Watts Wacker

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Watts WackerCounselor’s Academy ended on a high with a tour de force presentation by Watts Wacker, the celebrated futurist. (Watts describes himself much more entertainingly as a “twenty-first century alchemist.”)

Wacker was at turns humorous, inspirational and thought provoking. I can’t do him justice in one blog posting. You really have to see him. But I’d like to offer some snippets:

“What does the World look like after The abolition of context? There is no context today. The study of what has come before. Studying what has come before will not provide good insight into the future. It used to be that the mainstream would define the future. Now the fringe, the edge, has replaced the mainstream in the Zeitgeist. How else could Ozzy Osborne become a model for fatherhood?”

“People do not know what to trust anymore. People do not believe that institutions are prepared for the future. There’s never been a better time for people to swallow hard, summon courage and take the radical step. In our industry,this will lead to the demise of the traditional ad agency. Because the traditional agencies are unable to step outside of what they know.”

“We can’t stay here. There is a groundswell of people coming up who are saying, I’m ready to go. I just need to know who to trust to take me there.”

“Self selecting social organziation: a thousand years ago, the biggest contribution of Christ was the organization of life around families. Now we are moving to a neo-tribalism, a desperate search of people to find someone like themselves. This is what blogs are about.”

“In the broadcast model, value equalled the size of the audience. … Metcalfe’s Law of Networking Theory: The next person into a network makes everything before it have more value (e.g. fax machines). Every new person in, makes everything have more value.”

“As we move into this self-selecting organization, you have messaging, content creation, networking and commerce creation. The value creation becomes truly exponential. … You’re the ones who can help our clients put themselves together with new self-selecting communities.”

“The media centric life: We no longer define one another through possessions. We now define one another through the media we consume. We are starting to frame social discourse around something other than stuff. This media centric-ness is growing at a precipitous rate.

“All life is mediated. It’s all third person-driven. We should start to think about messaging as a result of that. We are now living in the pluperfect tense. Newspapers no longer write about what happened yesterday; they are writing about what may happen tomorrow. We are living in a future-focussed world.”

“We have new forms of tribal media. When Gianni Versace was shot, there was a cover story on Biker Magazine. That was counterintuitive. But as I looked at this I realized that the mass media tell you what you need to know about, but the tribal media tell you what you need to think about.”

“Post-America Geopolitics: We are seeing the dawn of the post-America era. Australia is an example of a country that spent the past century oriented to the west and now it is defining it’s future in relation to China.”

“Beauty and Earth: The post modern movement has come to conclusion. Just as the Empire Struck Back, so has beauty. In post-modernism, beauty wasn’t to be appreciated; it was to be parsed. … Beauty is coming back. We will have a new relationship with beauty. And the earth will be the recipient of that.”

What would I do if I were you?

“Relationship Theory: We have to really understand this. … The greatest currency in the world is reciprocity. Stop holding stuff back. You must give a view. Sellers should understand that I am never the same consumer two times in a row.”

“Story telling and myths: What can you hold on to in a time of change. Myths are truth stories. … A good story teller tells a story well. A great story teller helps me find myself in the story.”

“From “fringe” to “mainstream”: Malcolm Gladwell told us about one stop on the line; remember there’s a whole train line. Anything that makes it to social convention begins on the fringe. We don’t recognize enough where things are and where they are going. Stop hiring people like me to be a cool hunter for you. Do it yourself.”

“Do right to do well: Adam Smith was right, It’s called enlightened self interest for a reason.”

PRSA Counselors Academy Deb Radman

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Day two of Counselors Academy opened with another round of Breakout sessions – small groups of 10 to 15 participants seated around a table for a discussion led by a senior practitioner or an expert advisor.

The first session I attended on “Preparing Your Future Leaders,” was led by Deb Radman, Managing Director of Stanton Communications and a former Chair of Counselors Academy. Darryl Salerno, the President of Second Quadrant, also offered much valuable insight. Darryl is the advisor Steve Cody credits with helping him to develop Peppercom‘s successful formula.

Future LeaderMost of the discussion participants agreed with Radman’s that all people are imbued with somesome leadership qualities. It is the responsiblity of current leaders to help young people to identify and develop the particular leadership qualities each of them possesses.

Of course, some people need more help than others to discover what they have that is special and will help them to lead a team or to run an agency.

Mid-size firms provide an opportunity for people to develop their leadership abilities. We’re in the leadership business: Our work is about helping articulate a vision, helping set goals, planning, researching, advising, persuading, and clarifying. That’s what leaders do.

We must stimulate the people who work for us to consider what kind of leader they might be and what they need to do to get there. Ask employees about who is an aspiring leader? Who do they perceive to be leaders? it’s very revealing.

  • What leaders look like:
  • They have bedrock values.
  • They have the courage to be decisive.
  • Consistent behaviour.
  • They do what they say they’re going to do.
  • They have the courage to be decisive.
  • They enable collaboration by building trust.
  • They create other leaders, not followers.
  • They articulate a clear vision of where they’re going.
  • They choose to lead.

To teach leadership, the people who you are trying to teach must perceive you to be a leader.
You must know what the people in your organization view as leadership qualities; then look at yourself to determine if you have the qualities to lead them, not just to manage them.

Radman emphasized that there is a tremendous difference between being a leader and a boss.

  • Boss drives people; Leader motivates them.
  • Boss depends on authority; Leader on persuasion.
  • Boss uses fear; Leader uses positive reinforcement.
  • Boss fixes the blame; Leader looks for a solution.
  • Boss say “I”; Leader say “we.”
  • Boss will tell people what to do; Leader will entice people to do something.

