Great networking night

For those of you that missed the PRSA Boston networking night last night at the Long Wharf Marriott, you missed a great event. There were about 40 PR pros there from agencies (SHIFT came out in force), corporations, non-profits and educational institutions.

I met some new members and learned some new things about existing members. (I never knew we had a PR pro that focused solely on PR for chocolate and chocolate companies. Now *that* is cool). Best of all, she gave me recommendations of what chocolate to buy for my wife. (I am keeping that in reserve and make the trek to Mike's Pastry for some cannoli).

The discussions were interesting ranging from diversity to social media to Mattel and taking control of your career.

Thanks to the Marriott for a great venue.

I hope to see everyone at our September measurement event...

Keeping the eye on the ball

Yesterday I was reading Dilbert (as I do every day) and the comic really stuck a chord with me. You can view it by clicking here.

It got me to thinking. Measurement is essential. Tracking results, time, and campaign effectiveness are core to great public relations. But we also need to be sure not to get trapped in Excel box hell.

Numbers are beautiful. I love working with them, parsing them and seeing what I can get them to do (And yes, I know many PR people do not share my love of numbers).

But we need to be sure that we don't just focus on the numbers and getting that Excel box or graph to move from 72 to 74. If we look only at the numbers, we can miss important things. We can put blinders on and not step back and think, should be blow all this up and take a new approach? It is taking the step back that often transforms incremental growth into exponential growth.

What do you think?