6 posts tagged “pr”

I have been working furiously over the last couple of weeks to get a new extranet online for IPREX, the international group of public relations and communications firms my company belongs to.

The mission was to see if we could get an extranet built in under a month, at very low cost, with some highly specific functions. Using pre-existing online web tools was theonly way we could have accomplished these goals.

Some of the tools we ended up using:

Ning: Provided the back-end framework.  I initially went with SquareSpace, which is much more customizable than Ning and is what we are now using for our public-facing site, but it did not have enough built in community functionality to make things work the way we wanted as fast as we wanted. The recent addition of Ning Apps made adding our Huddle sites far easier. However, Ning's lack of integrated document management is making implementing a document library FAR more difficult than it should be (Ning provides 20GB of space and an image and video library, but nothing for documents outside of adding 3rd party apps, or attaching documents to individual notes.). I may revisit SquareSpace for version 2.0 of the site though - It’s a great environment for rapid development.

Huddle: This was our pre-existing site used for permissions-controlled document storage and discussions. It can be integrated into Ning via the Ning Apps extensions. Huddle is a very powerful tool and the permissions settings are critical for some of our needs - however I am fearful that it will be too complex for some IPREX professional to want to use on a regular basis.  I am looking for a simpler solution for everyday use and whant to stick with Huddle only for the things that require it (various committee, project, and executive document libraries, etc.).  If Ning just had an integrated document library, I would be a happy (and far less sleep-deprived) guy!

Google Docs: Used for a minimal-permissions set of documents that benefit from greater ease of use for end-users.  It's my current, less-than-perfect, interim documents "semi-solution". The ease of sharing documents in folders is heavily countered by the fact that shared folders can still only have documents and other folders created in them by users with full permissions on the Google Docs workspace (and that’s a separate login from Ning, making it FAR less than ideal.)

Google Spreadsheets: Google spreadsheets, and their integrated forms tool, was a life-saver.  We had a requirement to have users input data in for Awards (and other data types). That data then needed to automatically populate a database and the most recent five entries needed to be displayed on the home dashboard. I created a Google spreadsheet form to handle data input and linked to the form from a Ning tab (I could have also embedded it on a Ning page). It made a really elegant database solution...for free!  I figured I'd then populate the last five entries on the Ning page via an RSS widget. That lead me to the most frustrating 8-10 hours of work I have had in a long time. Google provides a really easy way to publish spreadsheet data to an RSS feed. Unfortunately, the feed it produces is a completely malformed bunch of crap that is unusable by any RSS widget or feed reader on the planet (at least with my data).  Nothing could make it work right…no matter what I tried…until I finally used…Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo! Pipes: Thank god for Pipes!!! By switching Google Spreadsheets to publish the data as a CSV feed (Nice job on the multiple formats Google. At least you provided away to work around the crap RSS feed), I could then get properly formatted CSV data into Pipes and use the magic of Pipes scripting to output a useable RSS feed. Pipes is a godsend and Yahoo! Should be thanked for it daily. Thanks Yahoo!!

WidgetBox: I needed some custom tabbed RSS widgets, and WidgetBox, as per usual, made quick work of the task, an inexpensive pro-account gets rid of all the ads and produces rock solid widgets. I must also compliment Ning here again. They make Widget embedding really easy.  Thanks Ning! (WidgetBox also works really well in Facebook, MySpace, etc. too. Thanks WidgetBox!)

TwitterTracker: A great embeddable app, that began life as a Wordpress plug-in (I breifly concidered trying to do the whole site in Wordpress...I seriously think it could be done...but a challenge like that is not made for a time-line like ours) that we are using for tracking twitter mentions on-site. It highly customizable and works well in a group setting like ours

NewsShare: A great way to share interesting websites with our members. It even allows ongoing commenting. It's built by SlinkSet on top of Posterous...so ya know it's cool!

Google Calendar: We are using the Ning events system to allow individual users to set up events, but we also needed a global IPREX calendar of events. Google calendar provided an very good solution, with an embedded widget providing up-to-date info on global events to our members. A belated thanks Google!

