There’s nothing like intelligent debate, especially with someone who happens to be as geeky as you about communications theorists.

Because my background involves the evolution of my career as a PR practitioner I started my literature review with a book that is the foundation for PR, the book that established the RACE formula (research, action, communication, evaluation, although now the “a” has been changed to analysis).

Basically RACE is how PR practitioners plan and the formula came from a 1963 book by John Marston called The Nature of Public Relations.

I’ve written before about how I think the RACE formula is outdated, because two-way communication is not a linear process. I still think all those elements are present (RAC&E) but not as a sequence because sometimes you’re doing all of them at once.

This blog post is essentially part of the outtakes from our paper, since it won’t be included but I thought it was still worth writing about.

I’m still reading the book but some bits kind of surprised me recently because I was expecting it to be a manual about “how to be a slick PR man.” (Marston refers to the PR man throughout the book – I didn’t add that for effect.)

He also holds some simplistic views about different types of people in the book like blue-collar workers and farmers.

Still, his idea about what PR should aspire to be really resonated with me, with clearly no slickness involved. The irony is that back then PR also had a PR problem.

He talks about how the ideal PR model includes two-way communication while recognizing they did not have the ideal PR model given that the modes of communication were mass media.

He writes, “Public relations practitioners, politicians, educators, advertisers, clergymen, and others should realize that although the flow of communication today is mighty, most of it is one-way!”

But what surprised me most is how he talks about communication and how important it is to instill trust.

Marston goes into great detail describing why most forms of communication are persuasion.

I was having some difficulty with that but he talked about how even in the simplest conversion between two people there’s persuasion, whether it’s that you want to find out how someone’s day is going, provoking a debate or just trying to get him or her like you.

He goes further to say, “Religion, education, patriotism, and all altruistic enthusiasms are “persuasions” which can generally be realized only by persuading others in turn. The man who says that he has received nothing from persuasion is either densely ignorant, a recluse or self-deluded. Despite its abuses, persuasion is a gentle art in which wisdom, patience, love, and friendly enthusiasm are by far the greatest elements and it is much to be preferred to the more brutal, crass forms of forcing or buying human cooperation.”

Yup, no matter how things change, some still remain pretty much the same.

I’m struggling as I write this because attacks like this are often rooted in ignorance and ignorance can lead to hate, but hate is difficult to simplify when you can’t even understand how people can be brought to do such things.

So instead, I’ll focus on something (or someone) that I do understand – me. (most days)

I had the opportunity to interview Dan Tisch, APR, FCPRS recently about his appointment as Global Alliance chair (an international umbrella organization for PR organizations including CPRS). He also attended the first-ever Global Congress for Muslim PR Practitioners held in Malaysia in December. Read his blog post here.

What struck me is when Dan was telling me about the sessions and how it resonated with why I became a PR practitioner – to face real challenges and to help tell real stories. Real PR is not about the ridiculously outdated notion of spin.

The congress was an inclusive event as the organizers invited non-Muslims “who are interested in gaining truthful knowledge of the Public Relations developments affecting the spheres of economics, social and politics of the Muslim World.”

Truth makes your choices about what to communicate obvious. Either it is truth or it isn’t.

There’s no such thing as shades of the truth, which is why “truthiness” is not a real thing.

Actually, years ago I was surprised by something I read about Stephen Colbert – not the character living in truthiness, but the real person who plays the character. He is a real-life devout Catholic.

In interviews he’s given, he talks about how he had two intellectual parents who encouraged their kids to question authority, even when it came to their church. So while, he lives as a real-life Catholic, it doesn’t stop him from challenging the religion on his show.

So here’s my truth.

I think I started questioning authority within religion when I heard a story told in private as a kid by a priest saying basically said it doesn’t matter what religion anyone belongs to. He said when you get to heaven you’ll be surrounded by Muslims, Jews, Sikhs…basically saying we’re all the same.

Of course I was young and wasn’t paying a lot of attention to things.

In fact, it wasn’t until recently that I found out there is a mosque in a community close to where I grew up. I heard about it through a friend who used to go to it with his family.

