Social PR Forum – 4 December

Social PR Forum

A conference which looks like it will be very interesting later this year is the Social PR Forum scheduled to take place on the 4th December at RIBA, London. The event is looking to bring together people from our industry to address the issues surrounding PR and the social media space, how they are impacting on each other and how PR professionals can relate and work effectively within the new challenges web 2.0 communication channels bring.

The speakers already look impressive, with my old friend Phil and Drew Benvie being speakers from the agency side I certainly won’t be missing as well as spokespeople from T Mobile, The British Heart Foundation and Asda also sure to be interesting.
 
The organisers of this event have kindly offered the readers of this blog with a discount code so you can get money off entrance to this forum. To secure your discount all you have to do is quote the code PaulS09 when registering either online or by phone (+44 (0) 117 321 8303).

The organisers list the events highlights as the following:
•  Learn from global PR companies who have successfully embraced social media
•  Understand what products and services you should be using, and how to use them well
•  Listen to top commentators and experts on their take on why social media can be effective in PR and why not to fear it
•  Learn how to seamlessly introduce social media into your way of thinking and into your employees
•  Listen to how award winning campaigns utilised the social space successfully
•  Understand how offical bodies view PR in the social media space
•  Network immediately with our first-class pre-show online meeting planner

Anyway, I hope to see you at the event in December and should you be interested in learning more about it please download the brochure.

Mobile World Congress 2009

Source: Google images

Phew, I survived! What a brilliant couple of days in Barcelona despite the travel to and from the exhibition each day.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the exhibition last year for the first time in a while but was really pleased to be back. Firstly, the location of the exhibition is beautiful and upon arrival in the morning with the fountains switched on up the main parade you truly understand how special this show is.

The show is attended by just about everyone from the telecom industry and with the divide between telecommunications and IT fast becoming blurred there were a lot of first timers at the exhibition this year. In fact a couple said to me that they were not attending CEBIT this year in favour of MWC.

I have to say I had an enjoyable couple of days talking to exhibitors and journalists at the show and was excited about the buzz.

Most people this year understood that the mobile world now needs to start generating money from the services it has been talking about for the past few years. In particular it was apparent that there were less people ‘floating’ and looking for ideas and more senior representatives looking to arrange deals. Fantastic news for the telecom industry and I am sure we will see some exciting developments over the next few weeks.

From a PR perspective, it was interesting to see the difference in approaches to the show. Many people I had spoken to were disappointed with the amount of media interest in what they were announcing at the show while others had decided that the exhibition is just too vast to try and be heard at.

I agree with the latter, unless you are one of the big players who had booths the size of a small village you will always struggle to be heard at a show with so many halls. To see my ideas on how to get the best out of an exhibition with PR in mind read my recent post.

Exhibition catering

Source: Paul Stallard

Why aren’t all exhibitions like Mobile World Congress? Ask yourself how many times you have sat down for a stale sandwich and a flat jack at Earls Court, Olympia or NEC ten pounds lighter? Well I have to doff my hat to the caterers at the top end of the MWC who were serving up fresh paella. With the sun out and the fantastic view down the main parade it was almost possible to forget how sore your feet were!