Media Guerrilla

Heading to the UK...

I know, I know, posts here have been infrequent, but it's for good reasons, some of which have been spilling out over on the Voce Nation, others are still to come. Unfortunately, this won't change soon, I'm off to the UK tomorrow (with @Hyku) to meet with members of ION, an international network of consultants we work with, to exchange ideas, learnings and some best practices in the area of new media and communications.

Also, while we're visiting, this Saturday, April 12th, Neville Hobson has organized a very cool "PR geek dinner" in Soho. He just posted an update with all the details. If you're living in the area and would like to join us, please get in touch with Neville. It sounds like several people will be participating, maybe we'll record something special for FIR, regardless, this should be a lot of fun...

socialmedia, uk, ion, neville+hobson

Podtech Talks "Pressroom of the Future"

Another great Third Thursday meetup last night. Our guest speaker was Podtech's John Furrier who, among other things, shared his thoughts on the recent Podtech BlogHuas at CES and discussed how projects like this are indicative of bigger possibilities for newsrooms at special events. Jeremiah Owyang captured a live stream of our talk, check it out.

Thanks to all that attended. June's meetup will be on the topic of citizen journalism - we think. Details will be posted to the Third Thursday Meetup page shortly. BTW, if you have ideas for speakers or topics, let me know, we've got some great stuff on the horizon, but we're always looking for new topics, new voices....

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, podtech, john+furrier, thirdthursday

@ PR Online Convergence, Third Thursday

Man, days like today make living and working on the left coast worth the price of admission....

I spent the first half in Studio City, talking along side Sally Falkow, Phil Gomes, Brian Solis, Eric Schwartzman, and a host of other industry friends and peers at the inaugural PR Online Convergence conference. It's always good to hear these guys color and contextual-ize new media and its impact on PR. My thanks and congrats to John Gerstner for pulling this together.

Now I'm returning north for tonight's Third Thursday meetup where we'll be speaking with Podtech's John Furrier. Blog posts, photos and maybe a few podcasts to come. Good times....

Technorati Tags: brian solis, california, eric schwartzman, phil gomes, pr online convergence, sally falkow, thirdthursday

Third Thursday Returns This Week

A new year of Third Thursday meetups gets underway this week. With the help of some new friends (which I'll explain in a sec) we've lined up a kick butt panel of speakers to talk about the Social Media Press Release, folks like Tom Foremski, Chris Heuer and Brian Solis, certainly some of the most active contributors to this industry project so far. Joel Tesch with Business Wire has also agreed to talk, so we'll be approaching this subject from multiple perspectives, which I think is needed....

Also, on a related note, beginning this year we're changing things up a bit: First off, we're moving Third Thursdays up to SF. We'll be hosting things at Shine. This is long over due, we know, we always intended to alternate our meetups between Palo Alto and SF, it was just a challenge finding an SF venue, but we found one...which leads me to another change, an exciting one:

We're teaming up with the Social Media Club and the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) to co-produce Third Thursdays beginning this year (beginning this week actually). This just makes sense, for multiple reasons, not least of which is that our groups are each trying to raise awareness and understanding of social media and its practical application in various industries. With Third Thursdays, we're focusing our energy on the use of social media in PR and marketing and this new partnership just brings a collection of resources together to make sure YOU get the most of it. It's good stuff, I'm glad we could team up like this. We'll talk a little more about things Thursday night.

Details are on the meetup page. Hope to see you there.

Third Thursday background

Social Media Release background

Technorati Tags: brian solis, businesswire, chris heuer, joel tesch, sncr, socialmedia, socialmediaclub, socialmediapressrelease, thirdthursday, tom foremski

Find Me @ Macworld

So, a quick schedule update: I decided to forgo the madness that is CES to attend Macworld this year. I figured it's here in my backyard, plus it has the potential to be a very memorable one. As always, it's fun to watch the crescendo(s) of chatter leading up to the keynote....

Posts that contain Apple per day for the last 7 days.

Technorati Tags: apple, ces, macworld

Third Monday Debuts

Awesome, it looks like the debut of Third Monday in Ottawa was a success, nearly 40 marketing and PR pros packed into a local watering hole to hear Shel Israel speak.

Congrats to Joe Thornley and his team of organizers.  Next up, Third Tuesday Toronto.

Also See:
Third Thursday

Technorati Tags: marketing, PR, thirdtuesday, socialmedia, thirdmonday, thirdthursday

BlogOrlando Kicks Off Tomorrow

Josh Hallett has pulled together an impressive lineup of speakers and sessions topics for BlogOrlando — the two-day unconference kicks off tomorrow.  You can soak in all the usual digital detritus via the blog, the tags, the Flickr stream, and I hope, eventually, the podcasts.  I wish I could be there....

Technorati Tags: marketing, PR, blogorlando, socialmedia, unconference

Find Me @ WOMBAT, BloggerCon

Alright, I'll admit it, I'm becoming increasingly apathetic when it comes to industry conferences, particularly those focused on new media.

Too often it feels like the same old A-list blowhards and tool pushers talking about, well, themselves, with just a few minutes of conversation and networking sprinkled in between things to make it bearable for the attendee.

But with that said, I'm holding out hope for two events this week: WOMMA's WOMBAT conference, which kicks off tomorrow at the Hilton in SF, and then BloggerCon, the "unconference," which kicks off on Friday at CNet's offices (also in SF). I'll be at both, looking forward to blogging from each. Email me if you're attending one of these gigs and we'll meetup.

Technorati Tags: Bloggercon, conference, unconference, Wombat, WOMMA

3rd Third Thursday Next Thursday

A week from today we'll be hosting our next Third Thursday meetup at F&As in downtown Palo Alto. Early response and interest in this meetup series has been amazing, we currently have 200+ PR, marketing and business folks registered through our Meetup page, and we've been averaging about 75 attendees per event so far.

We've also started talking with a few folks outside of the Bay Area (and the country actually) who have expressed interest in bringing Third Thursday-like meetups to their cities, which is pretty cool, given we're just getting off the ground with this thing. Hopefully we'll have more to share on this soon.

Next Thursday we're going to talk about community building strategies and tactics with folks from SAP and Linden Labs (the makers of Second Life). Eastwick's Giovanni Rodriguez will be leading the discussion. We'll be kicking things off at 7PM, details are on the Meetup page. Hope to see you there....

Update: Dave Roberts, "Community Cruise Director" for Vyatta will be joining our panel.

Third Thursday Background

Technorati Tags: community, Eastwick, Giovanni Rodriguez, PR, ThirdThursday

Richard Edelman "PR in 5 Years"

Richard Edelman in his Q&A sit down today at Syndicate was asked, among other things, what the PR industry might look like 5 years from now. A few of his responses paraphrased here:

Press releases will be deconstructed: how companies produce and package their news via the press release will change (but not die).

PR will play a critical role in early stage product development: with PR teams increasingly listening to and participating in edge conversations, the richness of this information in aggregate will be invaluable for product development. Also, the concept of co-creation, where "edge conversationalists" are invited in to actively influence and shape new products will be a unique value that PR can bring to bear for both the company and the audiences that care about these products.

PR will have a seat in the c-suite: as the eyes, ears and voice of a company, a bridge really to the conversational edge, executive teams will need to rely (heavily) on the input and counsel of communication leaders when it comes to strategic business decisions.

Josh Hallett with Hyku has a recording of the conversation available here.

Also See:
Edelman: there has to be a better way (Brian Oberkrich)
Edelman keynote at Syndicate touches upon industry changes (PRWeek)
Richard Edelman (David Weinberger)

Technorati Tags: PR, Richard Edelman, syndicatenyc