It was part of my own ignorance, not realizing that there was much more diversity surrounding me than I realized.

Or maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t know enough to think it was different.

Regardless I wasn’t looking for it, so it’s no surprise that I never knew it was there. Had I known though, maybe I would have wanted to go inside. And I would not even have known how to make that happen.

Sometimes what we consider the most challenging has the simplest answer.

To go inside, just like any other building, the door was a pretty good bet.

So last summer I participated in Doors Open Toronto where a bunch of places around the city literally open their doors to the public.

There were a few other religious buildings that I wanted to go in, but only managed to go to a mosque. It was the closest to my neighbourhood in a time when I was still having to give myself a lot of “getting lost in Toronto until I find the place” time.

The mosque had opened their doors and they were surprised by how much traffic went through the place. Many people said the same thing as me, “I didn’t think I could come in before today.”

Some time after (during Ramadan) all of the attendees received an email inviting them back to share a feast. I jumped at the opportunity to secretly observe amongst the crowd.

I was told that there were four of us who sent an RSVP but as it turned out that day one person from the threesome fell ill and had to cancel. So it ended up being just me.

They gave instructions on dressing modestly and a hijab was given as a gift to wear.

I was so excited to go back, the absolutely last thing I wanted to do was be disrespectful in any way. I actually forgot that I should have had my arms covered but no one said anything and when I brought it up, they said it was OK because I was a guest.

During the breaking of the fast, I sat at a table with three families, sitting to the direct left of the imam. The imam spoke better English than he get himself credit for and the questions just kept coming from me.

It was a beautiful evening where I had a chance to ask some questions about things I always wondered about and got very honest answers.

I was even invited back to the final picnic of Ramadan but because it was at a park not easily accessible on transit and because of other commitments, sadly I wasn’t able to go.

How about exploring those things that pique your curiosity in 2012?

I am infinitely curious and while I still have many questions, I can tell you that the best part of all this was that something unknown (because of my own ignorance) became known. And that’s the best feeling of all.

The second that I moved out, my brother moved into my room and my stuff was out. And my mom laughed when I said I hoped it would stay exactly the same as when I left.

You can romanticize your life all you want but if others don’t play along, I guess you’re just left with reality.

So since 2006, I’ve been checking Google Earth to see what our family farm looks like when photographed from space. The farm and a large area around it, including our home town has been pretty much fuzzy since then. Basically you can’t zoom in like you can on other parts of Google Earth.

Back in 2006 Michael Jones of Google Earth did say at NAIT GIS Day that he hoped they would have higher resolution imagery of the entire earth within a couple years.

While it’s still not the case, I was happy to see a limited version of Google Streetview came to our mainstreet probably sometime in 2010.

Surely very few people ever have a need to look up my town of Girouxville (pop. 282) because it is so small and easy to get around if you do find yourself there.

The thing is, no matter how insignificant that tiny little town is to some, it is a big part of me.

Girouxville became my home because all four of my grandparents settled there. All four are also buried there, along with many other people I’ve loved.

My mom grew up in town in a house that’s still standing today and my dad still lives on a farm settled  by my pépère Bégin seven and a half miles outside of town back in 1927.

Uploading pictures to Google Earth

So, to help preserve the town for me now that I live so far way, I decided to figure out how I could get a few pictures up on Google Earth. I tested it out in Toronto before I went home for the holidays and it basically takes two programs.

1. Google Latitude – Google Earth will only accept images that have location tracked on them. They do it through Google Latitude so I downloaded the app to my iPhone. Just a caution to remember to turn it off when you’re done or else people will keep knowing your exact location.

2. Panoramio – Google Earth uses location enabled Panoramio images, so I also downloaded this app to take pictures from directly once I linked it with Latitude.

Once you’ve uploaded images, it takes some time for the images to be reviewed by Google before they are posted.

Mine were approved within 24 hours. I took 33 pictures, but 31 were approved. The two that weren’t were a street sign and a monument near where the old wading pool.

The wading pool is now gone, as are the grain elevators and the school where I spent ten years of my life.

Next year, I’m told the curling rink will also be torn down.

