Where to begin: Life as my muse

For the first time, the Canadian Public Relations Society - National hosted an Educator’s Roundtable and poster session at its national conference. The plan was to discuss issues and opportunities in public relations teaching, curriculum development and research. (Click to find out “what is a poster session?“)

A number of the posters/abstracts from the research presenters are now available online (click the bottom right icon in each of the respective posters to view in full screen):

1. An Ideal Model: Public Relations Education & Co-operative Education
(Sonya Horsburgh, MA(PR) student, Mount Saint Vincent University)

2. Social Media Space in Public Relations Education

(Dr. Amy Thurlow & Anthony Yue Department of Communication Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University)

3. Storytelling in the Not-for-Profit Organization
(Brent King, Department of Communication Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University)

4. Executive Perspectives on Public Relations Management Competencies
(Colleen Killingsworth, MCM, APR, FCPRS, Capstone Research Project, McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business)

5. Évaluation et excellence en gestion des relations publiques et de la communication : étude de cas
(Marc Angers, ARP, MA communication publique, Université Laval)

6. Understanding trust and its impact on public relations
(Diane Bégin, MA, APR, graduate student research, University of Alberta)

7. Study of PR Writing by Entry-level Practitioners Reveals Significant Supervisor Dissatisfaction
(Jeremy Berry, APR, Dr. Richard Cole, Dr. Larry Hembroff, Mount Royal University, Michigan State University)

8. Culture and Health: Immigrant Women’s Perceptions of Health Care in Canada
(Dr. Alla Kushniryk and Deanna Gamble, Mount Saint Vincent University)

Some of the research will also be featured in McMaster University’s Journal of Professional Communication. (inaugural issue in July 2011)

Some months ago my friend let a few of us know a decision she had come to – she was going to do her PhD. My first thought was good for her. My second thought was why would she want to put herself through that?

We had just finished our MAs. It was her second one, but my first. It took me a tad longer than her to finish because, you know, life got in the way. So some six years later, I found myself finally done.

It was an absolutely rewarding experience and I met some great people along the way, but the entire thing killed me little.

Fortunately I had a couple great study partners: another fellow MA student who kept me to task and a really good Riesling that helped the writing flow.

Once I was done though, I was pretty sure I was done for good.

When friends have asked me over the years if I would ever do a PhD I joked that my only motivation to do it would be so that they called me Doctor. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be motivation enough to get through another four to six years of school.

Then all of a sudden – like magic – the motivation came.

Ok, maybe not like magic because it has been the accumulation of a bunch of things, but I still think it was serendipitous none-the-less.

The biggest reason is that over the last while, I’ve felt the same way about my career that I felt when I was dating a bad boy back in high school.

I remember having a conversation with my dad about how he was just misunderstood. I told my dad that he just didn’t know him the way I knew him.

That’s how I feel about PR right now. The bad has been getting the spotlight lately and I’ve felt like I’ve had to defend what I do for a living even though I’ve never practiced those bad things.

But just like my dad had reason to feel the way he felt, the public also has reason to question the PR profession.

While most people don’t see what we do on a daily basis – dealing with traditional media is just a fraction of it – there is no simple solution to just get people to trust us.

Trust is earned and it will take some major changes to the way we do things to get there.

That’s the realization I’ve come to and why I decided just last week to continue my grad research into something more.

There’s a new program starting at McMaster University – a PhD in Communication and New Media Practice starting in fall 2012.

The beauty of the program is that it will have a part-time component so that you can continue working while you complete it. That was important to me because remaining in the profession as it evolves will be key to the research.

So there it is. Now that it has been written, there’s no going back. (of course, I can always delete this blog post)

I’ve been thinking about this blog post for a while. I attended Tweeting the Arab Revolutions at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs on May 26.

The obvious appeal for me would seem to be social media, but in fact that wasn’t it per se.

The panel was hosted by Brian Stewart, longtime CBC foreign correspondent, included the experiences of the following individuals:

-Jill York, columnist for Al Jazeera English and Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
-Sarah Abdurrahman, a Libyan American producer for WNYC’s On the Media
-Sonia Verma, foreign correspondent at The Globe And Mail

The comment that really captured it for me in terms of what it’s all meant (as an avid consumer of both traditional and social media) is that there are other more important things that we should talk about than the social media.

