Congratulations to Bridgewater State

Congratulations to Bridgewater State College for its new PRSSA Chapter.

Yesterday, I had the honor of visiting the campus to help celebrate the founding of its PRSSA Chapter. It was a great event that was attended by the President of the College as well as senior faculty and students. The students were excited and passionate about public relations.

Bridgewater State College is now the 10th college or university in the Boston area to have a PRSSA chapter. For all of our members at corporations or agencies who are looking for good interns to help them....let me strongly suggest you recruit from the PRSSA chapters in our area.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the holiday part on 12/5.

It's a party!

Everyone is invited to join their PRSA Boston and Pub Club peers for a fun, relaxing evening at our yearly joint holiday bash and end-of-year celebration!

Mingle, network and get caught up with old friends as we toast the season and nosh on hearty appetizers at Charley’s Saloon on Boston’s trendy Newbury Street.

When: Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 6:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Where: Charley’s Eating & Drinking Saloon 284 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 617-266-3000T-accessible via green line to Hynes Convention Center/ICA Center at 100 Mass. Ave.

Cost: PRSA and Pub Club Members - $15
PRSSA/Pub Club Student Members - $10
Non-Members/Guests - $20

To Register, Go To: http://www.opinionpower.com/Surveys/241043178.html

I look forward to speaking with all of you there!

Vendor musings

One of the good things about the International Conference was the ability to meet with a number of the main vendors to PR agencies quickly (Don't worry we will be doing it for everyone in Boston in January 2007).

Two random thoughts struck me from some vendor conversations I have had over the past few weeks and I wanted to make a recommendation and pose a question to my readers:

1) Measurement - All the typical measurement vendors were either at the PRSA International Conference vendor showcase or speaking. (Cymphony did a very good job). The best measurement discussion I had though was over drinks with Katie Paine at the Tech Section bash. KDPaine introduced me to a new, low priced but seemingly relatively effective offering - DIYDashboard.com. It won't meet everyone's needs, but I was wondering if any PRSA Boston members had used it and had thoughts to share. (In the interests of transparency, I have heard multiple pitches from measurement vendors, neither Schwartz nor I currently use any of their services although we are exploring options). This is not an endorsement of DIYDashboard, but it caught my attention, and I hadn't heard much about it so I wanted to see if anyone else had feedback to share?

2) SEO - It's a hot topic and both BusinessWire and PR Newswire have offerings for SEO for press releases. (I use both BusinessWire and PR Newswire). They seem to be taking different approaches. BusinessWire has you focus on editing it yourself and seeing immediate impact. PR Newswire used a third-party firm to optimize and the impact seems to be long-term but not short term. Have any PRSA Boston members used these services from the wires and have any thoughts to share? I personally plan to try both for some of my clients in the next few months.

Note: PRSA Boston and PRSA is completely neutral and does not endorse any vendors. Use whomever best fits your needs.

Hopefully this type of post will get more discussion going.

Annual Meeting Recap

Last nights PRSA Annual meeting was a resounding success. We had more than 100 people in attendance. I will save the highlights from Caleb's speech for later (mainly for when I have been back in the office for more than 30 minutes).

Some key items:

1) Congratulations to Pat Pollino, APR, Fellow PRSA for being awarded the 2006 Beacon Award. It was well deserved.

2) Thanks to all the 2006 PRSA Boston Officers for their hard work over the past year, and to our Chapter Administrator, Beth Bryant, APR for going well above and beyond the call of duty.

3) PRSSA Boston University will he be hoding a regional PRSSA event in 2007 and is looking from help from the PR community. More later as I get more details.

4) The officers for 2007 will be:

President - Mark W. McClennan, APR
President-Elect - Tom Nutile
VP Programs - Karen Kennedy
VP Membership- Julie Lear, APR
Secretary - Diego Miguel Sanchez, APR
Treasurer - Meghan Magner

We need your help to make PRSA Boston even better in 2007. If you are willing to volunteer, please let us know. Even if you have just 3 hours to give over the year, we will take it!

