Here’s the thing: I have a habit of getting into shows, books and musicians late in the game.

At face value, this may seem like a bad thing – it means I rarely get to be the “one who discovered the awesomeness of…”

But the truth is that I don’t actually care.

Waiting and being late in the game has its benefits:

• My friends and the general public let me know if something is worth my time
• If the person/book/show/etc lasts over time, it’s a sure sign that there’s something there – I know I’m not wasting my time or energy
• If it’s a show, I have tons to catch up on. It means no waiting until next week or season to find out what happens next. Anticipation is great but fulfilling a desire immediately is even better! The same applies for books too
• There’s lots of fresh material for me to soak up and enjoy while everyone has ants in their pants, waiting for the next season or the next book
• There are many opportunities for me to borrow the book, DVD or CD from friends who are already fans (cost savings!)

Here are some examples of things I love now but didn’t pay attention to for a long time:

• Dexter – this is the show I’m currently exploring. I just finished season 3 and I love it.
• Harry Potter – read the books 10 years after the first one was published.
• Friends – I started watching the first season while the latter half of the 10th (and final) season was airing.
• Doctor Who (w/ the 9th & 10th Doctors) -  I started watching while season 3 was airing.
• Lost – I started watching while season 3 or 4 was airing.
• Grey’s Anatomy – I started watching while season 3 was airing
• John Mayer – I had a friend who loved his music and wanted to go see him live. We all said no. A year later, we were all big fans.
• James Morrison – I recently discovered his music, three years late

The list could go on forever.

So what does this mean? People get to be excited and watch in anticipation as I fall in love and become addicted. They participate enthusiastically as I go on and on about these shows or books that they’ve loved for years already.

This also means that people think I’m slow and really out of touch – but I don’t mind.

From this point forward, I plan to write about and share my thoughts on all of my “new discoveries” here. So please bare with me – sometimes I’ll be on the ball and other times I won’t. Either way, your feedback and comments will greatly be appreciated.

Image source: Suchitra Prints (Creative Commons License – BY)

Last Friday, the Globe and Mail published an article by Tavia Grant entitled “Tweets from the top: It pays to be in on the talk.” The article discusses the current trend of North American executives turning to Twitter in order to put a human face on their corporate brands.

In the article, Grant profiles CEO of ING Direct Canada Peter Aceto, who “is busy – but not so busy that he can’t find time to share bits of his life through Twitter.”

According to the article, “few Canadian CEOs have embraced the new tool like Mr. Aceto, whose daily updates range from the philosophical (“great leaders…seek out those with differing viewpoints”) to the personal (“parent teacher interviews tonite. found out my kids are not abnormal”) to the downright funny (“dressed like a banker today – yuk”).”

CEOs are supposed to be really busy people, maybe too busy to type 140 character messages all day about anything and everything. I mean, they usually work 11 to 13 hour workdays. But, apparently many CEOs think that taking that time is worth it. ExecTweets, which posts updates from top business executives on Twitter, features about 100 Tweet-happy executives. A similar website called Twitter Leaders, lists more than 300 of them.

Why do CEOs use Twitter then?

The experts featured in Grant’s article list the following reasons for CEOs to tweet:

• To build trust
• To promote values of openness and transparency
• To market the company and products (although not too strongly or frequently)
• To build communities
• To share ideas
• To get customer and client feedback
• And, ultimately, to put a human face on a large corporation

All of these aspects can help attract buyers and customers, all which are great for your business. And for your own brand. The article states that Aceto, as a result of his constant broadcasts, has been asked to speak at public engagements about his twittering.

Does it make sense?

It sounds like a good initiative. Getting your CEO to tweet is an easy and somewhat inexpensive way to make the company seem light-hearted, less rigid and made of ordinary people just like you and me. It allows customers and clients to connect to you or your company on a personal level – it brings down the traditional wall between the little customer and the corporate giant. Now, if I’m a super fan of Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, I can follow him and get to know what crazy things he’s doing each day, read what articles he thinks are interesting, and maybe I’ll start to understand how I can be as successful as he is (this is all hypothetical, of course).

But at the same time, there are risks. For example, it only takes one biased, negative or flaming tweet to bring down a CEO’s credibility and perhaps the company.