While it’s clear that these tools helped, they are just tools. Combined with a number of other factors, the important part is that they’ve enabled something.

Marshall McLuhan was one of the first to talk about how technology shapes us. And with every experience there is learning, which shapes the next experience.

When it comes to revolutions, a couple examples that were brought up were faxes during the Tiananmen Square protests and audiotapes in Iran.

I specifically remember Tiananmen Square because of the images and the stories. I didn’t know until it was mentioned at this event that the enabling technology at the time was the fax machine. Keeping in mind that I was 12 years old back then, I still think it speaks to the power of being able to tap into the human experience.

Shaping me, shaping you

When Google and Twitter launched Speak2Tweet after the internet was disabled in Egypt, it meant that people like me could now explore and hear directly from individuals involved. In fact, I played many messages until I found one in English.

There was talk on the panel about how traditional media’s role is to put together the pieces of the puzzle and to tell a story that’s digestible.

While it was very powerful for me to be able to explore and hear a message from a woman in Egypt, I still relied on traditional media to get the full story on the protests because I didn’t have the resources to get it myself.

Even though I could access this woman’s message, it wasn’t the fact that I could do that that hit home with me. Technology has shaped me to the point where I expect an app for everything – even in a country with no Internet access – I expect that someone (in this case Google and Twitter) will come up with a solution, which is of course what happened.

When I heard this Egyptian woman’s voice though, it struck me that she sounded just like someone I could have a conversation with, someone that could be within my circle of friends.

Turns out being able to see another human being as a human being is quite powerful.

I know that sounds ridiculously simple but for someone who is used to seeing primarily first-world problems in tweets and Facebook status updates, it puts things into perspective ridiculously quickly.

One of the panelists admitted she wasn’t a fan of social media before the Arab Spring. She specifically said “I don’t care what you had for breakfast,” which was funny to me because I’ve heard the exact same line about breakfast from people before who weren’t impressed with Twitter.

But it makes sense that the biggest challenge for me advocating for social media has been convincing people that it’s more than some of the frivolousness that you see.

It’s also certainly not life altering everyday, but sometimes it can be.

I remember reading that the telegraph was first used to play chess across great distances. I’m sure people found that ridiculous too. But for the people saved from an explosion coming on the train into Halifax on December 6, 1917, I’m sure it wasn’t.

It is powerful to embrace new technologies, but that power only comes through understanding how it shapes us individually.

The video of the panel discussion will be posted on the Munk School of Global Affairs website. Special thanks to Rob Steiner from the school for letting me slip in at the last minute to attend the session, which was full some time before I registered.

So I thought I’d quickly count how many tweets were generated from the Canadian Public Relations Society National conference in Saint John, NB this week. I knew there was a lot of content generated, but I actually didn’t expect this much. CNW Group presented a survey at the conference that said Twitter use by PR practitioners almost doubled since 2009, to close to 80 per cent, so I guess these results make sense.

I thought I’d share a few highlights, but note that this goes from 8:56pm on June 5, 2011 to 8:00pm on June 9, 2011. There were tweets before that time on June 5 but I didn’t retrieve the data quickly enough to count it. While there were meetings and events on the 5th, the conference officially opened on June 6 anyway. (So I don’t feel bad because my neglect also saved me some work )

There were 1108 tweets generated in that time by around 170 users (see MediaMiser’s twitter list for some attendees) and there were tweets in both official languages.

Most active tweeters
1. PhilipMulder
2. Percl8
3. CNW Group
4. dibegin
5. conradts7
6. jillianasmith
7. terryflynn
8. irisdias
9. uclucas
10. ztifhael
Honourable mention: JeanBoileau for most French tweets

Top retweets (using “retweet” icon)
1. @CNWGroup Does PR need a Social Media Reality Check? @lauriesmith & @dave_scholz’s #cprs2011 presentation available now: http://ow.ly/5c8l5 June 7, 2011 11:33:39 AM via HootSuite 8 Retweets

2. @ztifhael Good news, use your name. Bad news, spread the blame. – Jeff Ansell #cprs2011 June 7, 2011 1:18:04 PM via Twitter for BlackBerry® 7 Retweets

