global discussion. local perspectives.
If, like me, your head is spinning with the constant conversation, your ears vibrating with the latest buzz and your hands weary from punching keys on the latest digital toys, then perhaps you would do me the kindness of joining me – perhaps under the shade of a virtual tree – for a bit of thinking about where we’ve got to. I’ve been pondering quite a bit these last few weeks, particularly as Twitter has...
Are we finally seeing, moment by moment, a public relations approach unfold…or is it only a disastrous and desperate exercise in spin? You will remember that years ago (not as many as we would hope…) the skies of Baghdad poured tons and tons of bombs. Later on, when the fighting went house to house, those same skies poured leaflets encouraging Iraquis to support allied forces. Subsequently, local newspapers were flooded by articles, expensively prepared by...
Many thanks to Judy Gombita for recently sharing the blogpost “Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries“. As I was perusing the photos, it struck me that these libraries make a profound statement about how we value books, knowledge and learning. These rooms are temples and cathedrals. As information has multiplied in recent decades and access to it opened up, we are losing that sacred aspect to knowledge, and the architecture is disappearing with it. I...
The long-awaited Draft King III Report and its Principles have been made public by the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IOD). Of particular interest to Public Relations/ Corporate Communication is Chapter 8: ‘Managing Stakeholder Relationships’.
The Rocky Mountain News (Denver CO, USA) will appear for the last time today, just short of its 150th birthday. And the staff has been chronicling the closure in real time through social media. One of the paper’s official blogs discusses it. Staff members have been posting their feelings, pictures, etc. on Facebook. There is something extremely ironic and poetic about this, especially given the brutality of the announcement. Although rumours have been swirling for...
In agreement with the Diplomatic Institute of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FERPI -the Italian Federation of Public Relations- is holding in the English language, on March 3,4,5,and 6 in Rome a four session workshop on Public Diplomacy for 25 mid career Italian diplomats according to this program. Tutors of the course will be Toni Muzi Falconi and Fabio Ventoruzzo, both representing Ferpi. Four guest lecturers have agreed to participate: Dejan Vercic, Mindi Kasiga,...
Rem Koolhaas, the reputed Dutch architect and professor at Harvard has recently launched a new ‘buzz word’: that of generic architecture. Just as generic pharma simply deliver the functionality of the base-molecule, generic architecture rediscovers its basic function and common sense, overwhelmed in recent years by the many extravaganzas and by the pressures of competition. Two association of ideas here: a) you will possibly remember the many posts in this blog dedicated to the ‘generic...
Who has the right to criticise in public relations? This seems a pertinent question in the light of the development of PR in social media where many lessons can be learned, and success or failure is often the subject of comment and debate, normally in the immediate public forum of social media itself. Is it only the originators of a social media PR campaign who have the right to judge its success? After all, they...
Quanno ce vò, ce vò (pronounced: cannocievò, cievò). So goes an old roman expression indicating that when something is so, it is so… no matter what, no buts or ifs… In a particular period in which my Country (Italy) and its private, public and social elites are undergoing a sustained (and increasingly intolerable) intellectual deterioration with dire consequences on the well being of its citizens, if and when something positive does come up, it is...
“A goal is a dream with a deadline” Recently I was in a meeting where this quote was featured on a wall and I quite liked it, with my first reflections related to personal and professional goals. But soon the aptness of the quote had my thoughts turning to an exceptional person in my life, my 15-year-old niece, Sarah D. You see this niece of mine has a really big goal (and dream) in mind,...