Map of the path not taken

I came of age before Gary Gygax's (PBUH) Dungeons & Dragons fell onto my radar. And I escaped the fad unscathed.

My first and only experience with D&D was in intelligence school (I needed remedial, you see) in the Navy, where the Dungeon Master and I rapidly came to collision ("Man, I don't need no 10-sided dice to decide if the fuckin' dwarf dies, just kill him"). I was soon booted from the Dungeon, but the DM was soon booted from the Navy on morals charges, so I call it even.

Since then, I have been utterly sure that I was never infected by the D&D virus. But I can see from the map below... and I have traveled a good bit of it... that I must be carrying antibodies.

Technorati : dungeons and dragons, geekdom, maps

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:39pm in Career management, Cartography, History, Humor | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wacky CNN bosses fire producer for blogging

Chez Pazienza is a writer, an award-winning television news producer
and the creative voice behind Deus Ex Malcontent.

During his somewhat illustrious and certainly notorious 16 years in TV
news, he's produced and managed daily content for WSVN and WTVJ in
Miami, KCBS, KNBC and KCAL in Los Angeles, and MSNBC and CNN in New
York. He has two L.A.-area Emmys to his name as well as a Golden Mic,
none of which mitigates the fact that he's an irrepressible wise-ass
who doesn't mind being an occasional nuisance to authority figures.

Unemployed, too.

Not for long, I bet.

Technorati : chez pazienza, cnn, fired for blogging

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:33pm in Bizarre but Expected, Career management, Is Tedious in the House?, Journalism | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

More reasons to own your identity

From Stuart Bruce comes the chilling news that your boss might own your Facebook profile... in some instances. He cites Pinsent-Mason's Out-Law blog (which I am glad to have discovered).

Here's a snip:

"Employers could have grounds to demand ownership of employees' social networking profiles, such as those generated on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo, according to a leading intellectual property lawyer.

The news comes in the wake of a court ruling which forced a journalist to hand over the contents of his contacts list to his former employer after he left that company.

Employers could insist on gaining ownership of some social networking content, though only in limited circumstances, according to IP law expert Catrin Turner of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM.

"If a social networking site is used to hold any information which relates to your employment, if that information is prepared in the course of your employment you are dealing with company property," said Turner.

The profile, or the elements of it that are work related, would belong to the employer despite the fact that it was created and is hosted in a virtual environment primarily designed for personal interaction."

About a year and a half ago, I wrote Don't mix your identity with your employer's. Here's a snip:

• "Own your books and subscriptions. If you use books and trade journals as you should, you know these are the intellectual ballast for your work and career. Make them your own. When you are at professional conferences, buy your own books and manuals.
• Own your professional network. Enlightened companies recognize the value of professional networks and associations and often offer to spring for memberships. Just make sure it's your network, not theirs. IABC, for example, openly states that memberships are personal, even if paid for by the employer. Insist on it.
• Own your side of the game. Were I going back into corporate life, I'd tell my employer that a) I have a blog that I intend to continue and that is equipped with my CV and personal contact information and b) my LinkedIn profile will continue to say I am seeking inquiries about opportunities."

Neville Hobson, Tom Foremski and Mitch Ratcliffe all had wise things to say on the subject then, but perhaps it's time for PR bloggers to revisit the issue.

Some questions begging for answers:

• Are blogs written by employed bloggers owned in any way by the employer if the blogger is writing about the profession? If a Facebook profile can be the employer's property, can't a blog (after all, there's little intrinsic difference?)
• And what about Twitter networks? And tweets produced at work?
• LinkedIn networks?`

Others?

Technorati : employee rights, facebook, identity, intellectual property, personal identity, social networks

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:36pm in Career management, Law | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Lee Hopkins is not a dog... this way, folks, to the Egress

Yesterday, in show #2 of the Better Desirable Roasted Communications Café Podcast, Lee Hopkins and I talked about virtual project teams . I believe smart independent communicators, meeting each other in the PR/communication Oort cloud, will soon form temporary, virtual "agencies" to serve clients.