Leadership is a choice; you must inspire or persuade people to look inside themselves to determine what they want.

PRSA Counselors Academy: Julia Hood

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Julia HoodCounselors Academy Steve Cody conducted an interactive one-on-one conversation with Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief of PR Week.

Cody led off the conversation by noting that the membership of Counselors Academy is predominantly small and mid-size agencies and that these firms have a sense that “PR Week seems to give inordinate attention to the large agencies.”

“The large firms have larger marketing budgets, more staff, huge global clients and better opportunities to get our attention,” Hood responded. However, she added, “We pay an inordinate amount of time trying to cover medium sized agencies.”

On the question of how she believes PR agencies are doing in relation to advertising in getting the seat at the executive table, Hood had a positive message, seeing PR, “Definitely making strides. The thought leadership that is coming out of the PR world is definitely resonating, especially with CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers). … More and more, you can see advertising agencies understanding this. Advertising agencies are bringing PR agencies in earlier and earlier. That shows that advertising agencies realize that they are not doing the total job.  …. For PR, this is the moment.”

The most animated discussion revolved around PR Week’s treatment of the ethical controversies in which major agencies have become embroiled.

Speaking directly to the overbilling scandal involving Fleishman Hillard’s Los Angeles office, Hood initially suggested that, “No agency leader can say, ‘It can never happen to me.’ So I don’t sense a lot of glee coming out of the industry at Fleishman’s expense on this.”

She was challenged aggressively on this position by questions from the audience. One questioner asked, “Where is the institutional control? the tone of the coverage has been allowing them to get away with it.”

To this, Hood responded, “I think we’ve been pretty unflinching about Fleishman’s responsibility. Fleishman, at the end of the day, was not on trial. I don’t think we let Fleishman off easy. There were times when I wasn’t talking to anyone at Fleishman. At times I felt we had a reasonable point of view and they thought we didn’t.”

This answer elicited follow up question, “Have agencies cut you off?” Hood seemed nonplussed at this question and after some hesitation answered that, “I sat with a senior Fleishman person one time and they were not very happy. But we got through it. For myself, I take this responsibility very seriously. Communicate your displeasure, but don’t abandon the normal rules of dialogue.”

Question: “Who is responsible.”

Hood: “The individual is ultimately responsible.”

Question: Why isn’t there more criticism?

Hood: “It’s not PR Weeks job to impose an ethical standard. That’s the job of organizations like the PRSA. I don’t feel the need to come out on this because I’ve seen evidence of the industry dealing with it.”

Hood was also asked about her reaction to recent reports of attempted “pay for play” (allegations made by Robert Reich). “When talking about the issues of credibility and media and PR’s role,” she offered, “PR has to have an interest in preserving the credibility of the media platform and not undermining it. … We asked CMOs whether they would consider paying for media coverage and, thankfully, the vast majority said no. … This is something you have to address every day. And you’ll have to challenge clients who want to take the easy way.  … It’s a very grey area. A daily reality check to say, Is this crossing the line?”

Hood was also asked for her sense of why mainstream media do not accord PR the same level of coverage that they give to advertising. She noted that, “Richard Edelman just did a Q&A in the Wall Street Journal. Crispin Porter + Bogusky [the subject of a cover story in Business Week] is not really an advertising agency … They were on the cover of BusinessWeek because they challenged the conventional mindset of their industry. … Richard Edelman has changed many of the rules of the game by being out there and talking about their clients. … A lot of PR people do not want to talk about their clients. …. What does that do to the PR industry and its own promotion efforts?

“Finally, I think there is still a basic discomfort on the part of journalists in covering PR, because they know how important their relationships with PR agencies are – and they don’t want everyone to know. …. There is a certain amount of plausible deniability going on in the media … As long as those people feel there is something wrong with disclosing that there is a give and take, there’s a problem there.”

Finally, Cody asked Hood to put herself in the shoes of a start-up PR agency and to suggest how she could get on PR Week’s radar screen. She responded “The first thing I’d do is go online and get a copy of the editorial calendar. Six weeks before publication, we decide on what to do the feature on. Idea generation is absolutely critical. … If you see something in the editorial calendar that you have a unique expertise in or a story about, contact the publication.

“The second thing would be to make sure I know who the news editor is and who the features editor is. All the reporters have beats and they will return to the people who helped them the last time. They want people who will get back to them. Be interesting. Be quotable and be prepared to go on the record. Let us know what the trends are. If you pitch us, give us a clear idea.

“You see stories about large agencies because agencies large agencies pitch us.  We need help to find you sometimes.”

To close the session, Cody asked, “Is Pr Week making money? How can firms here who can’t afford advertising help you out?”

Hood responded that, “PR Week is doing quite well. What’s really pushed us ahead are special projects. … I believe that display advertising is not going to be the centre of the universe for PR Week. …. One thing that does bother me is people who want to be in the magazine who don’t subscribe. That level of participation for your trade publication …. you should get at least one subscription for your company.”

Julia, I’d love to subscribe. If I do, can I persuade you to cover Canadian PR agencies?

PRSA Counselors Academy: Tom Hoog clarification

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I received an email from Tom Hoog that one passage of my post on his remarks at Counselors Academy may have given the reader the wrong impression. Tom’s email said:

hey Joe just reread the blog—-one thought that might clear up a question—on the fifth paragraph I think it was, I’m not sure if the reader may take away the thought that H&K made some mistakes or the industry made some mistakes—clearly my intent was to say the industry had made some mistakes 

My intent was to faithfully capture the intent of Tom’s remarks, which were both candid and full of valuable advice. I appreciate that he took the time to read my post and clarify this point.