There’s also a fine line between sharing what’s going on in your day and looking like you don’t do anything at all. If I’m expecting you to take care of my project but you’re busy tweeting about being at the beach, then I’m not impressed.

Do you think it’s a good thing for CEOs to be on Twitter? What risks are there?

Picture credit: arincrumley

It’s already been four months and my first semester at Centennial College is over. It’s hard to believe that it’s over considering how much we had to do.

Our courses were:

• Project Management
• Introduction to Corporate Communications
• Public Relations Writing 1: Writing to Inform
• Canadian Business Practices
• Event Management
• Media Relations
• Copy Editing

These courses were interesting and engaging and gave us the chance to learn a lot of the basic skills that we need to go forward into second semester and then into the field of communications.

On top of writing, editing, planning and presenting, we also did a lot of strategic thinking, participated in intelligent and creative discussions, and took part in a few role-playing activities (including a mock news conference and making mock agency pitches to a fake client).

I learned a lot this semester but there are two things that really stand out:

We can do anything

I realized that as a group of students, we really do have the skills, drive and talent to succeed. I say this because for our Event Management course, we were split into groups and had to put on events in the community with a budget of $0. With a lot of hard work, initiative, creativity and support for each other, we put on three really successful events. Two of which raised more than $1,000 for charity (combined) and one that brought down the house at a retirement centre. It’s hard not to be proud of my peers and the work we’ve done.

This is for me

I love that communications is creative and involves writing, editing, designing and planning. However, before starting this program, I had no idea how much strategic thinking and problem solving communicators do. That aspect is something I love and it makes me realize, even more, that my decision to pursue the field of communications was a good one.

What’s next?

I have this week off between semesters and I plan to spend it exploring my goals for the next few months. I want to think about who I’d like to do a client project with and where I may want to do an internship.  Of course, I’ll also spent a lot of my time resting before the next set of courses start.

Photo Credit: BookMama – Creative Commons Licence (BY-NC-ND)

They split us into groups based on the preferences we indicated on our registration form and we rotated through three sessions on three different sectors of public relations and corporate communications.

I ended up in Group C: Crisis Communications, Agency and Corporate/Internal Communications.

A lot was said in the three hours but here are the points that stuck out for me:

Agency:

• In an agency, you’re surrounded by people who do communications too.  This can be a valuable experience and may bring a sense of community that you may not feel in a small communications department for a corporation.
• Tasks as an entry level practitioner may include: creating media lists, doing media calls and pitches, organizing meetings and staff events, doing research and doing media and online monitoring.
• 25% of your tasks will involve researching about the client and anything related to that organization or project.
• One of your other main tasks will be media monitoring,  so know the media and love the news.

Internal Communications:

• Most people believe that internal communications is just about writing the newsletter, but it can more than that.  You can be the coach who mobilizes and engages employees.
• You can work with upper management to develop plans that will engage employees and ensure that they are aware of, understand and believe in the organization’s brand.
• People spend most of their lives at work and you get to make them love it.  You help employees feel pride in where they work and feel a greater sense of accomplishment.

Crisis Communications:

• Every plan is just a plan. It needs to be flexible and adaptable in any situation.
• There are early warnings for crises – they don’t just drop from the sky, so plan ahead and pay attention.
• Take time to look at how your organization or other similar ones dealt with crises in the past.  Learn from these examples.

I left the event with a lot of notes and was impressed with how things rolled out.  The only negative thing was that I would have loved to participate in all the other groups too, such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Media, Media Relations, Non-profit and Financial.

Either way, it was a well-organized event. Thank you to all the speakers and the student steering committee for doing a great job.

Photo credit: oooh.oooh – Creative Commons Licence (BY-NC-SA)

I’ve been spending lot of time reading and listening to the PR and social media community. I have been doing this for months now but this time it’s different because not only am I’m learning from the online community (through blogs, podcasts and even tweets), but I’m also learning from school (with classes, readings and guest speakers).

All of this listening has made me so much more sure and excited about where I am going.  So I think it’s time that I start writing and talking as I continue to read.

And so here I am with this post.

It is very early in my course and there are many other aspects of PR that I will experience and learn about, but I find myself currently intrigued by employee engagement.  And with that, I am intrigued with how social media can be used in this process.

