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‘You have no privacy. Get over it.’

• Posted by Francis Moran
• January 03, 2008
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By Francis Moran

The line above is a statement by former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy that was quoted by Canadian novelist Guy Gavriel Kaye in an article in the Globe and Mail‘s Books section just before Christmas. Kaye wrote about how technology, and especially the everyone’s-a-publisher-now phenomenon of the internet and its pervasive blogs, has changed how he interacts with readers he meets. Mainly, he wrote, he is now a lot more circumspect about what he says, even in informal conversations, knowing that every word he speaks — and, unfortunately, some words he never spoke! — will end up published on a blog somewhere where they will persist forever. It’s all contributing to what Kaye called “an erosion of space between reader and writer and book.”

As a new blogger, I have already wrestled with this phenomenon and the issue of what responsibility, if any, I owe to people to obtain their approval before I quote them or refer to them in a post. When I was a reporter, the lines, for me at least, were very clear. If you were a politician, public official or corporate executive, everything was on the record unless we explicitly negotiated otherwise. For me, that meant that anything I heard, any where at any time from such a person was fair game. If you were an ordinary citizen on the other hand, I cut you a great deal more slack, making sure you were aware you were talking to a reporter working on a story and that I was taking notes of what you said. In a couple of very sensitive stories, both having to do with suicides of young people, I even read my story back to the parents I was quoting to make doubly sure they were comfortable with how I was treating them.

Since launching inmedialog a few months ago, I’ve written, or wanted to write, posts about wholly public events, somewhat public events and private or by-invitation-only events. In the case of the wholly public events, where I knew mainstream reporters had been invited and were likely present, I felt absolutely no compunction quoting freely from the speakers and other formal participants. If something outrageous or controversial had been said, I would have felt equally free to quote at will. And I think that’s fair. No reasonable person participating in such a forum should have any reasonable expectation of privacy. I will, however, play by the same rules that governed me as a reporter, meaning that I will strive for accuracy, fairness and balance.

At a somewhat private event, I tread a little more carefully. I am no longer a reporter with an obligation to disclose what I learn, so I can pick and choose. So long as what I write reflects favourably on the people and organizations I’m writing about, I don’t feel any responsibility to gain prior clearance. But if someone at a less-than-openly-public event says something controversial that I’d like to write about, I’d probably make sure the person was comfortable with my doing so, and I’d certainly offer them the opportunity to participate in the blog discussion. Indeed, I’d encourage it. That’s how we’ve ended up with Peter Kemball’s continuing posts on Canada’s SR&ED tax credit scheme.

The waters get a lot murkier for me when the event is expressly a private one. A couple of months back, I was invited to an event in Calgary featuring a panel of executives from leading Canadian companies talking about their sustainable development practices. The organizers nixed my suggestion that I bring with me an old friend of mine who now lives in Calgary where he covers the energy sector for the business newswire service, Bloomberg, so I knew they felt that the event was strictly off the record. However, after hearing inspiring stories of how sustainable development practices at these large corporations were mitigating damage to the environment, improving products, enhancing human health and safety and, most riveting of all, boosting profits, I badly wanted to write about it. Unfortunately, the organizers put the kibosh on that idea, insisting that the closed event remain that way. I respected their right to do so.

(As an aside, I think they did their panelists a disservice. The speakers and their companies would have been presented in a highly favourable light for their leadership on sustainable development initiatives. And, paradoxically, more than one speaker lamented the fact that not enough was known about the positive financial results that could flow from doing the right thing environmentally and that more Canadian companies might follow their lead if only the issue was more widely understood! Oh, well.)

Here, then, are our rough operating principles for how we’ll treat what we hear when we set out to blog about it. If it was said or published in an open forum, it’s open season. If it was semi-public, we’ll use discretion, and seek permission before we wade into controversy. And if it was a private event, or a conversation you have every reasonable expectation was private, we’ll honour that and seek express permission before we attribute words to you.

Bottom line: McNealy probably has a good point when it comes to the broader world but at inmedialog.com, privacy still has a role.

Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Random thoughts
• Social media

Happy holidays

• Posted by inmedia
• December 21, 2007
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By inmedia

We are going on hiatus for the holidays. We will be back in the New Year.

inmedia

Posted in:

• Random thoughts

May your New Year be crisis-free

• Posted by Danny Sullivan
• December 20, 2007
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By Danny Sullivan

After reading the recently unveiled 101 Dumbest Moments in Business of 2007, assembled by the recently defunct Business 2.0 Magazine, I was struck by the thought that most of the events likely resulted in extensive hair loss for the PR folk involved.

Crisis management is a core competency of any decent PR firm, but I’ll be surprised if you can find many folk out there who actually enjoy that particular component of their work.