For the past two days ads have been popping up all of the interwebs, on TV and (reportedly) in print for some new series called Scarlet.  Check out the website and trailer. The Web site is very high quality, the ads are on expensive sites (Yahoo, Gizmodo, others), the video is of good production quality and shows up in the usual places, and they list decent actors (Natassia Malthe) and a good director (David Nutter).

Yet the voiceover and actual shots are super cheesey and over the top, it lacks most of the critical details (no network listed), and the trailer scenes seem to make no sense at all (not in a mysterious way - just in a thrown togather randomly way).

It is so obviously a fake or spoof that I have to assume it's a viral ad for something.  What amazes me is that no one has leaked what it's for.  Despite it's cheese factor, I think it;s going to work.  I can't wait to find out who's behind it and whether a (seemingly) large amount of cash and a good lid on leaks can generate guaranteed buzz. I think it can...

Wikiscanner has been getting a ton of attention lately. With articles cropping up all over the place detailing editing "abuses" by corporations, the government and PR firms.  When you look over these articles or, perish the thought, actually use wikiscanner yourself, you end up finding that abuse is fairly rare.  Most cases of changing articles are factual in nature.

However, there seems to be a very vocal group of folks who think that any change in wikipedia information by a corporations/government agency or a public relations firm is taboo.

I think this is crazy! 

Wikipedia is about creating the most expansive base of factual knowledge possible.  The plain fact is that, often times the people with the most depth of knowledge on a topic are people who work at - or work for - the entity that the facts describe.

If you want to exclude information about the CIA just because it comes from a CIA employee you will possibly exclude the most accurate and timely information.  The same is true about a General Motors product being described by a GM employee, or a James Blunt entry being edited by James Blunt's PR agency.

I have no problem with full disclosure.  Editors should let folks know their background in their profile.  And this is especially true if they have a connection to the topics they are editing. And people should not be entering opinion, or "edited backstory" about their corporation/agency/clients.  But facts should not be excluded from them based on thier emplyer.  In reality, facts should be demanded of them.

To decry editing from classes of people that may have usful information to add should be considered antithetical to wikipedia's mission. To claim otherwise is to lock up knowlege based purely on ad hominem grounds.  And that's a ridiculous waste.

Earlier this morning I was thinking about the "Digg Riot" that happened last night. Digg executives received a cease and desist letter from lawyers from AACS (the HD-DVD DRM encryption folks) asking Digg to remove items refencing decryption keys.  And, fearing they would be sued out of existence, Digg complied. The reaction to Digg removing the initial messages and then removing additional messages critical of the initial deletion was swift and massive, flooding Digg's front page with user promoted items containing the encryption keys and trashing Digg's decision.

At first I was fascinated by how quickly the fortunes of a popular social media site were shifted through action taken by the very people that made up its social group.  That in itself would have been fodder for me declaiming on and on for a good week.  But, what really struck me was the way Digg founder Kevin Rose reacted the the riot:

"We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code," he wrote. "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

It was a brilliant PR move (at least as of 2:30am the next day). It could not have been planned better (hmmmmm...?).

Think about it...

• Digg relies solely on its user's to promote items appearing elsewhere on the web.  Its business model is 100% reliant on its user's actions. If enough of its users act in concert (and DRM seems enough to initiate such mass action) they can cause Digg to display whatever they want.
• Digg can never truly eliminate the publication of AACS keys, because users can keep adding them.  Digg can only react after the fact. 
• Digg cannot control the masses flooding the site with anti-Digg items, if the masses are angry enough to do it. The Digg community could keep this up as long as they wanted to.  There was no way they could win against a backlash and still keep a profitable company going.
• There was nothing worse the AACS lawyers could do to their business then what the Digg community itself could do.

But, with Kevin Rose's post the situation clears up considerably...