The Edmonton Journal had done a piece on the town in 2009 when CN closed its rail line. The coffee shop owner that feared she’d have to closed shop since has.

Of the bits that remain, my favourite parts are the forest behind the grotto and the museum because they always seemed so mysterious. I spent lots of time as a little girl exploring both.

The good news is that there’s a recent addition breathing some new life into town – a four-lane bowling alley that opened in November 2011. (We went bowling after taking these pics.)

The busy bowling alley, like the full church on Christmas Eve, reminds you that no matter what the world outside thinks, there’s still life there.

The new year will mark the point in my life where I’ll have lived in cities longer than I lived in my little town. Even though I left home the moment that I had the means to go, I’ve always been proud of where I came from.

My story began in middle of nowhere and now, at least, nowhere is sort of on the map.

A few weeks ago I attended a Schulich School of Business alum event with a couple girlfriends who went to York. The last session of the day had panelists from Nielson, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Some words from the guy from Facebook stuck with me, probably because I have been thinking a lot about the ridiculous quest for perfection lately.

He said that at Facebook, they live by “done is better than perfect” – obviously stemming from maintaining innovation in a competitive market.

Of course there’s professionally but it got me thinking about it personally.

A few years ago I worked at a college and for some reason – that I can’t remember – it was a really busy time. Long story short, I ended up getting a parking ticket because I hadn’t realized I put my parking receipt face down on my dashboard.

It was my mistake, but still I contacted the head of security and parking to see if he could help. He responded and very quickly my ticket was reversed, which I was really grateful for because I didn’t think I had a chance.

Then I got caught up in my busyness again to the point that I almost forgot to say thanks. He wasn’t around work, so I couldn’t thank him in person. Instead I sent him an email. It was the best I could do. Plus I could thank him in person next time I saw him.

What I didn’t know was that my fellow coworker was actually on a leave from work and the emails he had been responding to were from his hospital bed.

A few days went by and Monday morning a coworker came by to tell us that the head of security and parking had died of a heart attack over the weekend.

You know when people in the workplace say in passing “so if I get hit by a bus tomorrow…” Well it was like that except he had a heart attack and I felt like I had been hit by a bus.

Fast forward to tonight… I went up to a friend to wish him a happy birthday. With new friends, there are many surprises like not realizing our birthdays were two days apart. Friendship is that imperfect thing where you feel like you randomly meet a person and for whatever reason you hit it off.

This friend is in his 50s and we became acquainted a short time back when he came up and introduced himself to me. He has a face that you like instantly. The fact he always seems to be smiling doesn’t hurt either.

We hit it off in our very first conversation because he has a place out in the country with horses where he goes every weekend to go fox hunting (thankfully they don’t actually kill foxes though, I asked).

After I told him I was from a farm his response was “but you don’t look like a farm girl.” I don’t really know what he meant because I’ve only ever looked like me. Farm people have as consistent a look as city people, which is to say there’s no consistency.

So I laughed and we’ve been friendly since. Whenever we spot one another we say hi and I often get a hug. (Good news: Toronto folk are just as huggy as westerners).

So tonight I was greeted and hugged by the same friendly smiling face who was pleased to hear our birthdays were two days apart. I can’t even express how sweet this man is, when he asks how things are, you really feel like he cares to know.

So I asked him if he had a good year, to which he said no, especially not the last couple weeks.

His partner of 20 years died this week after a struggle with cancer. I had no idea. Again, hit by a bus.

What do you say to someone who lost the love of his or her life, like literally this week?

There are no perfect words for a moment like that. Just friendship. Fortunately we’d been there and done that.

Done is in fact far better than perfect.

This week I heard someone once again talking about something a company had done that was just a “PR strategy” or a “PR tactic” – basically asserting that is was something that was not genuine.

I’m not knowledgeable enough on what the company did to know whether it was genuine or not, but what bothers me is when people generalize PR as being something superficial with the end goal of just making people believe something at any cost. That’s not what ethical PR practitioners do.

If I could simplify my job to one statement, it is to make sure the communication is flowing both in and out with the people affected. That’s the whole “relations” part of public relations.