3. @amandalaird Does PR need a Social Media Reality Check? @lauriesmith & @dave_scholz’s #cprs2011 presentation available now: http://ow.ly/5c8l5 June 7, 2011 11:35:29 AM via web 7 Retweets

4. @BSerjeantson MediaMiser launches beta version of journalist contact manager - http://mmi.sr/2W4 (via @MediaMiser). Visit booth 13 for info. #cprs2011 June 6, 2011 2:41:32 PM via web 7 Retweets

5. @DaveCarroll In Saint John today, speaking at @CPRSNational #cprs2011 Performing with @SonsofMaxwell tonight June 6, 2011 9:48:49 AM via web 7 Retweets

6. @dibegin ”A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” – Mark Twain Said before telephones. #cprs2011 June 7, 2011 1:22:22 PM via HootSuite 6 Retweets

7. @TerryFlynn You can get a copy of the @CNWGroup and Leger Marketing SM Reality Check 2.0 here http://t.co/GX00Aku #cprs2011 June 7, 2011 10:01:11 AM via UberSocial 6 Retweets

8. @andreatavchar ”Social media not conversation but ability to make something shareable and findable” @mitchjoel #humberpr #cprs2011 June 7, 2011 8:52:55 AM via Twitter for BlackBerry® 6 Retweets

9. @CNWGroup Do you need a Social Media Reality Check? Preliminary findings available now: http://ow.ly/5bQND #cprs2011 June 7, 2011 8:05:03 AM via HootSuite 6 Retweets

10. @dibegin A digital strategy is the entire experience, not just social media play. #cprs2011 June 6, 2011 2:39:39 PM via Twitter for iPhone 6 Retweets

11. @CNWGroup Know your kryptonite. Or, understand your weaknesses and learn to make them your strengths. #cprs2011 June 6, 2011 8:15:00 AM via Twitter for iPhone 6 Retweets

Thanks to all of our tweeters! Also, don’t forget to also share any blog posts with the others. Here’s how again.

The CPRS National Conference in Saint John, NB is just days away. If you’re one of the lucky ones who gets to attend, we have a favour to ask.

Will you share just one thing?

Whether you’ve been blogging for a decade or you’ve never shared anything online before but would love try, here’s how you can participate.

1. CHOOSE
There are a lot of great training sessions, but there are also a number of events like lobster dinners and an awards gala that your PR colleagues across the country would love to see, hear or read about. So your first step is to pick something.

2. WRITE
You may already be posting in your organization’s blog, local chapter blog or your personal blog (if so, move on to the “Share” step). If you don’t have a platform, you can use a Facebook note to share. (after login on Facebook, click on “Notes” in the left column, click “Write a note” icon on top of page, and be sure to set the privacy to “Everyone”) See a sample note. Around 600 words is usually good for online reading.

3. CAPTURE
Use Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, SlideShare or any other platform to post videos or pictures from any of the events. CPRS National also has a Facebook account if you’d like to post there or ask us about posting on our SlideShare account(just ask me how).

4. SHARE
On Twitter you can use the #CPRS2011 hashtag (See who’s already talking about the conference!). AND most importantly post a link in our CPRS national LinkedIn discussion group(max. 200 characters).

A number of PR practitioners across Canada have already accepted the challenge. Will you?

Before I moved to Toronto I had mentioned to a few people that I wanted to go check out the McLuhan Culture and Technology Program at the University of Toronto. I never had the time on previous trips. Just a week after I moved from Edmonton, Spark on CBC did a walking tour. Sadly I missed it, but it probably was a good thing because I think it rained on May 7. They put up some audio files though so that you could do it when you wanted. I listened to them in advance of going.

I know McLuhan fits into the category of one of the obscure things I enjoy (because no one outside academics and people involved in communications seem to know who he is), but I’m glad I did it and I’m glad I didn’t invite someone along with me. I had to be at the University later on in the day, so it was a nice way to get acquainted with the campus.

The tour took much longer than I expected (because I wanted to upload to Flickr at the same time) and in the end it was much smaller than what I imagined. I guess that shouldn’t have been a surprise based on what I’ve heard about his relationship with the University of Toronto. Still, it clearly wasn’t the size, but what McLuhan did with it because he managed to attract people like Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Woody Allen and John Lennon to his famous Monday night seminars in the Coach House.

Here are the photos from the tour:

The MP3 links work only in the set. Also check out the CBC Spark Marshall McLuhan Walking tour website.