• Digg looks very responsive to their users.  Responsive to the point of seemingly (maybe really) risking thier business.  They solidify loyalty
• If the AACS lawyers do come after them Digg has already framed the fight as David versus Goliath ("You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company."). And the odds of that are exceedingly slim anyway.  With hindsight they could see that thousands of other sites were in the same boat legally and Digg had no additional liability that would make them a more attractive target.  In fact, there has been little case law on this topic and the publication of the keys may not, in itself, be found in violation of the DMCA since there are legitimate non-infringing uses of the keys (including uses that fall under LoC exemptions to the DMCA).
• Digg's users quickly went back to digging the same sort of stuff they did before (gas prices, calls for impeachment, and gladiator graveyards).  The riot ended, and almost all of the DRM stuff and AACS keys end up off the main page.
• The stuff Digg pulled from the site before never came back. Without new diggs it didnot end up restored.
• Digg (and Kevin) come up looking like roses to the people who will make their business work (or fail) in the future.
• They get a ton of press about Digg. 
• They take only a very minor legal risk to do it.

Brilliant! 

Today's St. Paul Pioneer Press had a fun article on online avatars that has some quotes from me about my Second Life avatar

"Patrick Lilja, who works at the Tunheim Partners public-relations agency in Bloomington, recently wandered the Second Life realm and dressed his avatar, "Patman Wacchman," with items he procured in various online shops. The accouterments included a pinstriped suit, designer-style shades, a phone headset and shoes with huge, silver buckles. (Oh, he also got a helicopter.)

Lilja describes his Wachmann doppelganger as "the younger, better me, with really nice hair, which I don't have."

My kids even get a little plug in for their favorite game, Webkinz!

Unfortunately, the online version does not have the great photo of me and my avatar where I compare my girth and hair challenges in the caption.  It's in the print version along with a bunch of other photos that help tell the story.

I have no idea why the Pioneer Press does not include photos in their online version. If anything, they should have additional photos...and maybe some video and audio. Most other papers are going that route.  I almost wonder if it has something to do with their content management system (CMS) not being up to the task.  I can't think of any other reason that they don't...becasue it's just insane. But, that's a question for a real reporter to answer...I'm just a blogger...

I moderated a round table this morning on "Journalism and the Effect of Emerging Technology" that was sponsored by PR Newswire.  I thought it actually turned out very well. I often go to round tables where they just seem to peter out about 15 minutes because there is general agreement on the answers or because the topic is too narrow, but this one could have gone on for a couple of hours and still stayed interesting.

Today's success was due to the really knowledgeable folks on the panel and some nice debate that occurred that, frankly, I didn't expect.

We had Greg Swan, a PR professional and the founder of music critic site Perfect Porridge and regular contributor to the Minneapolis Metroblog. Greg took the general stance that information wants to be free and that blogging is a good way of setting it free (my paraphrase).

We also had Kate Parry the Reader Representative (aka ombudsman) for the Star Tribune who also writes the omblog. Kate took the general stance that traditional journalists, whether online or off, provide a source of information that is generally more vetted, more trustworthy, and better researched than what readers would find in the overall blogosphere (again, I paraphrase).

Our third panelist was Mark Holterhaus from our PR agency Tunheim Partners.  Mark is always a wealth of good analysis and he provided a great voice to tie together the disparate opinions of Greg and Kate.

I have to admit it was sooo hard for me to be a moderator rather than a panelist...Those of you who know me know how much of a struggle it must have been for me to not go on - ad nausium - about my own opinions on the various topics we covered (which ranged from "is traditional journalism still relevant today" to "the ethics of PR agencies using social media to tell their client's stories"). I had about twenty minutes of "introductory" material that I pared down to about 4...but maaan it was hard.

One of the things that really surprised me was how many PR and marketing professionals we had in the audience.  We had about 75 people that showed up.  Two of them were reporters, a couple were business owners and the other 71 were PR/marcom people.  Maybe it's because that's who recived the PR Newswire email release about the event (It just demonstrates the potential of new media to target folk's interest area's!).