Last week, I attended the 7th annual 360 Degrees: All Things Connected, an event hosted by the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS). The event was organized by the student steering committee for students and junior PR practitioners and was well worth the ticket price.
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)
Public pillow fights at Yonge-Dundas Square.
I stopped by Saturday afternoon with a friend to watch as random strangers pulled out their pillows for some fun. We laughed ourselves silly as people enthusiastically returned to their childhood days and participated in a good-hearted pillow fight.
It wasn’t violent. Some people were dressed up. A few little kids happily and safely participated. And it lasted a very long time.
Good job Newmindspace!
I’ve decided that it may be better to write about anything and everything until I find what my blogging voice is. So while I may talk about technology, social media and PR, I will also talk about anything else that catches my attention.
Such as the post that I wrote two weeks ago (now posted below) on skating at the Harbourfront Centre.
Hopefully this will help avoid blogging dry spells…
In an effort to get out and enjoy my Spring Break and explore the city, I went out to the Natrel Skating Rink at the Harboufront Centre today.
Skating there has been a part of my Canadian winter memories for about ten years now. Each winter I would go skating with my high school band or with a group of friends in the evening. Skating at night, we would enjoy the magical feeling of skating by the lake on the rink, lit up by Christmas lights and spot lights and listening to some oldies but goodies.
Today I did something different. I went by myself during the day and was pleasantly surprised. I was able to skate for more than an hour in the bright, soul-warming sunshine with only six others on the ice. At first it was quiet but half way through they turned the music on.
Either way, it was both refreshing and relaxing. I enjoyed the rush of the cold (but not freezing) air as I skated and watched couples – both young and young at heart – skate, dogs run by merrily with their owners, and some stray planes land over the water at the City Airport in the distance.
When I finished, I was happy that I took a chance. I got over my reservations about exploring on my own and got over my lazy desire to stay on the couch with my computer and the tv (which was great over the weekend but now it was time to move on).
Afterwards, I enjoyed a nice warm drink at a nearby coffee shop, as per tradition. I was happy I came and even happier to know that I’m taking two of my international friends from school there tomorrow.
One of the courses we are taking this semester is Event Management and our major project, as you may expect, is to work in a team to put on an event.
During our very first meeting, I suggested that we set up a wiki.
All of my group members had heard of wikis before but maybe only one or two of us had ever used them. So I quickly set up a private wiki on pbwiki and invited them to use it.
I had only briefly gone over why we should be using a wiki and so I think I will go into a bit more detail here.
What are the advantages of using a wiki?
- For the most part, using a wiki doesn’t really require any special technical skills. Even if you need the brief how-to session, it’s pretty simple to use.
- It allows you to collaborate with a group of people (regardless of how many people) without having to e-mail documents and files back and forth, and without having to worry about losing an important e-mail in your crowded inbox
- It’s a great way to keep all information related to a project in one central place
- Everyone can add and edit information and it’s easy to track changes
- You can always revert to previous versions of a page
- You can record and access current information from anywhere, whether or not you have the files and regardless of what system you are using
- You can receive notification when a page or information has changed
- You can lock the wiki so that only a select few can view and/or edit the pages
What are the disadvantages?
- For some people, there is still a learning curve (even if it is much smaller for wikis than other options)
- If you are using a public wiki service, it may not be as secure as you would like it to be
- If you are meeting your group in person and you won’t have access to a computer, you will still need to print off the important pages
Right now, it seems as if most of my group members are doing ok with the wiki. I understand that there is a little bit of frustration because a wiki doesn’t function the exact same way as a word processing program, but I think that will pass over time.
I’m sure that once we split up our duties, the wiki will be really useful for recording our findings and activities for each other to see.
Are there any other advantages or disadvantages for using a wiki? How do you use wikis?
Photo Credit: teemow - Creative Commons License (BY-NC-SA)
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