We've seen a bit of this already. Neville Hobson and Fredrik Wackå serve a client together, and Hugh McLeod and David Parmet work together on both English Cut and Stormhoek.

Lee, who describes himself as "one of Australia's leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment," a claim I have chosen not to examine closely, rightly points out an obvious issue, one raised in the old New Yorker cartoon: on the Internet, no one knows you are a dog. Lee notes:

"With an example of the requirement to launch a multi-country PR or marcom campaign, Allan correctly suggests that two consultants in different parts of the world, say, Adelaide and Copenhagen, may well know more about each other and be of more value to a campaign than two senior executives from a global PR company with offices in Sydney and Copenhagen.

"The obvious leap is that should that campaign require (from a European base) an Australian element, a North American element, a Canadian element, inter alia, then the Euro-based PR consultant would be able to tap into the local expertise of people he/she already knows and has built a relationship with, rather than the faceless executives of a global firm.

"However, having slept on the idea, I can see a ‘challenge’.

"Despite the ‘trust’ relationship that might be built up between two online-corresponding consultants, let us not forget that on the internet no one need know that you’re a dog. I can create any persona I like, and if I creatively or schizophrenically hold ‘true’ to that persona, over time I will cement that personality into the hearts and minds of others who repeatedly correspond with me.

"So too with Allan’s virtual global PR team comprising of a free-moving, project-based, fast-evolving and fast-dissolving amalgamation of consultants. Whilst the executives from the global PR firm may not know each other, they do have the ‘trust’ base of being employed by the same company, with hopefully the same values and measures for success, and disciplinary measures for failure."

I don't think any responsible consultant would entrust a client to a colleague who is only an online correspondent. But let's say Lee wanted to hire me to handle some work for him here in Copenhagen -- would we have to meet? Well, no, because much of the PR/communication Oort cloud is connected through past experience, work, personal knowledge, professional credentials. In this case, I could suggest to Lee: a) "A.B." a  highly-credentialed IABC colleague, whom we both know, sent me to Berlin to do focus groups and seemed satisfied, b) "C.D.", another highly-credentialed IABC colleague, and I have worked together, on several association tasks c) "E.F.", another IABC leader, might be worth asking.

(Of course, at this point, it can become maddeningly difficult to put the nail in the quicksilver. A.B. and C.D. could truthfully say they've "known" me 13 years... but would have to confess, on cross-examination, that they've been in the same room with me.... probably not more than 18 hours in 13 years. And there are IABC leaders who shudder at the thought of 18 hours in a room with me. But let's leave that, and move on.)

Lee's point, of course, is do your due diligence. I believe that is fairly easy to do in the blogosphere, and more easily than in an international agency, for a couple of reasons. First, I think it's hard, though certainly not impossible, to fake it in the blogosphere. Stru***tte tried, did a pretty good job at the outset, but was outed in less than a week. Second, most of the PR/communication cloud has been around a while. Due diligence is easy enough. Many of the people I read are IABC and PRSA leaders (past and present), award winners (easily checked), or show up at conferences where, in some face time, you get a sense of them.

Frankly, after the PR agency scandals we've been seeing? I'll take that any day over agencies "hopefully with the same values and measures for success, and disciplinary measures for failure."

Technorati Tags: Allan Jenkins, Better Desirable Roasted Communications Cafe, communication ethics, Lee Hopkins, Tag 10, virtual teams

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 04:01pm in Career management, Communication, Management | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4)

Social media & PR education

I've signed on again to be a contributor to the Marcom blog, the blog of Robert French, his PR students at Auburn University and a handful of lucky contributors. It's a terrific initiative that must be getting Robert some serious credit at the Bank of Karma.

Earlier this week, Robert threw out a few questions to the contributor team, asking us to consider them. Like many pretty good questions, they are simple to ask, harder to answer. Like trying to hold down a drop of mercury.