There seems to be a belief that PR is just traditional media relations – which happens to be one of the most visible parts of what some of us do.

But the thing is some of us don’t even work with traditional media at all. In fact, some of the best PR ever done is not visible to the masses and doesn’t get any media coverage because the goal is making sure the communication is flowing both in and out with the people affected – regardless of if the information is considered good, bad or neutral.

Back in 2002 or 2003 I woke up one morning to news that chambers of commerce across Alberta and BC were receiving mysterious packages in the mail. I worked for the Alberta umbrella organization representing over 100 of community chambers that were getting these packages that supposedly had cryptic messages and mysterious objects in them.

Turns out it was a religious organization that was trying to get a message out. Fortunately, they didn’t pose any kind of threat to anyone’s health or safety.

The story completely died but it took all day to get to that point and of course people were panicking in the meantime.

Because technology wasn’t what it’s like today, we simply sent update emails throughout the day as things progressed. When everything was done, I remember getting notes of thanks about how scared chamber managers were about their own safety and they were just so grateful (especially the very isolated ones) that we made sure they were informed.

That made my day, to know we actually made a difference and that we did our job.

In that position I also first experienced social media. Because of the isolation felt by our chamber managers, we experienced great success through launching online discussion forums to give them a platform.

While I value what traditional media brings to PR, the immediacy of social media in getting in touch with the people who want to get in touch with you and vice versa is invaluable for a PR practitioner.

Fast forward to a few years later… I was part of a crisis communications team at a post-secondary institution.

A colleague informed us that campus security told her that a gunman had just run onto campus. It was the result of a police chase that happened to end on campus.

Fortunately again it was no longer a threat, but quite literally just as she finished telling us, there were two posts on Twitter with people asking what was going on because they saw it happen.

Fortunately we were able to respond quickly, with accurate information and to alleviate any fear of further threat.

Again, fulfilling our role as people making sure the communication was flowing both in and out with the people affected made my day.

Crisis communications is but one area of PR where we use those darn “PR strategies” or “PR tactics.”

PR is continually evolving and social media has already made PR more visible and transparent by outing some unethical practices.

Hopefully one day it will also mean that PR is also viewed as something less superficial and much more genuine too.

When I was a kid, I felt ripped off because the red maple leaf on Canada’s flag was nowhere to be found where I lived. I’d try to find any leaf that looked remotely the same – in rural northern Alberta.

One time my mom was talking about some maple trees in our yard and I questioned her because clearly they weren’t maples because the leaf shape was totally different. Turns out it was a maple, just a different kind. I felt even more ripped off.

The maple leaf shape from our flag is as a symbol after all supposed to be part of our Canadian identity, but for me it pretty much didn’t exist.

This fall – in my new eastern home city – maple leaves are found everywhere. I smile now at my ridiculousness, but then it continues…

So, now with abundance I’m trying to find the “perfect” red maple leaf to send my niece in Alberta. (You know to save her from my ridiculous constant search as a kid.)

Of course I can’t find that “perfect” leaf. They often get spots, are asymmetrical or are crumbling.

Apparently a ridiculously stubborn child makes for a ridiculously stubborn adult.

I kind of like the idea though as a metaphor representing a symbol for identity.

This week I participated in the national conference call to prep this year’s Accreditation in Public Relations candidates for exams coming up later this month. Later on the same day, our local CPRS chapter hosted an open house to introduce our roles as the new board – an event that had a huge student turnout.

In one day, I spoke with I don’t even know how many people about my path including my work and both my education and accreditation. It’s been far from easy and certainly far from perfect.

My experience, as part of my identity would be just as imperfect as those leaves.

My education leaf probably would be six times bigger than the accreditation leaf, just because it had all those extra growing seasons, but the growing seasons for both didn’t have much sun or rain since I was dealing with some other challenges at the same time.

They’d both be ugly, spotted, asymmetrical and crumbling because there were times when I was going through both of those processes that I doubted myself and I’m sure others doubted me. (There’s a prodigal child comment that a friend made that comes to mind.)

Those leaves may have already fallen but I still like looking at them, no matter how ugly. To me they still look good and I am proud of them.

