A busy day spent packing for an overseas trip is quite an educational experience - not only have I questioned half the pieces of clothing I have purchased, but it really helps to find out what I need to survive. Should I pack a hair dryer? Do I really need 7 pairs of socks? Am I asking rhetorical questions because I've just watched the Sex & the City movie?
My procrastination of planning (how's that for an alliteration!) has culminated in packing this arvo before my flight out to Buenos Aires, where I will spend a solid three months fumbling around the continent with minimal Spanish. Thankfully, the first few weeks of my trip will be based in a language school with my good buddy Bella, hopefully easing some of the communication barriers I can currently foresee...I doubt that "Muchas gracias mono" is going to get me everywhere.
I will try my best to source out the Internet, I have a fear that I could be stuck with nothing, but that's just because I've been reading a lot of articles about the Lost Tribes. I do know the first 6 weeks will be in either Buenos Aires or Mar Del Plata.
A few of my twitter friends have asked if I'll tweeting - and the answer is 'si', I will be sending updates via my mobile phone. It's going to be my main communication channel for family & friends, as the 13 hour time difference might throw a few people off.
Next post: The struggles of communicating in Argentina.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
CSU PR Grads - Where are they now?
I toddled off to Bathurst last week to graduate in my beautiful gown and silly hat, and discovered that my short visit prevented me from finding out where everyone is at the moment. So here's a bit of an update of what people are up to at the moment, based on what I can remember and what Facebook tells me!
Hannah Dunn, Nea Pilgrim, Peri Muddle & Pip Goldsmith are taking over Burson-Marsteller, well at least their North Sydney Office. Hill & Knowlton still have the talented Jess Hughes on their staff, with Courtney Howard close by at the Department of Lands (sorry if I'm wrong Court, I'm sure it was a government organisation of some sort!).
Elisha Weber has made the trek down south to Melbourne, working in the crazy IT department in house. Someone else who caught the travel bug is Ali Hunter, who hung around in Bathurst to graduate,get her PRIA award & dashed off.
Archer Cox is missing in action, last seen wearing bright fluoro runners. Mitch Hume is still enjoying his picturesque views at Cannings, while Thom Landers continues to work hard at Bang PR.
Kate Leahy & Alex Mayhew are working at Cox Innall and Magnum PR respectively, and both have some attractive bio's up on their agency pages.
I left out almost half of our class, but my memory is a tad stretched and facebook stalking is very time consuming ;)Feel free to flick me an email if you guys have anymore info on where people are.
Hannah Dunn, Nea Pilgrim, Peri Muddle & Pip Goldsmith are taking over Burson-Marsteller, well at least their North Sydney Office. Hill & Knowlton still have the talented Jess Hughes on their staff, with Courtney Howard close by at the Department of Lands (sorry if I'm wrong Court, I'm sure it was a government organisation of some sort!).
Elisha Weber has made the trek down south to Melbourne, working in the crazy IT department in house. Someone else who caught the travel bug is Ali Hunter, who hung around in Bathurst to graduate,get her PRIA award & dashed off.
Archer Cox is missing in action, last seen wearing bright fluoro runners. Mitch Hume is still enjoying his picturesque views at Cannings, while Thom Landers continues to work hard at Bang PR.
Kate Leahy & Alex Mayhew are working at Cox Innall and Magnum PR respectively, and both have some attractive bio's up on their agency pages.
I left out almost half of our class, but my memory is a tad stretched and facebook stalking is very time consuming ;)Feel free to flick me an email if you guys have anymore info on where people are.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Strewth - Check out these little beauties!
In my usual meandering online, pottering about and dabbling with new sites, I've come across some pretty useful online tools. Some of these have been around for awhile, and I may be a little slow off the mark, but bear with me - you may not have seen all of them!
The first site is Dipity, who I discovered through a tweet from @bmoyle (Joffre Street Productions).
Dipity is "the easiest way to make and share interactive timelines about the people and things you care about".
I can see these being very useful for monitoring and evaluating online campaigns for both individuals and organisations - it's easy to submit a RSS feed from any site and track what they're posted up.