Oh and the rain did come in buckets after I left my other thing at the U.

This morning I was listening to Q on CBC Radio. In his opening essay, host Jian Ghomeshi was talking about a study on the changing newsroom with the infiltration of social media.

The findings from the research were that newsrooms still rely heavily on PR folks to source and verify stories, even though verification and sourcing through social media is growing. In his essay, Ghomeshi refers to the “dark arts of public relations” and the power behind the “PR machine” in both traditional and social media.

I’m not going to defend to PR industry as a whole because it would contradict my argument that the PR industry as a whole shouldn’t be stereotyped.

The whole love-hate relationship between journalists and PR practitioners is over a century old. Then it gets more complicated (and exciting in my opinion) with the awkward threesome that social media created, giving a voice to anyone who has access.

I am well aware of how PR started, the psychology behind it, the good, the bad and everything in between that brings us to our modern-day media environment. I’ve been living it – both in practice and in my studies.

Still, I have never been embarrassed to say I’m in PR.

Everyone gets stereotyped. I grew-up a French-speaking Catholic, in a farm community in northern Alberta, so I’ve had my fair share of stereotypes. Just like my profession, these things are all part of me too.

For the record, I’ve never worn cowboy boots, nor owned a truck. I don’t believe in separatism (for Québec, nor Alberta for that matter). And my political and religious views are probably not what you think they would be.

Similarly, PR people aren’t just about someone’s definition of PR. Just like there are many different kinds of Albertans, there are many different kinds of PR people.

I am a PR practitioner, but I’m a person first.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have done some interesting work on trust. The media environment today, like the corporate environment, is endlessly confusing — still people manage to trust one another.

In their work Brogan and Smith talk about why we trust is the same, it’s just how we trust is different. Obviously the Internet and social media changed the “how.”

New tools have forced old models of communication to evolve. That’s the environment I’m excited and proud to be a part of.

As communicators, this means we can now be an accessible “face” for an organization through social media for when people want to talk about the good, the bad or just whatever. And oh yeah, we (PR folk) happen to be real people who love dogs, spend our weekends camping and sometimes make mistakes.

Working in PR from the corporate side of communications can be endlessly frustrating. Corporate change doesn’t ever come fast enough for my liking, but the point is change is coming because some of us are willing to make PR about something more than a slick corporate PR machine. That’s the rewarding part.

I know that all the stereotypes associated with me both personally and professionally will probably always be there in some form, but it doesn’t matter because they aren’t part of who I am.

As a whole, the PR industry has a long way to go but in the meantime, there are a lot of people doing what comes most naturally to them – just being human.

Jackie Kennedy died today in 1994. I didn’t actually remember that. I spotted it on a screen in a subway station after work. I do actually remember the day she died very well though.

I had fallen asleep after school in front of the TV, which was blaring the six o’clock news. When I woke up, I told my mom I dreamt Jackie Kennedy died. My mom gave me a mom look and told me she had – they’d just said it on the news – and that I really need to stop falling asleep while watching TV.

Why that’s relevant is that was just over a month before I left home for good. I remember being so excited to finally take off from the farm, although as far as my dad was concerned I never really was there anyway. I left home when I was 17 and before that I found every opportunity to be somewhere far, far away. It’s not that I wasn’t glad that I had the opportunity to grow up on a farm. I just knew it wasn’t the life for me anymore.

So here I am some years later feeling the same excitement about having moved away from a city I called home for so many years. Again, it’s not that I wasn’t glad that I have had the opportunity to live there, it just wasn’t for me anymore.

People say the funniest things when you tell them you’re moving away. Like when you say you’re moving to Toronto, people from Toronto say “you’re going to love it here!” and westerners usually say “you’re going to hate it there!” At least that was my experience, but then in both cases they’ll usually ask why.

I actually have a number of reasons but in the end, they all add up to one thing – you just know.

I wanted to move to Toronto probably about 7-8 years ago because I loved the vibrancy of the city. In early 2009 I felt very restless. I knew I would be moving away somewhere but the timing wasn’t right. I had to wrap up a few things (like my lingering degree) and so in the meantime, I was living my interim life until I figured things out. No one knew. Not even the people closest to me. The most important at the time being my now ex-husband. While it was a huge adjustment at the time, we’re all now much happier (including the ex, who I remain on good terms with).

