PRSA Chair-elect Mike Cherenson, executive vice president of Success Communications, Parsippany, NJ, was interviewed by Peter Shankman for Peter's "Buy Peter a Sandwich" interview series on PROpenMic.org.

Peter will be PRSA/Philadelphia's luncheon speaker at Positano Coast restaurant in Old City July 17.

Register for the lunch here.

Be prepared to offer to buy Peter a sandwich if you want to be interviewed!

PRSA/Philadelphia and Professional Podcasts LLC present a video podcast program, recording at the Union League Club on May 22, 2008.

In this vidcast, a group of media experts discuss how their jobs have changed and the media has adapted to technology and changes in the news business. The program runs 1 hour 23 minutes, and includes an audience Q&A session.

Panelists

Sarah Glover, Inquirer Photographer
Shawn Sullivan, Courier-Post web content producer
Brian Conley, Alive in Baghdad
Jim Eyles, NFL Films

Moderator:  Cheryl Squadrito, President, Media Friendly Public Relations

Produced by Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ

Concluding the IAOC Conference in Reykjavik today is Peter Gloor, an MIT professor and chief creative officer of galaxyadvisors researching swarm intelligence and crowdsourcing, using some social network analysis software called CONDOR.

It analyzes the relationships between people and the topics they are discussing in online communications channels, building a map of relationships and connections, and enhancing predictive value of the content.

This has application in business for integrating new employees into the company network.

Complete audio podcast will come in a week or so, thanks to a grant from PRSA/Philadelphia, which is underwriting this coverage of the conference.

UPDATED 6/14/2008: Luc Van Braekel, Belgian blogger and podcaster who helped Philippe Borremans liveblog the conference, has posted a video of Peter's presentation.

We had a concluding panel before lunch about the international implications for online communications.

Reykjavik, , Iceland - Friday June 13, 2008: IAOC Conference panel on European/US issues of online communications included (from left): Philippe Borremans of Blackline, a Belgian social media consulting firm; Bill Wolff, a professor from Rowan University; and moderator Don Dunnington.

Here's a small video excerpt from the panel. We're producing a full audio podcast of the panel, courtesy of the grant from PRSA/Philadelphia.

Melissa Bass of Rowan University (with microphone) is presenting her Master's thesis research on product recalls. She's a graduate student at Rowan University.

She reviewed the Menu Foods pet food recall and her survey of pet owners about how they got information.

37% of survey respondents were older, yet still went to the Internet for information about the recall. Only 8% were between 18-35, and all used the Internet for their information.

Consumers remain confident in pet food industry. Despite early chaos in the recalls, once consumers were able to get information about specific brands that were affected, it helped alleviate concerns. People did not switch brands. Also, most people used dry foods which were only recalled as a precaution but were not affected by the issue. Small percentage actually didn't use affected brands but cooked their own pet food.

Joe Basso of Rowan University presented research on efforts to apply First Amendment doctrines to online speech.

False ideas will be discredited by speech that directly rebuts it. Problem is what if the original listener is not online to get the rebuttal.

It almost becomes the ethical duty of the sender of the message to infomr people that thier view is biased, and that readers need to seek out divergent points of view. It's a laissez faire approach to free speech; i.e., we actually have to seek out other opinions.

Cyber SLAPs - Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Opinion. Courts have refused to force disclosure of anonymous bloggers. Come down on the side of the bloggers.

Basso discusses paper while Lubetkin live-blogs and podcasts

Reykjavik, , Iceland - Friday June 13, 2008: IAOC Conference Speakers presented papers in the second day of the conference. Joe Basso of Rowan University presented research on online libel and First Amendment issues. Looking on are (from left):  Rick Sykes of Central Michigan University; Keith Brand of Rowan University; and Luc Van Braekel, who was live blogging the conference.

Rick Sykes of Central Michigan University researched student-produced media. He was surprised to find student media recruiting his students to become multimedia editors. They are moving to multimedia journalism including video and podcasting.

His survey of several hundred student publication websites shows only a small fraction were still text-only. More than 90% had photos or slideshows, some with video and audio. 46% were using podcasts, about two-thirds had some blogs. Industry professionals in print told him that columnists blogging for the sports page was one of their biggest features. Readers want to see opinions from columnists.

Ed Moore, APR, of Rowan University, presented research on how school public relations is changing because of online communications.