Most of the events described in the list probably had the same effect on the respective PR departments as dropping a tube of mentos into a bottle of Coke. A panic explosion. Emergency meetings to decide what kind of spin to place on the situation to fix things… herds of flacks running around shouting on phones… that sort of thing.

But the mad panic usually isn’t worth the blood, sweat or tears. The media froth around an issue will almost always disappear in fairly short order (unless it appears again in these end of year lists) and the best way to handle the short term frenzy is to treat it calmly and honestly. If a business blunder has truly been committed, then it’s best to face up to things and draw a line under the matter.

Far better to spend your time discussing what approach should be taken after the storm has passed than pulling out hair trying to influence the immediate situation.

Still, I hope 2008 is a crisis-free year for me, and I hope it is for you too. Happy holidays!

Danny Sullivan

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

30 years of technology

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• December 19, 2007
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By Linda Forrest

I’ll be turning 30 years old later this week and it has me reflecting on the technological advancements that have been made in the last three decades. It sure seems like we’ve come a long way, just in my lifetime.

I don’t remember a time before computers. We had a TRS80 from about the time I was born and cassette tapes containing the data were strewn throughout the den. Apparently we were ahead of the technology curve at my house. Dad had a Zenith laptop in the 1980s. It weighed a tonne and I’m pretty sure it had a whopping 640K of RAM.

I vaguely remember renting a VCR when I was a kid. Later, we got our own VCR – a top loader with a “remote control” that was actually attached to the VCR making it less “remote” than the name suggests. Entertainment mediums changed from vinyl LPs to cassettes to CDs to MiniDiscs to MP3s; from VHS or Beta to LaserDiscs to DVDs to Blue-Ray or HD-DVDs.

You could cook things really fast in this new fangled device called a microwave. It seems to work well for heating things up but doesn’t cook as well as a stove.

Some of my friends had the Atari or ColecoVision to meet their videogaming needs, but I got a Nintendo Entertainment System from Consumers Distributing in 1986. Hours and hours of fun.

Phones went from rotary dial to push button, from pulse to tone, from fixed to portable and to cellular and beyond.

It’s easy to feel nostalgic for one’s youth and I fall prey to that as well – remembering summers spent outside, reading on the swing set, biking to a friend’s house, summer camp where roasting marshmallows was the most technically advanced activity, snowmen made, forts erected and toppled… Despite all of the technological advancements taking place while I was growing up, it really felt that technology was a minor part of my daily existence.

Now, as I sit in front of a computer all day, talking on the telephone, emailing, reading online, technology is a huge part of my life. With younger people, technology is even more pervasive in their lives and advancements continue to be made every single day. One can only ponder where will we be 30 years from now. I’m willing to bet Alvin Toffler has some ideas…

Linda Forrest

Posted in:

• Random thoughts
• Technology marketing

Making the most of downtime

• Posted by Jill Pyle
• December 18, 2007
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By Jill Pyle

As work starts to wind down for the year, you may find yourself with more spare time than usual. Rather than aimlessly surfing the Internet, consider catching up on some of the things you pushed to the side when deadlines were looming.

Revisit your bookmarks
If you don’t use a social bookmarking tool like del.icio.us, you probably save most bookmarks to your browser. Take some time to review your bookmarks and get rid of any that you no longer need. If you’re married to the practice of saving bookmarks in your browser, create a folder structure and get organized. If you’re feeling adventurous, sign up for del.icio.us and explore the wonderful world of social bookmarking.

Clean your desktop
The files that end up on my desktop are usually only temporarily relevant or valuable. Assuming most of your files are stored on a personal drive or within a set of folders, now is the time to do a clean sweep and make sure all of your documents are saved where they belong.

Grab editorial calendars
Most publications have made their 2008 editorial calendars available online. Think about the work that’s charted out for January and see if you can find the editorial calendars for any of the publications you’re planning to pitch.

Catch up on your reading
If having the time to read industry blogs is usually a luxury, here is your chance to catch up. If you use an RSS feed reader, today might be the luck day you see zero unread items. Take a few minutes to look over the feeds you subscribe to, remove any you’ve lost interest in and add some new ones to your collection. If you don’t have a feed reader, get one. I recommend Google Reader.

Send holiday e-cards
There are a bunch of really neat holiday e-cards floating around. Head over to ElfYourself, personalize a card and send some holiday cheer to your family, friends and colleagues.

Build out your social network
If you’re a member of social networks like Plaxo, LinkedIn or Facebook, now is as good a time as any to upload your address book and add some new contacts.

Content development
While it might be hard to push aside thoughts of baked goods and shopping lists, January won’t be nearly as stressful if you start drafting the content you know you’ll need finalized first thing in the New Year.

Jill Pyle

Posted in:

• Random thoughts
• Social media