It’s almost as though, that the feeling of being ripped off as a kid grew into a healthy longing feeling. One that made me start feeling no matter what the experience it is my own.

There’s nothing more perfect than that, especially since there are way more leaves up in that tree to look forward to. Plus then, there’s also next year’s growing season.

Granted it does feel longer but since I started my job the day after I moved here on federal election day, here we are at three months!

Over the weekend I heard a woman talking about how it’s important to change your point of view by really looking at things from a different angle.

She was talking about an argument with her wife, but made the point that in life you have to change the way you look at things otherwise you can get caught in the same unhealthy patterns.

That’s what moving to Toronto from Alberta has done for me – given me a new point of view. Not necessarily changing my opinion per se, but looking at it from a different way.

Looking at Toronto as an Albertan and now looking at Toronto as Torontonian are certainly two different things, but not in the ways I expected. Same could be said of my work.

And that’s another reality about life – things generally aren’t going to be the way you imagined them.

The people

I grew up somewhere where the closest urban area had a population of under 300 people. Now I live in a place where there are millions of people.

No matter where I’ve lived the ratios of phony, genuine, miserable, happy, unstable, pretentious, generous…types of people are probably the same. The myths of small town charm and big city coldness really should be broken.

The thing about living in a small town is that you know the whole range and if you run into them anywhere in the world, you’re expected to say hi – even if you typically wouldn’t in your hometown. (I’m only kind of kidding about that.)

That’s why I like getting lost in a city, you can surround yourself with the people you want.

The PR

I was reading Julien Smith’s blog this week about doing your life’s work.

He was talking about either living your life in autopilot where you’re rarely challenged or living your life in fear because you’re constantly challenging yourself, progressing and becoming different.

He wrote, “In order to get anywhere in life, you need to be uncomfortable constantly.”

Uncomfortable constantly started for me back in 2009 with some major life changes.

I have now been working at an agency in Toronto for three months (I’ve never done agency work before) but I’ve also continued my volunteer commitments through the local CPRS Toronto chapter and national.

The crazy part about this whole “changing your point of view” thing though is that while it can offer new perspective, that new perspective can even expose insecurities.

Being around people in my professional circles outside of work, I was thinking had I been around these people earlier on in my career, I would have thought certain things would be impossible for me to accomplish right now.

The thing is I’ve already accomplished what they’re talking about so thank God I was too ignorant or blind to see why I shouldn’t have been able to do that.

That’s the important part of being uncomfortable constantly, people will say things around you, but those things will only be part of your reality if you let them.

Now uncomfortable constantly continues to be part of my story in Toronto.

There was a post tweeted the other day about PR being the second most stressful career – after commercial airline pilot.

A silly list really, because I hope that no one would ever pick a career based on how stressful or stress free it is. And really what does it matter how someone who’s not in the career thinks how stressful it is.

When I looked at the other professions, it struck me that it didn’t matter where PR stood, because the other jobs listed like healthcare professions and broadcaster weren’t jobs I’d ever want.

As a consumer of their services, I appreciate the work that others do in these fields but I’m in my element in PR. (for now)

Uncomfortable constantly works only if you genuinely want to be there both in terms of your work and even your city.

Otherwise you should probably pickup and find another point of view.

The Vancouver Sun describes the blog as being “sunny without being saccharine” and really that’s what it is. Just enjoying those tiny little things that you often take for granted.

I had a chance to meet the author, Neil Pasricha, this weekend. At an event in a coffee shop, he told the story of how his blog was born, which I remembered reading back when I started following.

The blog came at a very dark time in his life when his marriage ended and he had to deal with the suicide of someone close to him.

It stuck with me because – while years apart – those were the exact two darkest moments in my own life.

It’s when you’re dealing with these dark moments though that you have a choice to either continue wallowing or find a way get happy again.

So Neil decided to start a blog and called it 1000 Awesome Things. He mentioned in his story that 50,000 blogs are started everyday and his was just one of them.

His mom was his first reader, then his dad. Then a whole bunch of other people (like literally millions) started reading, which led to him getting a Webby Award and some book deals.