The next site which I've actually known about for awhile is SlideShare. Most recently, I've been looking at the slides of a presentation done by Seb Chan, a blogger for The Powerhouse Museum, fresh + new(er).
His presentation covered the important aspects of social media & government, it was a really great view - the images & included social media content really show some of the amazing work being done at the Powerhouse Museum.
Bloggerati Australia has been around for a couple years, as I checked out in the FAQ - but haven't only just come across it recently. It's hosted by the popular, Laurel Papworth, most famous for her appearance on the Today Show...I jest ;) It's got over 43,000 members, so definitely of worth to news chasers, public relations professionals & all those concerned with the media..
Finally, for those lacking the understandings of Aussie slang, go and follow AussieSlang on Twitter. Though they can be a bit on the rude side, I'll suggest you go and check out the link, rather than me chucking some of their updates on my polite blog ;)
The first site is Dipity, who I discovered through a tweet from @bmoyle (Joffre Street Productions).
Dipity is "the easiest way to make and share interactive timelines about the people and things you care about".
I can see these being very useful for monitoring and evaluating online campaigns for both individuals and organisations - it's easy to submit a RSS feed from any site and track what they're posted up.
The next site which I've actually known about for awhile is SlideShare. Most recently, I've been looking at the slides of a presentation done by Seb Chan, a blogger for The Powerhouse Museum, fresh + new(er).
His presentation covered the important aspects of social media & government, it was a really great view - the images & included social media content really show some of the amazing work being done at the Powerhouse Museum.
Bloggerati Australia has been around for a couple years, as I checked out in the FAQ - but haven't only just come across it recently. It's hosted by the popular, Laurel Papworth, most famous for her appearance on the Today Show...I jest ;) It's got over 43,000 members, so definitely of worth to news chasers, public relations professionals & all those concerned with the media..
Finally, for those lacking the understandings of Aussie slang, go and follow AussieSlang on Twitter. Though they can be a bit on the rude side, I'll suggest you go and check out the link, rather than me chucking some of their updates on my polite blog ;)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Holy Moly - Catholic Facebook!
The latest news this week was that the Pope & The Catholic Church are going to create a social network (like Facebook) as the central communication channel for World Youth Day. He'll also be sending inspiration holy text messages to those participating, as well as hosting digital prayers walls.
I guess this doesn't surprise me much - considering that social networks are really just specialised groups targeting people with specific interests - collating everything together just makes more sense. It's great to see this happening, especially within our beautiful country!
A few posts ago I mentioned that if social media is to become adopted by Australian organisations, more coverage is needed in traditional press. Well it seems to be heading that way, not just World Youth Day branching out online - the front page of AFR was a story on Woolworths planning some Facebook involvement.
I guess now it's just more discussion and research into specific ways Australian businesses can target online audiences.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
First China censoring, now Twitter!
After reading a tweet from Scott Drummond on whether twitter should be censored - I thought I'd just observe if it worked or not, rather than test the theory itself. (Side note - check out the new marketing magazine site - it's been recently launched and looking fabulous!).
So next thing I know - Lee Hopkins (yes two mentions in two blog posts - definitely on a roll now!) has written a rather surprised post on seeing text being censored on twitter.
Using the world's most reliable source (Wikipedia of course), I thought I do a bit of research on online censoring - which inevitably lead to China. First they blocked Google, then more recently the dispute with BBC.
Posted on this blog was the question:
If this is suppose to be a PR stunt, I can't see it being fairly effective. There's been no official notice on restoring connections to the BBC and other online sites, nor has their been any release on the matter - it's all been very restricted.
Interestingly, the lead story on ABC's Foreign Correspondent tonight is on "The Great Firewall of China". Perhaps that will provide more insight into the Chinese government's censorship campaigns.
On a separate & final note, while having a scan on this topic in the blogs, one of the more amusing posts was that "Free Tibet" flags were being made in China!
So next thing I know - Lee Hopkins (yes two mentions in two blog posts - definitely on a roll now!) has written a rather surprised post on seeing text being censored on twitter.
