How do I ‘black pr’? Let me count the ways…At least 13. 150 professionals from 7 european countries meet in Vilnius (Lithuania) today to compare notes.

Many will remember Elizabeth Browning’s lovely poem…
I am now writing from a Hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania where I arrived last night.
Richard Edelman would say it is now 6 am.. and in a few hours 150 public relations professionals and scholars from at least seven different countries (Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Latvia, and of course Italy…) will be meeting to compare notes on black pr.
When I arrived last night and asked my young and excellent friend Andrius Kasparavičius -host volunteer from the organizing Lithuanian Public Relations Association- why this specific (courageous and thorny..) issue was selected, he cautiously replied that ‘there is lot of talk about this so we thought it would be good to just compare notes’.
But when I asked the same question an hour later to three young colleagues from Belarus, the reply I received was less cautious: ‘There is an invasion of black pr practices from the east (read Russia….) and we must do something about it before it kills our profession’. Interesting!
I will be taking notes and eventually posting.
But in the meantime you can look at the final pr-formos-2007-program-eng.pdf and, if interested, at the toni’s presentation I am presenting, which attempts to correlate 13 different black pr practices in Italy (or anywhere else..of course) with the personal/ organizational influence model and the issue that pr is all about relationships.
Let me know what you think….and, if you agree, let’s open a conversation on practices in other parts of the world and their correlation with the personal influence model and relationships…