His three As for awesome are attitude, awareness and authenticity. He talked about really how each person is responsible for their own happiness, no matter what their circumstances.

My favourite line though was “about being you and just being cool with that.” While brutally simple, so many people try to be someone else that they think others want them to be. That’s when it gets complicated and unawesome.

There’s simplicity in just being yourself and simplicity in Neil’s postings of daily little things, which resonates with pretty much everyone. That’s why his blog and his books do so well.

I have so many favourite things on the 1000 list but a few I can think of off the top of my head:

#219 When little kids give you their artwork (I’ve always loved this but my most recent little fridge artist is my little munchkin of a niece.)

#375 Finding out someone has the same birthday as you (Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado, Jim Cuddy and Kelly Buchberger have never counted because I’ve never met any of them. Within weeks of the blog post though I found out a friend shared my birthday and then someone I knew had a baby on MY bday.)

#205 The person lying down at the front of the sports team photo (While it wasn’t a sports team photo, my family had one of those awesome pics done in Mexico in March. It’s the first picture and my older brother is the person lying down.)

The event was hosted by Maxwell House in the Optimism Café (in the Beaches in Toronto) that they opened just for the month of July to give out free coffee. Free coffee is always pretty awesome. In their ads, you can also see Neil.

A former colleague a few years back said she would never take the accreditation in public relations (APR by the Canadian Public Relations Society) because it was “public relations” and she thought the accreditation in business communications (ABC by the International Association of Business Communicators) just had a better name (sans public relations) because she didn’t like being considered PR.

More recently a discussion on the PR vs. communications debate happened at the Canadian Public Relations Society national conference in Saint John, New Brunswick.

People have a number of reasons for preferring one over the other.

For me they’ve always been one in the same. In fact, I answered “both” in the poll, even though it didn’t let me. (Just answered both in the comments.)

Then I was reading something unrelated about a court case where a judge was pulled from the case.

In the piece, it said something to the effect “Did the authorities remove the judge as a public relations gesture?”

I suspect if “public relations” had been replaced with “communications” it wouldn’t have had the same intent for the author. And perhaps the audience may not have understood what she meant.

Interestingly, the line the followed the reference to the “public relations gesture” was “Or did they genuinely appreciate…”

It seems in the author’s mind, a PR gesture is an act separate or opposite from the organization acting genuinely.

Can public relations be a gesture? It comes up 53,900 times in Google.

Is it possible to reclaim PR?

The one thing I hate most about writing anything is getting started. A close second is staying motivated throughout to actually finish the piece.

Some things like an article on something you’re really interested in or someone you’re really interested in talking to seem to come pretty easily.

But sometimes you’re really interested in the content and it’s the scale of the piece that becomes a challenge.

That’s where I’m at right now for something I want to submit for review about the evolution of the PR profession to an academic journal (or two if I find the motivation to do both).

When I was finishing my grad research last year, a couple things that worked for me were writing 1000 words in one sitting and calling a fellow grad student every hour to tell one another what we planned to do in the next hour and report what we did in the last. I think our longest stretch was eight hours or so.

It was like playing a game to get the writing done and it worked brilliantly.

The right location also makes a big difference, like a good coffee shop or your patio.

And sometimes when you’re stuck and the words just aren’t coming out, a good glass of wine is in order. That was seriously some of the best advice I got from someone (although he suggested scotch).

Somewhere between balancing work, your volunteer and professional commitments, your personal life and all the bits in between, you try to get this writing thing done.

Ugh, if only this writing thing didn’t fall over the summer months.

I don’t talk to my dad very often but in our last conversation we were talking about a book he lent me a few years back. He asked me to read it and let him know if he should read it.

After putting it down for a long time, I breezed through it while on holidays in Mexico in March so that I could give it back to him before my move.

I gave my dad the Coles notes version of the parts I thought were good and asked him if he’d read it now. He said that he may but not in the summer – he never reads books in the summer. He leaves those things for winter.

Hmmm, tempting with my writing thing…but my work life isn’t a cycle between madness and calm like his – being in the agricultural business.

So sometimes the best advice to get started is to just get started.

At some point you figure out the game as you go along and you eventually get it done.