Anyway at some point, Toronto came back into my head. A few months after, a friend of mine was telling me about this book called “Who’s your city” by Richard Florida. He hadn’t read the book but he mentioned that a reporter he worked with had. She moved to Edmonton from New York. Basically the book suggests that like a life partner, your personality has to match your city. The reporter who moved to Edmonton hated her new city because it didn’t match her at all.

Anyway, the book starts off with Florida on the Colbert Report talking about his latest research. In the interview, Florida mentions that he’s moving to Toronto. Not only was he moving to my city, but he outed himself on my favourite show. Needless to say, the book solidified why we were perfect for each other.

What can I say, sometimes you just know.

After completing my accreditation in public relations (APR) recently, a number of people said to me that they would find the oral part of the exam, where they question you about current events, the most challenging. (After a year-long process, you write for 3.5 hours then you have an oral exam for an hour where you’re expected to be on top of any event thrown at you so that you can provide communications advice.)

For example some of the issues I was asked about were Envision Edmonton’s petition and former Col. Russell Williams’ murder case and my study partner was asked about the mosque near Ground Zero.

I too find it challenging to keep up with everything but like many communicators nowadays, I rely on Twitter and the awesome technology of RSS to keep on top of things by subscribing to search queries, blogs and media outlets. Right now, I have 109 feeds in Google Reader that I go through each weekday.

In Edmonton, we’re very fortunate to have people like Jeff Samsonow (@journalistjeff) who hosts a blog called the Edmontonian. While some of the site may have content that you may not want to read at work (they warn you when that’s the case because you will laugh at loud and if anyone asks, you likely won’t want to share what you were reading). But the reason why I bring this site up is that they also post some of the top headlines from the major media outlets from Monday to Friday. (see last Friday’s) It’s an easy way to get a daily glimpse of the news.

The site also recently secured a show on Shaw TV called the Edmontonian Presents, which will start next month. They are looking for submissions on the three themes for their upcoming episodes on “Firsts,” “Money” and “Spring.” If you have any thoughts, drop them a line.

But first, subscribe to their RSS feed…

In October, I came across this blog through Twitter when blogger Julien Smith posted “If you aren’t reading this Marshall McLuhan blog, you can’t really understand media, sorry.”

My own interest with McLuhan started as a child when I first saw the Historica Heritage Moments on the CBC. Watching the video will bring you back.

So how is Marshall McLuhan relevant today?

Well, even though McLuhan died in 1980, his words and thoughts are still in many best selling books, like a couple I picked up earlier this year including Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith and The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.

It was in 2004, when I started my MA at the U of A that I became more immersed in many things McLuhan, including his famous Playboy interview, his appearance in the 1977 Woody Allen and Diane Keaton movie Annie Hall (YouTube clip), or the late-1960s TV program “Laugh-In” with Goldie Hawn and Henry Gibson reciting “Marshall McLuhan, what are ya doin’?”

In Hinton’s blog, he also talks about the celebrity of McLuhan, “In 1965 anyone who watched TV, read a magazine or looked at a newspaper had heard of Marshall McLuhan.“ Pretty amazing, but not surprising given the depth in most of McLuhan’s words.

I was recently reading the convocation speech that McLuhan gave at the University of Alberta in 1971 after receiving an honorary degree. Consider words like these and remember they were written in 1971:

“Electric information has now become as indispensable to people as water to fish, but people cannot yet accommodate to this rarefied environment.”

Anyone involved in communications should be aware of Marshall McLuhan, but it also hits home in a literal sense because one of the 1960s most famous cultural icons was born in Edmonton in 1911.

In 2007, when CPRS Edmonton hosted the national conference themed Fast Forward, we used McLuhan’s words in a promotional piece and screensaver:

“I think of western skies as one of the most beautiful things about the West, and western horizons. The Westerner doesn’t have a point of view. He has a vast panorama…”

Next year, the University of Alberta and the City of Edmonton will be hosting one of many international celebrations for the McLuhan Centenary. Read more about it on page 20 of CURB Magazine below.

Also be sure to check out Todd Babiak’s article “Media guru’s Highlands childhood home well worth preserving.” (Edmonton Journal, September 25, 2010)