Thanks!

First day conference report

The first day is off to a great start. They reported we have 2,400 at the International Conference (although I believe they took some liberties by including PRSSA in the total, so it is more about 1,600). Still an impressive gathering.

The keynote speakers were great, with Tavis Smiley challenging listeners to change their thinking. He was driving home some familiar points "having values adds value" and he took a dig a "reputation management" stating that corporations should work to create reputations that do not need to be managed. (I heard a lot of comments on that line throughout the day). He had some other very interesting thoughts, that I don't have time to explore right now, if I want to keep these posts short (as I want to).

As KDPayne indicates in her blog (http://kdpaine.blogs.com/), Tavis Smiley was one of the most influential speakers she has ever heard. I almost completely agree with her, but would put Mike Paul "The Reputation Doctor" up there as well (http://www.mikepaulblog.com/blog/). She has the highlights of his speech on her blog, you should check it out.

After that I went to a Jim Lukaszewski "Master Class" on "Why Should The Boss Listen to You" or as I think of it - better understanding the CEO and presenting ideas in a way to break through the clutter.

He has some interesting tidbits to share:

- Don't worry about getting a seat at the table. If you do your job right, you are the table.
- Something I have always believed - PR pros need to read more management books (check out HBR, your CEO does)
- Restrain your creativity. Every idea comes with a price tag (budget and time). Better to present a few essential ideas than a laundry list to show your creativity.
- Negative feedback is failure. Be positive and coach. Positive language reduces the time you need to communicate your idea by 10%; constructive coaching reduces it a further 10%; and focusing on outcomes reduces the time by 25%. It lets you get more done and have an impact on the organization.

More later. Off to the Welcome Dinner now.

Next year's conference is in Philadelphia. It would be great to see more PRSA Boston members there.

PRSA Assembly Update

Well, the PRSA Assemby is finished for 2006. It was an interesting time. While some of the things the PRSA Boston Chapter wanted, were not approved, the majority of them were. I am proud to have been given the opportunity to serve as a delegate this year, and am also proud to report that we kept up the "rabble-rousing" tradition set forth by Pat and Paul. Many delegates told us during the morning that they were considered that without those two here, Boston would be quiet...but in the afternoon we received at least a dozen complements that we were keeping up the tradition.

Barbara Wellnitz and Steve Quigley did a great job as the other Boston delegates and clearly communicated our (and your) thoughts.

For the highlight/recaps:

1) The means for the assembly to pass resolutions was clearly defined (although some last minute added language made things ambiguous).

2) As a result of that the Central Michigan proposal was soundly defeated. (93% opposed)

3) The vote to eliminate proxy voting was defeated (97 to 175). We were in the minority suppoting it, and I think the Assembly made a mistake, but we will see how it plays out.

4) What makes it even more interesting is during new business a resolution was passed directing the Board to look into ways to delegates to participate via conference call, videoconference or web conference. So while we made it easier to have votes at the assembly via proxy voting, we are potentially obviating the need for proxies.

5) The "Emergency Proposal" was defeated. This was a good call. The Board has almost completed policies on this topic, and there was too much wigle room for parliamentary chicanery.

There are some new benefits PRSA National is rolling out to members, including a Web respurce where practitioners can find RFPs for new business!

More later. I am off to have dinner with other PR folks from the Northeast District

Using new resources

I figured I would take a break from speaking about upcoming events, to make sure all of you were aware of a great resource - the PRSA National Silver Anvil Award database. (http://www.prsa.org/_Awards/silver/index.asp?ident=sil0)

This database lets you search and read the two page summaries of the Silver Anvil Award winning entries from 2006. They are worth reading and you can get some great ideas from them that you can apply to your own campaigns.

PRSA Members can search entries going back to 1969!

Check it out. It's a great and effective form of low cost professional development.