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Presentations

Monday, April 14, 2008

PR Open Mic connects students, faculty, and practitioners

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Robert French, the social media-promoting PR professor at Auburn University, has launched a Ning-based social network for PR students and faculty called PR Open Mic. He’s also thrown the door open to practitioners in hopes that a dialogue will emerge that ultimately improves PR curricula and benefits students.

As of this morning, the group boasts 382 members (including me). And, unlike some Ning networks that almost instantly enter stagnation mode, PR Open Mic is off to a vibrant start.

Phil Gomes, the Edelman Digital stalwart, has started a group called “Ask Phil.” And rather than just answer questions, he produces videos. In fact, one of the first questions—Kaye Sweetser, from the University of Georgia—came in the form of a video asking about the real value of research in PR. (I’d bet my iPod that Kaye knows the answer, but figured a reply from a practitioner would make an impression on students.) Phil’s answer included an interview with Edelman US CEO Matt Harrington:

Find more videos like this on PROpenMic

A few of the other groups have emerged around geography—one for European issues, another for students for whom English is not their first language, another for UK members. Robert has posted an item addressing the global diversity of the membership, which shows about one-third of the sign-ups come from Europe. Additionally, there’s a faculty group and one for sharing PR syllabi and resources.

Students ask good questions, as evidenced by the discussion forum, which is host to queries like, “What do PR writers REALLY have to know about AP Style?” and “Maximizing PR when there really is no budget.” The events section is getting loaded up with conference and podcamp info, and nobody seems shy about uploading photos and videos.

As with all Ning networks, anybody who joins PR Open Mic gets a blog, although there hasn’t been much time for many members (other than Robert) to post to them.

I emailed Robert about his goals for PR Open Mic:

I’ve dreamed of a network that will connect public relations faculty and students from around the world.  One of the truly positive aspects of social media is the beneficial impact it may have on education. Connecting all of these people in one site will, I hope, create an environment of sharing and learning in a casual informal way. I actually believe that the site may, on its own, serve as a seminar or colloquium for colleges and universities.  Faculty can pool enough resources and, with the aid of streaming video or audio, create an entire class interviewing practitioners, faculty and students on PR practice around the world.  Beyond that, the site may serve as a connection point for finding internships and employment.  Realizing all of the students I’ve had who have already found jobs (or jobs found them) through their blogs, this aspect of the site offers great promise, too.

A lot of the usual suspects have joined from the PR social space—Elizabeth Albrycht, Jeremy Pepper, Constantin Basturea, Kami Huse, Paull Young, Eric Eggertson...the list goes on. I’m looking forward to interaction between these voices and those in the academic world.

Hat tip to Phil Gomes.

Friday, November 16, 2007

A nifty one-page handout

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote that I was reconsidering my position on handouts for my talks and presentations. Among those who read the post was Lisa Junker who works for ASAE and the Center, a joint venture of the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership. She emailed me and attached a PDF file of a template for a one-page handout. She wrote:

In our magazine, Associations Now, we recently published a short article that demonstrates one way to create single-sheet handouts that really pop and provide a lot of information in a small amount of space...the author, Jeffrey Cufaude, has a blog as well: http://jeffreycufaude.blogspot.com/.

Lisa gave me persmission to share the template here. I may give this a try for my next talk.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Revisiting paper handouts

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After today, I may have to rethink my position on handouts.

For years, I have resisted providing handouts of my presentations. The reasons:

• Delivering handouts weeks before the speaking engagement precludes making changes to the presentation, even if events or better examples make such a change a good idea.
• We’re supposed to be going green, right? I have a file cabinet full of presentation handouts from conferences. I’ve never looked at any of them. How many trees would have been spared if those handouts simply had never been printed?
• Somebody (I think it was Wilma Matthews) told me about research that proves people retain less from presentations when they have a handout of the presentation in front of them.
• I hate it when I have a point that’s going to be a big “ah ha” moment, but it’s spoiled by people who can’t resist reading ahead.

My concession has been uploading a PDF of my presentation and making it available for download after the talk is over. Then today came along.

I’m in Vegas (at this moment sitting at McCarran waiting for my flight home). I delivered this morning’s keynote at the annual Healthcare Internet Conference, then did a lunch talk at IABC’s Las Vegas chapter. My cell phone rang while I was speaking and the caller left a message. This is the gist of the message:

Hi. I’m attending a conference at the Venetian Hotel. I found the handout of your presentation and it blew me away. I’m at a different conference but I got permission from your conference to keep this copy I found. I’m with a non-profit and, as I read your presentation, I realized our marketing company is doing things the old way. We’re very highly rated but having trouble getting our story out there. Can you help?

I called him back and we’re going to have a longer call when we’re both in our offices next week.

I never considered handouts as marketing tools for people attending conferences other than the one where I’m presenting. That may be worth a few trees after all.