Here's my take. I hope readers -- professional communicators or no -- will comment with their angle.

(a) Do you believe college PR students reading and blogging about PR practices is a viable and valuable endeavor?

Two parts to this question: 1) reading about PR practices and 2) blogging about them.

On the first part: I'd call it required. Not only for students, but for every communicator. And not only blogs -- podcasts, books, seminars, conferences. Can anyone ever know enough about his or her profession or craft?

Blogs are a valuable new source of new thinking. I used to have to go to conferences, at great expense, to hear what my international colleagues were thinking. Now, many of them blog. My advice to every communicator: take advantage of that.

The second part of the question: do students need to blog about PR practices? It's not essential, but how can it hurt?

New PR practitioners need to master, and I mean master, many skills to succeed. Skillful writing. Succinct, moving storytelling. Intelligent pitching.  Having a "nose for news".

Those skills are not widely doled out,  I am sorry to say, judging from the pitches I get. Running a blog demands them all.  Running a blog can only make you better.

(b) What are the key concepts/lessons that should be included in such an exercise?

By following the leading PR/communication blogs, all communicators are exposed to fairly interesting debate about the future of the communication profession or, more correctly, how technology, media consumption habits, politics, shop-floor attitudes, and street attitudes will affect the future of our profession.

Now, some of the ideas flying around -- "the press release is dead" -- seem silly to me. But it's an idea floated by some serious people, and blogs are where it's being discussed.

And, best practices in corporate blogging are, surprise, talked about most on blogs.

(c) How might a future employer react to a student's PR blogging efforts?

In 2006? Positively for the lucky few. Indifferently for the rest. In 2008?  "You don't have a blog? You got nothing to say, or what? We'll get back to you, don't call us."

(d) What tactics by the students will best exhibit PR knowledge through their blogging efforts?

It loops back to (a).  No one will fault students for not yet being masters of PR. But now's a good time to demonstrate mastery of the underlying skills. Tell me a good story, a relevant story. And tell it well.

That's the take from Copenhagen.

Technorati Tags: PRedu, Auburn University, marcomblog, marcom blog

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:46am in Blogging, Business, Career management, Communication, Communication Skills, MarComBlog | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

Don't mix your identity with your employer's

Neville Hobson, Tom Foremski and Mitch Ratcliffe are dispensing advice you should run, not walk, to heed immediately if you work in an organization.

The message: Guard your identity and don't mix it up with your company's identity. Otherwise, you risk being "disappeared" if you leave your job or get fired.

For example:

• Carry and use your own cell phone/number for business. If you rely on a corporate cell phone, you'll just be a disconnected number when you leave.

• (to that I would add: always give the cell phone number, not your desk number, to contacts -- it won't be your desk one day)

• Carry and use your own email address at work. I believe this one is a harder nut to crack... employers want clients to know you work @acmeexplosives.com. Still, when I was an employer, I let employees put personal email addresses on their business cards, in addition to their work email -- it can't hurt to ask. Naturally, you should never rely on your corporate email address for anything other than corporate email.

• Create a blog and establish your personal presence in the new marketplace. Required... if only because the blogless professional indicates he/she has nothing to say.

I've just scraped the surface of these three posts, so go read them all.

I have some additional rules:

• Own your books and subscriptions. If you use  books and trade journals as you should, you know these are the intellectual ballast for your work and career. Make them your own. When you are at professional conferences, buy your own books and manuals.
• Own your professional network. Enlightened companies recognize the value of professional networks and associations and often offer to spring for memberships. Just make sure it's your network, not theirs. IABC, for example, openly states that memberships are personal, even if paid for by the employer. Insist on it.
• Own your side of the game. Were I going back into corporate life, I'd tell my employer that a) I have a blog that I intend to continue and that is equipped with my CV and personal contact information and b) my LinkedIn profile will continue to say I am seeking inquiries about opportunities.

Hat tip to Neville.

Technorati Tags: employment, career management, brand of you

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:35pm in Career management | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6) | TrackBack (2)