Co-Blogger Kami Interviewed for Podcast

As you may have heard, our own PRSA board member Kami Watson-Huyse, APR, was instrumental in integrating social media into the PRSA international conference last week. She and Eric Schwartzman gathered up a team of heavy hitters to live blog the event, post photos, record videos and produce podcasts during the conference. It was a pretty impressive feat. If you couldn’t attend the conference, you can still get a taste of it at the conference blog.

What I am really excited about, though, is the series of interviews conducted at the event that Eric will be releasing. I’m sure you can find them somewhere on the conference web site. But I know you can hear them through Eric’s On the Record Online podcast (which is a good one to stay subscribed to).

The first interview he released is of Kami to boot. And it is a really good interview. (Yes, Kami is my friend, but I really mean it.) Among other things, she talks about the importance of using social media as a tactic in ways that tie it to the overall goals of the program.

So click over there now and listen!

Rock star bloggers and bylaw amendments

By David Snowden, Assembly Delegate for PRSA San Antonio (and former chapter president), October 20, 2007

At today’s assembly, I had the honor of sitting next my fellow San Antonio chapter delegate and a social media rock star – Kami Watson-Huyse, APR. While she was busy “tweatering” with her motley crew of hot shot blogger friends, I tried to figure out the real issue behind Bylaw Amendment #1, which would have changed the way PRSA national board positions are determined.

Today, the majority of the positions are aligned with various regional districts. The proposal would have done away with the district representation and turned the majority of the board positions into “at large” positions. There was actually a lot of debate on the issue. Some say the new model will allow for a greater pool of talent to be considered. And others, well, I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to say, but there was a lot of debate on the issue.

Here’s what it looks like to me… It looks like the contingent who’s advocating for the new bylaw really wants to run the PRSA national board like a corporation with all directors working on behalf of all members. The old model is almost like a form of representative government where most of the board members are there to first represent the interests of their districts, and second to work on behalf of the entire membership. Is one model really that much better than the other? I don’t know. But, to tell you the truth, I like the idea of having a representative from my district on the board. And since the bylaw amendment didn’t pass, I guess that’s how it will be in until next year when this issue comes up again.

Of course, there were lots of other issues discussed. Military PR practitioners were honored and so were the PRSSA board of directors, but the most informative time for me was getting rock star blogging advice like:
• “You can’t hire a 20-year-old to run your social networking program just because he knows how to navigate Second Life.”
• “Big companies should start their social networking programs by testing the waters with small projects.”
• “The biggest challenge for big companies wanting to participate in the social networking space is overcoming the internal culture that often wants to control the messages.”

The list goes on and on… thanks Kami.

Lesson Five: Online Social Networks – A Review

Lesson Five Review: Next Installment of Learn About Social Media from Your Desk

Here’s a review of what we’ve covered to date about online social networks.

Social Networks: Lesson 5 in Learning About Social Media from Your Desk (Sunday, August 05, 2007)

Data on Social Networks (Wednesday, August 08, 2007)

ABCs of Facebook (Sunday, August 26, 2007)

Business Use of Online Social Networks (Wednesday, September 05, 2007)

Some Social Networks Are Bad for Your Reputation (Tuesday, September 11, 2007)

A Social Network Just for Communicators: MyRagan.com (Monday, September 17, 2007)

If you’re fairly new to this blog, let me explain that I started this series of “lessons” about tools of social media in January. I had planned on doing a different subject each month. But most subjects simply required more time. Below are links to the summarizing posts for each topic:

• January: Exploring Newsfeeds and Webfeeds (RSS)
• February-March: Getting Acquainted with the Blogs
• April-May: The World of Podcasting
• June-July: Using Delicious (I forgot to do a summary post for this topic)
• August-September: Online Social Networks (this post)