Are You Ready for Your Close Up?

CHEN Account Manager Juli Greenwood spotted this useful article...

In a recent BusinessWeek piece, Publicist Marsha Friedman offers useful tips on how entrepreneurs can attract attention from radio and TV media outlets -- and make the most of it when they get it. When asked "How do you conduct yourself in a way that makes the host want to invite you back?" she offers this advice:

You need to sparkle on air. Enthusiasm speaks loud and clear, so in order to keep the audience attentive you need to maintain a high level of interest throughout the interview. Remember, media is about entertainment. So you want to be both informative and entertaining, not boring. Do that, and you'll find the host jumping in to help you promote your message.

... and for those nervous about their entree into the spot light she reassures, "...don't be too hard on yourself after your first appearance. No one goes out and bats a home run the first time at the plate. So try to be as comfortable as possible and as prepared as you can be, and then enjoy yourself."

Photos We Can't Forget

From CHEN account manager Juli Greenwood...

The American Society of Magazine Editors recently released its list of the top 40 magazine covers of all time.

The Boston Globe published the top 10. (Site registration is fast and free.) Annie Leibovitz's famous portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which graced the cover of Rolling Stone in 1981, is number one. Just hours after the photo was taken, Lennon was murdered outside of his apartment building in New York City. Sixth on the list is The New Yorker's 9/11 issue. Its almost entirely black cover with shadowy Twin Towers is chilling.

Scanning through all the images is a journey through time.

Confident we won't have to exist without our copies of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker anytime soon, storytelling is absolutely changing its form. Like novels, quality magazines -- like those featured on the list -- are critically important. But while print media outlets continue to battle decreased subscription numbers and lag behind on-line in ad sales, you have to wonder what future lists will look like. Screen shots of on-line versions carrying multiple images, headlines and advertisements? I personally hope not.

MITX: Using Social Computing to Benefit Your Business

From CHEN Veep Randy Wambold...

Recently I attended a presentation organized by MITX, a Boston area organization that CHEN PR sponsors, entitled “Using Social Computing to Benefit Your Business: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and More.”

It’s a topic of personal interest and also of interest to our firm, as we continue to spend a lot of time thinking about how to use new channels such as these for our clients.

The speakers, two IBM consultants, put forward the idea, hinted at in the title of their presentation, that a defining characteristic of “Web 2.0” -- the next generation of the World Wide Web -- is people as the drivers of computing power. In their belief, new Internet technology is being driven by a particular kind of dialog taking place between people.

This is related to a conversation I’ve had with several colleagues recently about the way in which technology has now become seamlessly integrated with our culture (made up, of course, by people). When I was in college 15 years ago, the only people who used personal computers (other than for word processing purposes) were computer scientists. Fifteen years later of course, you’d be hard pressed to find a 15-year-old who isn’t highly computer- and Internet-proficient.

To the extent that the presenters are right about social computing -- and their argument seems convincing to me -- it’s reason for optimism. The more computers mimic the way we act as humans in our culture, rather than forcing us to think like computers, the more useful and enjoyable our experience with technology is likely to be. More specifically to those of us who are communications professionals, social computing is enabling more, and more effective, communication channels, and that is only good for those of us whose job at the highest level is to get a client’s message to their intended audience.

The speakers included in their presentation a distinction between four types of knowledge that I found intriguing and thought-provoking, so I'll include the shorthand version here:
* Data: Web 1.0, just a whole lot of stuff
* Information: Web 2.0, data that is organized such that it is potentially useful
* Knowledge: Web 2.0? and beyond: Information that a person assimilates and actually uses
* Wisdom: Web x? Knowledge that is not only used, but enlightening

It was good food for thought -- and at 8:00 am, that's all I can ask from a presentation -- it's all that I have to give.

Hot Holiday Technology Shopping List - Just in Time!

The weather is wacky and we're getting torrential rains. Weather.com isn't promising a sunny day for more than a week.

It's tough to know what you can count on these days.

But happily, there's Bob Zurek's annual Hot Holiday Technology Shopping List! It's up in plenty of time to plot your holiday e-shopping and it's only Part One. More to come.

Voted most likely recommendation: an iPod anything

Voted least likely recommendation: Tupperware Rock 'N Serve Set

I guess even hip geeks eat leftovers.