Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Here is a comment I posted on misbehaving.net (http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/06/where_are_the_w.html)
I think its worth putting it here to just emphasise the point that this event is open to everyone - it is not invitation-only.
"Hi liz. As Elizabeth Albrycht has explained above, PR Blog Week is very specifically not invitation only. Designed to be that way. The sad fact is that there seem to be very few PR bloggers compared to the size of the profession globally. And even fewer women PR bloggers compared to the industry. This lack of PR bloggers is one of the reasons I thought it would be a good idea to hold an online event. I particularly wanted it to be 'open' because I have long been critical of the 'invitation-only' traditional conferences. When I decided to promote this idea, I emailed every PR blogger I could find, just to get the ball rolling. So if anyone is responsible for the 'invitations' its me. My email list reflected the online reality in PR, I'm afraid. Some people who weren't on my initial list have stuck up their hand, but not many I have to say.
I think this idea of an 'open-source' conference is still quite novel and I've had a number of peop
le seek my permission to participate - no matter that we keep saying they don't have to. Yet one reason for putting the program on a wiki was to get around this 'invitation-permission' constraint. I believe blogging is ideal for this 'democratic' approach. If one of the presenters is boring you don't even have to sit through it. So I expect that the whole thing will end up being a lot more 'customer-driven' than the usual conferences. This flexibility means we don't have to select speakers at all - let anyone who wants to have a go, do it.
In fact, we would love to see more participants, people don't even have to be strictly-speaking PR practioners or teachers. If anyone looks at the program on the conference site or the wiki and thinks they have stuff they want to say on these topics, they can just add their name to the list. Its that easy.
In fact, it would be great to have someone volunteer to contribute on women in PR or even women in PR conferences.
Thanks for your interest in our venture - I hope you and your friends and readers will participate from 12-16 July (sorry couldn't resist a plug) at http://www.globalprblogweek.com"

Posted by: Trevor Cook at July 1, 2004 07:46 PM

Trevor -

I'm glad to see such an undertaking. It is surprising - and at the same time not so surprising - that so few PR practitioners use Blogging as a communications vehicle for distributing news and promoting their companies and clients. It's not only concerning that there a just a few women involved in this event but that there are so few PR practitioners in general. Those of us that create, distribute and promote news for corporations and individual clients know that timely, relevant, and up to date information is a critical ingredient in building credibility. And that credibility build lasting relationships with the media and our key audiences. Blogs and other easy to use web publishing tools are revolutionary in their ability to accomplish these objectives. Cheers to all the participants and their continued evangelism.

Posted by: Chris Bechtel at July 9, 2004 02:44 AM

Hi Trevor,

I have set up a custom news syndication service for the event to make it really easy for people to syndicate the event news feed:

http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=79

Hope this helps.

Rgds

Charles

Posted by: Charles at July 9, 2004 07:31 PM