Using the world's most reliable source (Wikipedia of course), I thought I do a bit of research on online censoring - which inevitably lead to China. First they blocked Google, then more recently the dispute with BBC.
Posted on this blog was the question:
So, is this a genuine loosening of web censorship in China or just a temporary PR move in the run up to the Olympics?
If this is suppose to be a PR stunt, I can't see it being fairly effective. There's been no official notice on restoring connections to the BBC and other online sites, nor has their been any release on the matter - it's all been very restricted.
Interestingly, the lead story on ABC's Foreign Correspondent tonight is on "The Great Firewall of China". Perhaps that will provide more insight into the Chinese government's censorship campaigns.
On a separate & final note, while having a scan on this topic in the blogs, one of the more amusing posts was that "Free Tibet" flags were being made in China!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Marketing social media through traditional press?
I might be a little slow off the mark in blogging about this topic since it's been discussed into depth - but I thought I might provide a little insight into the topic of social media integration in Australian businesses.
Lee Hopkin's post of "Why Don't Australian Companies Get It?" raises some important points of opinion on why it hasn't been adopted within the business world - a question on ROI for most executive management teams.
So if an Australian business is keen to experiment with new social media, just googling it doesn't really help when this is the result of (searching social media services Australia (Have a look at the link provided - so much for SEO!). I am not silly enough to think that a google search is to blame for this - but where are companies getting their information from?
If public relations agencies aren't up to speed or their in-house communications team isn't aware - how are companies going to change if the people leading the pack aren't even skilled up? Then I guess this takes us along the path of educational sessions/programs - not that PRIA is to blame for the Australian industry to catch up, but from my understanding, they only starting hosting seminars on social media this year.
Maybe there's a market out there for social media "experts" or "advisors" to market themselves for Australian businesses through traditional media channels?
Lee Hopkin's post of "Why Don't Australian Companies Get It?" raises some important points of opinion on why it hasn't been adopted within the business world - a question on ROI for most executive management teams.
So if an Australian business is keen to experiment with new social media, just googling it doesn't really help when this is the result of (searching social media services Australia (Have a look at the link provided - so much for SEO!). I am not silly enough to think that a google search is to blame for this - but where are companies getting their information from?
If public relations agencies aren't up to speed or their in-house communications team isn't aware - how are companies going to change if the people leading the pack aren't even skilled up? Then I guess this takes us along the path of educational sessions/programs - not that PRIA is to blame for the Australian industry to catch up, but from my understanding, they only starting hosting seminars on social media this year.
Maybe there's a market out there for social media "experts" or "advisors" to market themselves for Australian businesses through traditional media channels?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
PROpenMic
I've recently joined PROpenMic.
The fun (or perhaps terrifying) part of social media is becoming part of the online community - participating and learning through experience, rather than theoretical babble. The building of a community and those to engage in conversations with involves more than just the odd few comments - it's tracking whats happening in the blogosphere. In this light, it's great to become part of a new network that is growing more and more everyday.
Another wonderful thing about this site is all the connections I'm making with public relations professionals and students from around the world. The opportunity to not only discuss things in the forums - but to add more friends on twitter is great - especially for someone that is relatively new to the whole online scene.
Even Dr James E. Grunig is a member - someone who we referenced and discussed in university has joined - clearly a sign for new students to jump on the bandwagon and find a funky profile picture.
The fun (or perhaps terrifying) part of social media is becoming part of the online community - participating and learning through experience, rather than theoretical babble. The building of a community and those to engage in conversations with involves more than just the odd few comments - it's tracking whats happening in the blogosphere. In this light, it's great to become part of a new network that is growing more and more everyday.
Another wonderful thing about this site is all the connections I'm making with public relations professionals and students from around the world. The opportunity to not only discuss things in the forums - but to add more friends on twitter is great - especially for someone that is relatively new to the whole online scene.
Even Dr James E. Grunig is a member - someone who we referenced and discussed in university has joined - clearly a sign for new students to jump on the bandwagon and find a funky profile picture.
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