I feel that coming from a company like IBM, I’ve already been spoiled by social media in the workplace.

IBM uses social media both internally and externally to engage its employees.  Internally, employees create podcasts, share bookmarks (through Dogear), connect on an internal social network (Beehive), collaborate using wikis, and converse through blogs.

Using social media, IBM is empowering employees to build and use these online communities to be creative, to collaborate and to innovate.  In other words, by allowing the employees to connect, communicate and participate in new ways, IBM is giving each employee a voice and an opportunity to share their value.

I will not pretend to be an expert on this topic just yet, especially since I know some of IBM’s great social media evangelists who can speak at length on the importance of social media.

Over time though, I plan to discuss how IBM and other companies use social media to engage their employees and how social media can be used internally by communicators with their work.

For the time being, I will point you towards the following social media study on Scribd:  The Corporate Newsletter Goes Social: IBM and Employee-Centered Social Media.

Photo Credit: Kris Hoet – Creative Commons License (BY)

I’m not an expert on Twitter yet, but from reading various blog posts and talking to enthusiastic users, I am learning how Twitter allows people to build relationships, share information and interact in real time.

I mentioned to the class that on the night of the US Presidential Election, I followed the election.twitter stream.  I was in awe as I watched hundreds of people tweet their immediate reactions to Obama’s win and it really hit me then that this was a moment I would never forget.  That’s when I started to realize that there was something special about Twitter.

Yesterday, there were two great examples of the power of Twitter:

U.S. Airways flight 1549 crashes into the Hudson River

We were in our Media Relations class and our professor, Barry Waite, was showing us examples of media relations in the news.  When he opened the CBC page, we saw that there had been a plane crash in the Hudson.  He then opened Twitter and asked his followers to say hi to our class.  A few minutes later, someone responded with a link to a story on how Twitter broke the first photo of the plane crash: http://ad.vu/2hrc. The class was amazed.

Toronto’s West End Blackout

I was at home working on the computer when all of a sudden my Tweetdeck (which I had installed only a few hours earlier) started making a lot of noise. I didn’t have the TV on or the radio, and so it was through Twitter that I learned that part of the city was without power.  Quickly I picked up that people were using the #darkTO hashtag for the conversation and I began to follow it myself. People were posting TTC service updates, Toronto Hydro updates, phone numbers for help, and even supportive messages.  An hour after it began, CBC posted this story: Twitter Shines in TO Blackout

What both of these examples showcase is the power to reach a group of people and share information instantaneously using Twitter.  Media outlets were watching streams on both events and not only were they adding information, they were also using information from other tweeters to build their own news stories.

Here’s another story: A friend of mine ran to work in the morning because her apartment was freezing.  A few hours later, she tweeted to #darkTO and asked if her area has power yet or not.  She received a faster response (telling her no) by tweeting than if she had gone searching around the web for that answer.

Are there any other examples of how and why Twitter is so great? In what ways is it not?

Photo Credit: ComicBase – Creative Commons License (BY-NC-SA)

I know I haven’t posted in a long time and this is because school has been hectic. I just finished the craziest week of the semester (so far) which included something due every day of the week.

One of these major projects was my Media, Information, and Technoculture honours seminar project. I am enrolled in the The Art of Commentary: Editorial Cartooning and the Role of Dissidence in the Press seminar class in which we study editorial cartoons and the history of cartooning. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the class but it is now one of my favourites. We not only look at editorial cartoons, but we also learn about the political and historical events that were occurring at that time and see how the cartoonists engaged in political commentary through their work. It’s amazing how powerful and strong the cartoonists’ messages can be.

Along with attending lectures, we each worked on a research project throughout the semester and then held a half-hour seminar for the class to present our work. For my project, I looked at the topic of genocide – something I became very interested in and passionate about since I took the Century of Genocide class last year. I started by researching all editorial cartoons that deal with genocide and then slowly put together a theme.

I ended up talking about the phrase “Never Again”. After each genocidal event starting from the Holocaust, we (the public, the international community, and the United Nations) said “Never again”. However, we all know that genocide has happened and is happening again and again.