For last several years, he has looked at award winning school websites and pulled the top national winners, and audit them, to identify the components that make them excellent.

Creative approach - special purpose websites (portals) - such as site for school bond issues; new residents; teacher recruitment

Interactive sites designed to provide financial information - pressure to be transparent and comply with freedom-of-information requirements. Schools responding by putting all financial information online.

Issues

Research suggests municipal government websites are often written above the 12th grade reading level. Yet most people believe governments have responsibility to provide information on the web. The question is how well they are actually communicating.

Need to look at metrics - how well schools are doing this. He has anecdotal data of how some districts address the issue. Schools look at improving traffic through site, getting to destination data in fewer number of clicks. Currently no real standard for what metrics to watch. Accuracy and timeliness of information important, but Moore thinks a need for ratcheting up the level of sophistication in performance metrics.

Sees three areas for additional work:

1. Trying to track how schools are adopting technologies
2. How to get the most out of communications/PR and IT staffs
3. Standardizing and codifying performance metrics

Good morning again from Reykjavik, where the International Association of Online Communicators is holding its international conference. We have heard several presentations on academic research by IAOC members, summarized in the blog posts below. These summaries and the forthcoming podcasts from the conference are underwritten by a grant from PRSA/Philadelphia. These posts are also being cross-posted at Lubetkin's Other Blog. The conference is also being live-blogged at http://www.iaocblog.com/.

Up first in our paper presentations today,

Using Google Applications for Online Teaching: Competition For Proprietary Educational Software in an Age of Fiscal Constraint, presented by Kevin Lee of Western Carolina University.

Free applications attractive to professors, particularly in an age of fiscal constraint.

Quotes Esther Dyson as recognizing early on that commercial life of most products online will be brief. Quotes from 1994 writing suggests that content providers will need to figure out what to charge for and what to give away free as a way to encourage people to buy other services.

Music CD sales plummeted, TV shows available on the 'net. University courses now available free online, thousands of copyright-free books, free online phone calls, open source, including wikipedia model.

Kevin sees trend accelerating, people are buying fewer things, and if they can get it online, they will.

Free microapplications at Google - course management software, email that is essentially spam-free; word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software, synchronous chat, voice chat, blogging, web creation and hosting, photo and image management, video, academic research (scholar.google.com), RSS reader, private groups.

He discussed some other online services available for academic applications, some of which charge for access, but offer some discounts if schools commit to their applications, like Blackboard.com and Web-CT.

He thinks schools will increasingly turn to the free, Google style alternatives.

Melissa Bass, a Rowan graduate student attending the session, noted that Google's scholar application is not as comprehensive as Lexis-Nexis.

She also finds gmail.com a better organizing tool and has her school email forwarded directly to gmail. She can even respond using her school email address directly from gmail.

At the IAOC Conference in Reykjavik, Professor Evonne Kruger (left) from Richard Stockton College, and Diane Holtzman, of Stockton and Rowan University, presented research on how millenials and Gen X-ers deal with organizational commitment and structure in the era of virtual offices.

Findings - millenials because of all the years of volunteering, they actually read corporate mission and vision statements, want to know the values of the organizations they are interacting with.

Gen X need to see things that affect their lives.

Millenials expect more praise, difficult to have conversations with them that involve constructive criticism of work performance.

They have close relationships with parents, who are seen as mentors and friends. They are less interested in going away to school than boomers were.

There are also differences culturally and nationally.

Professor Keith Brand of Rowan University discussed his research on how radio stations are using social media.

Looking at NPR profile, noted adults 45-60 are top group listening to NPA, he said. Younger listeners are not listening as much.

Paper looks at different examples of radio stations or networks dealing with "participatory culture," endemic to the younger demographic.

Problem with these services that radio stations are trying are - attempting to create separate programs for separate sudiences.

Brand focused on Vocalo, a podcasting/broadcasting initiative by Chicago Public Radio that puts members of the community on the air in their own voices. Vocalo rhymes with the Spanish word Zocalo, which means "plaza." Currently broadcasting on an unused repeater frequency, but a signal strength boost is coming.

Metrics - measuring amount of content being uploaded and downloaded on the website

Participatory approach could be a way to get younger people reinvigorated about radio.

