PR meets the WWW / Constantin Basturea’s weblog

Faith and Confidence, by William C. Beall of Washington Daily News, 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Photography | More photos from Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs exhibition

It’s official (almost): we’re starting to organize Global PR Blog Week 3.0.

It’s an event that will present the best articles, interviews, debates, case studies, and essays on how social media continues to change the Public Relations and Communications theory and practice, its relationships with other disciplines, and our roles as practitioners, students, and teachers.

It will run –like the other two previous editions– for one week.

It will happen online, at globalprblogweek.com.

It’s going to be a free event.

It will continue to be a community-supported, volunteers-driven, unaffiliated event. At least two prestigious research organizations will support the event, and any (non-financial) support that will raise the industry’s participation to it will be welcome.

It will encourage new voices and fresh perspectives, it will value experience and real-world case studies, and it will have (I hope) a robust international participation.

What’s new this year:

• 2 or 3 keynote/invited contributions
• digg-style voting mechanism to choose the top 3 entries
• live events (example: a daily live BlogTalk Radio show)
• a daily event in Second Life
• video, in addition to podcasting
• daily summaries of the most discussed topics
• real-time updates for the number/titles/authors of entries submitted for each category

Also, we’re going to have:

• a more effective communication about the rules
• clear guidelines for accepting/rejecting the entries
• strict enforcement of deadlines for submitting entries.

Now, before discussing more about the nitty-gritty of the event, I’d like to ask you:

How do you see this event?
What do you expect from it?
What would you like to read/ see/ listen to?
What it will make it most valuable for you, and for the industry?

Please share –via comments, blog posts, or email– any ideas or suggestions on how to make this event a great one.

Thank you. We’re going to have a blast :)

Mike Driehorst (via Twitter):

We all need acceptance and attention. Why else blog?

• Name: Christin Eubanks
• College: Auburn University, 2007
• Social media activities: blog (see also), flickr, twitter, portfolio
• Highest recommendations: from her professor, Robert French
• Smart: absolutely
• Passionate: you bet
• Sense of humor: healthy (just ask the Aussie Boy)

Welcome to Converseon, Christi!

Read more:

• Christi’s announcement
• Our CEO, Rob Key, welcomes Christi
• A bogan’s tale
• (PR) Bloggers in NY (or: how we met in real life)

Who: You, gentle reader

What: Vote for a project that could get funded by American Express’s Members Project to plant 1 million trees and to use Second Life to educate people about environment and what we can do to preserve it. Or - just go to vote for any project you find worthy of your support; American Express is donating $1 for each member who is registering to vote.

Where: At http://www.membersproject.com/Environment_Wildlife/991 (or look for the project titled “The Virtual Forest Project. 1 million trees. Easy.” on MembersProjects.com)

When: Until Sunday, July 15

Why: Because…

• you care about environment
• it’s a cool idea
• it brings together real life and Second Life in a meaningful way
• it’s the only AmEx MembersProject program that is using social media

Background & disclosure: American Express’s Members Project is an initiative that will allocate between 1 and 5 million dolars to 5 projects that were suggested and voted by AmEx cardholders. Plant-It 2020, a non-profit organization, has been selected as the ‘fulfiling organizations’ for one of the top 50 projects. The project, called The Virtual Forest, is linking Second Life and real life in a simple way: for every (virtual) tree planted in SL, a tree is planted in the real world to combat deforestation. The project is already up and running in SL; my company, Converseon, has built the Second Chance Trees island; the funds are used by Plant-It 2020, our partner, to plant the trees in RL.

More information:

• My friend and colleague Paull Young has an in-depth post about the project and our approach on his blog and on our corporate blog
• Watch our machinima video on YouTube to learn more about the project
• Visit the Second Chance Trees Island (SLurl)
• Take a look at the photos took on our island
• Visit the project’s website.

Thank you.

Hey, the headline says it all! :)

I’m really happy to announce that, starting today, Paull Young is joining Converseon as Senior Account Executive, and that we’ll work together to create social media strategies for our clients (here’s the official press release, including an audio message from Paull).

Paull needs no introduction. He built a unique profile for himself in the PR blogosphere, as a blogger and director of podcasting for Forward, and as a leader for the anti-astroturfing campaign. And, of course, he’s that one lucky guy who traveled around the world to meet in “meat space” the friends made on the internet :)

Welcome aboard, mate! It’s a thrill to be your colleague!

Update: Here’s Paull’s entry on the announcement.

• My first del.icio.us bookmark: The future of Weblogging /The Register (posted on April 19, 2004)
• My 5000th bookmark: a comment made by Matt Cutts on how Google will treat paid links, in the context of the pay-per-post blogging brouhaha.

My, how times have changed.