Deirdre Breakenridge

My trip to New Jersey was inspired by a bland class assignment for my public relations course at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan: job shadow a public relations professional for a day and write a five-page paper about the experience. Shortly after moderating #PRStudChat in January, I thought this could be a great opportunity to venture out of Michigan and connect with #PRStudChat co-founder and one of the greatest minds in the PR 2.0 movement, Deirdre Breakenridge. She was completely onboard with my proposal, going above and beyond my request: I got to spend not just a day just with Deirdre, but three.

The holiday season reminds me of the song from the Sound of Music, “My Favorite Things.” Although there are many items on that list, I wanted to share a few of my favorite (PR 2.0) things that I’ve either read in 2009, or relied upon to get me through the year. Of course, I would love to mention everyone and everything that I find valuable online and read all year long, but then this wouldn’t be a blog post…it would be a BIG blog book .

It’s the week before the PRSA International Conference in San Diego, California and I’m thrilled to see that there’s excitement and discussion around this year’s conference. I’m hoping to generate more conversations with the short video that I’ve prepared. Since I recorded the video a few new developments have surfaced. For example, my panel session has expanded. Kami Huyse, APR and Principal of My PR Pro, now joins myself and Author and Chief Interrupter of crayon, Joseph Jaffe and Author and Founder of Ariel Publicity and CyberPR, Ariel Hyatt to participate in a dynamic panel session that we hope will get people thinking and speaking their minds.

In November, I’ll be moderating a panel at the PRSA International Conference in San Diego with several noteworthy authors. I’m really excited to have Joseph Jaffe (Join the Conversation), Ariel Hyatt (Music Success in Nine Weeks) and Juliet Powell (33 Million People in the Room) joining me for the panel session. We will be discussing the topic PR 2.0: R(e)volution. As a Public Relations professional, I’ve found the word “Revolution” or “Revolutionary” to be over used. I guess it’s because of the many news releases I’ve seen over the years that have talked about, “Our revolutionary or groundbreaking brands, products and services that will change your business, industry and the world.” For me to place Public Relations in the same sentence as the word “Revolution” – this is no ordinary shift for the profession.

I thought the September 16th #PRStudChat was a dynamic, passionate and valuable discussion between PR pros, educators and students. I want to thank @valeriesimon for organizing and hosting the session and @briansolis for his insightful comments and his recent post Using Twitter to Connect PR Students, Educators and Professionals. I just reviewed the transcript and the amount of information shared was unbelievable. The opportunity to collaborate and share experiences is priceless. I hope that with each session we grow and learn together.

I read an excellent article in PRSA’s Public Relations Strategist Magazine (spring 2009 issue) called, “You Are Now Entering Web 3.0.” I was happy to see that the author of the article discussed Web 3.0 as the next advancements in Web, which is the Semantic Web. He talked about the language of search and how 3.0 would be incredibly intuitive, so that machines would be able to make connections to provide a much greater depth of information.

On Tuesday, January 9th I presented to the members of PRSA at their T3 Conference in New York City. With the flurry of brands rushing to the blogosphere to begin their Social Media programs, I thought it was appropriate to provide an internal view and approach to social networking by first, focusing on the employee and the challenge of culture.

I met Doug Simon last year at the PRSA T3 conference in New York City. Doug is President and CEO of D S Simon Productions, which has been serving public relations and marketing professionals since 1986 by delivering their messages through video. I thought it would be great to get Doug’s perspective on some of the questions that many communications professionals have regarding the use of video on the web and how to create video effectively to generate buzz in online communities. Here are a few questions that Doug was kind enough to answer.