Sam Terilli, assistant professor at the University of Miami School of Journalism, left, and Master's candidate Liney Inga Arnorsdottir, an Iceland native, presented a paper on CEOs as celebrity bloggers, at the IAOC conference in Reykjavik. PRSA Philadelphia has sponsored these blog updates and forthcoming podcasts.

Prof. Basso from Rowan raises the concern he noted in his own presentation, that we are facing a severe potential communications and reputation exposure from these kinds of communications that may be going out without too much reflection on the content.

CEOs are becoming mavericks, want to communicate rapidly, don't really consider consequences.

Prof. Terilli suggests at least have the CEO's blog entries reviewed by someone else before they get posted.

Basso - sometimes they do, but it is an IT person not a PR person. We may be giving away the responsibility to people who understand the technology, not people who understand the communications implications.

Conclusions of the study indicate that CEO blogs are not completely disconnected from the corporate messaging of the organization, but firms that don't engage in blogging as one of many channels of communications may be missing an important opportunity.

Joe Basso of Rowan University presented on online newsrooms and media kits, and how people in different age groups use them.

At University level, there is an emphasis on one-way communications model, using communications platforms online as delivery systems to repackage existing material. Teaching professionals to think about how they use the channels to move organizations toward ethical business decisions is critical.

Question from Sam Terilli of University of Miami - are notions of transparency doomed? One way that enhances is that everything goes right out instantly. Compare with more seasoned practitioners who might be more reserved if they've has a problem.

Answer from Joe - Younger group wants to communicate without thinking about the fallout, needs to learn how to take time to think about the fallout. 36+ view the message more important. Slower to communicate but more conscious of the fallout. 35 and younger almost an addictive drug, the need to communicate overshadows thinking strategically. Younger people are not thinking about the two-way process. They are more interested in getting the communications out quickly.

Peter Schumacher of the University of Trier reported on multimedia websites and how people look at them. His interest is in determining the best ways for designers to pull the content together for multimedia presentations, automated slide shows, and other online content, to enhance the experience by using data collected from how people actually navigate through such presentations. He analyzed eye-tracking data from participants to see how they viewed these presentations. You can see what parts of pictures people look at first and where their eyes go in the presentation's environment.

CROSSPOSTED FROM PRSA PHILADELPHIA BRAINSTORM BLOG

Diane Penrod and Bill Wolff of Rowan presented on information "ecologies," including online portfolio, RSS feeds, and social bookmarking tools. Goal is showcasing how information is moving. Bill showed an example from a student about how that student is gathering information from multiple blogs and rss feeds and aggregating them in a way that is useful for her own collaborative writing projects.

Diane is interested in the "semantic domain" of Web 3.0. Beat-blogging is citizen journalism mixed with professional journalists and other experts interested in journalism. Twitter is mentioned in coverage of spot news events increasingly.

Teaching them a semantic, linguistic structure - Tweets are different semantic, linguistic structures.

Students are not digital natives, they are digital "primitives." They are not completely fluent. Goal is to take the primitives and get them away from the primitive uses and move the communications process forward by helping them learn how to use these technologies better.

Wolff: goal is to think critically about these tools and technologies, rather than just using them.

Greetings from Reykjavik, Iceland, where the IAOC Conference is underway. We're here as the IAOC Conference gets underway. We will live blog the session highlights, and there will be podcast recordings of the short presentations, sponsored by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

There is also live blogging at the IAOC blog, courtesy of conference sponsor Phillippe Borremans of Blackline, a Belgian social media company.

We are sitting at square tables for a series of roundtable presentations. I've convinced (wasn't hard) Suzanne Sparks Fitzgerald, APR, Fellow, PRSA, of Rowan, who organized the conference, to have the presenters rotate instead of the listeners. That way, we don't have to move podcast equipment from table to table.

OK, up first is Kathryn Quigley of Rowan University, who is presenting research entitled "Loud Voices, Silenced Voices; The Ethics of Online Content in Media Coverage of High-Profile Child Death and Child Disappearance cases."

Kathryn is examining how news media are handling child disappearances and murders in their online coverage. Some papers have allowed offensive and scurrillous comments on their online content. The Madeline McCann website set up by the Sun in London has 38 different click-on discussions available. Discussion is more tabloid, headlines, the bias is more pronounced, she says.

We'll post her presentation here on the blog when it's available to us.