What I found through my research is that editorial cartoonists criticize the United Nations, the western nations, the western media, and the public for their lack of interest, lack of action, and inability to do something to save people (an inability that comes from conflicts of interest, veto powers, etc). It has now gotten to the point where the cartoonists look straight at the words “Never Again” and show how empty the words are. “Never Again” is just rhetoric.

In my presentation, I used these themes and worked through information and cartoons about the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur. I was nervous about not giving the topic enough time because it is very important but I feel like it went well. I want to highlight here two of my favourite cartoons, both of which I think have powerful messages:

And finally, I finished the presentation with the following animated editorial cartoon (you have to click through to view the flash video). I look forward to your comments.

Tonight, when you sit down for some political TV, are you going to watch the Canadian Prime Minister candidate debate (English) or the American Vice President candidate debate?

My guess is that most people will watch the US debate and just read about ours tomorrow.

What does that say about political debates, our candidates, and us?

(of course, I realize that many people will watch neither…)

I have so many stories to tell you all but I can’t get into them now. I’m just amazed because I still have a week to go.

Last night we were in Koyasan (or Mt. Koya, if you’re not Japanese). Atop Koyasan is a village full of temples and shrines. It was a very quiet and beautiful place. We stayed in a temple overnight and got up early to attend the prayers.

It was a wonderful experience and the only downside was that it was freezing and us Canadians (who, as we were told by some Australians we ran into, should be used to the cold) did not have any warm clothes with us, so we spent a lot of time shivering. Haha, but every experience is one to remember.

Today, we were in Hiroshima and we visited the Peace Memorial Park and the Museum. The museum talks about Hiroshima before the bomb, during the bomb and after. I was struggling with my emotions the entire time. I decided that instead of being angry I should probably think of some way of putting my energy into more positive things. More on that later.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. I’ll blog more about my adventures (including Tokyo, the contest, Mt. Takao, etc) soon.

1) I’m almost done reading “Around the World in 80 Dates” by Jennifer Cox. The book is about travel journalist and author Cox, who realizes that while her work life is great, her love life is horrible. So in an attempt to fix this, she asks friends and friends of friends to help her set up dates all around the world. The book – part travel, part memoir – follows her thoughts as she goes through 80 dates around the world, all in the hopes of finding her Soul Mate.

Anyway, she just dated a few people in Japan and I enjoyed reading about some of the sights to see and things to do in Tokyo. I think I was more interested in reading the details about the area than what her dates were like. Just kinda =)

2) As many people had mentioned that I should watch it before leaving, I watched “Lost in Translation” last night. The movie is about two people in Tokyo who are just lost in their lives and desperately need to be found. I enjoyed the movie for its story, the acting, and also all of the hints as to what to see and do in Japan. As much as I see all these images, I still can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like to be in a car driving through Tokyo and seeing all the bright lights and people.

3) Today I watched all three hours of the mini-series “Kelly Osbourne: Turning Japanese” on Much Music (it originally aired on the UK’s ITV2). Kelly Osbourne is quite the character but I was really pleased with her in this series. I couldn’t help but laugh along with her and be impressed by her determination not to disrespect people and to try and understand. After all of her complaining or uncomfortable moments, she learned to understand. I enjoyed watching her go to different places in Tokyo, work various jobs, and take part in certain activities. Ha, I will never forget the Love Hotel segment. The best part was when she went to Kyoto and entered a Tea House to train with the Maiko for a week. It was great.

Anyway, as a result, I’m really itching to go to Japan and see everything that’s there. I think the biggest thing I’m worried about is being polite enough and not offending anyone. I’m just going to keep saying “sumimasan” (sorry) often to play it safe.

The time leading up to this trip has been very interesting for me so far because as part of the projects I’m working on at work, I’ve been reading and writing a lot about Japan, Tokyo, and Japanese history, customs, and traditions. I’ve been reading about things to see and do, talking to people about it, and also going through pictures to get a better idea. After watching both “Lost in Translation” and “Turning Japanese”, I’ve realized that I will definitely be overwhelmed by all that there is to see and do and how different things are in Japan from how they are at home.

It will be an interesting experience for sure. And I’m already beginning to think I’ll have to go back to Japan again in the future to see and do all the things I won’t be able to do this time around.