a tomorrow's world for comms

There's a few things that will be common-place in the near future. Here's a look at some of them.

by Dan Slee

There was this great TV programme when I was a kid called Tomorrow’s World where amazing new concepts were demonstrated.

Back in 1979, the amazing invention called the mobile phone was road tested. We would, they said, no longer have to have to rely on landlines. In 1969, they called school computers and in 1994 it was the internet.

The mood music of it all was that one day, things would be so much different. It would be better but we were in control. For a while now there’s been a few emerging trends that I’ve been trying to make sense of. They’re now just starting to drift into view and they’ll change things for everyone. Not just comms people.

Bear with me. It’ll get weird, but let’s walk through it together.

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the UnAwards are back

Following their huge success and popularity in 2014, the comms2point0 UnAwards return on 3 December 2015, even bigger and better than last year but still remaining true to their original ethos.

By Darren Caveney

The UnAwards are our opportunity to showcase great work and celebrate a hugely creative and dedicated community.

Why ‘UnAwards’, you ask? Well they’re a deliberate alternative to the £300-a-pop, black tie, swanky London hotel event awards machine which exists in our industry. 

That’s not a slight on these events – if you have been to one of them, and won an award in the process, you’ll have felt pretty good about the whole thing.

But for many the cost has become prohibitive. This is making the awards landscape a bit, well, ‘exclusive’.

That’s not how we like to do things. We’re more Sundance Film Festival than Oscars Ceremony.

The UnAwards are accessible to the entire comms, pr, marketing and digital community and, importantly, will recognise the contributions of colleagues across the sectors for their creative endeavours over the past 12-months.

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9 things anyone can learn from #localgovcamp

Our background is local government comms and lessons there have proved to be transferrable to a whole range of other areas. On Saturday, localgovcamp is staged and we’re shipping in as a supporter. Here’s some things anyone can learn.

By Dan Slee

So much of what I do comes indirectly from one small event in Birmingham eight years ago.

The event was the first localgovcamp in 2009. More than 100 people turned-up on a Saturday to a converted Mission church which had just been converted into a tech start-up hub. There was no agenda for the day and I only went because a few people I rated from Twitter were going. 

The aim of the event was to work out how the web could be used by local government to make the world a better place. Social media was new and we were all busy experimenting with it. IT and most comms teams hadn't even woken up to it all.

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Cwrdd mewn cae

Mae ymwneud, gwrando a siarad yn sgiliau cyfathrebu allweddol. I Gomisiynydd y Gymraeg mae hyn yn golygu sefyll mewn cae - yn llythrennol. Yn ein herthygl ddwyieithog cyntaf rydym yn edrych ar sut beth yw ymwneud i sefydliad ble mae diwylliant yn elfen allweddol.

Gwyn Williams

Dwi’n siŵr ‘sa ni gyd yn cytuno mae’r ffordd orau o “ymwneud” yw i ni, y cyfathrebwyr, fynd ar y bobl yn hytrach na fel arall.

Dyna pam mae Comisiynydd y Gymraeg yn mynychu tri o ddigwyddiadau mawr Cymru, gan roi’r cyfle i dros hanner miliwn o bobl alw heibio i ddweud “helo”, i gwyno, i wneud sylw, i awgrymu, mynnu, holi a pob ffurf ar eiriau arall sy’n bosib mewn sgwrs.

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engaging in a different field... literally

Engaging, listening and talking is a key comms skill. For the Welsh Language CommissionER this involves standing in a field - literally. In our first bilingual post we look at what engagement looks like for an organisation where cultural is a key element.

by Gwyn Williams

I’m sure we’d all agree that for effective “engagement” to happen it is much better for us, the communicators, to go to our target audience, rather than the other way round.

That’s why the Welsh Language Commissioner attends three large annual events in Wales giving over half a million people the opportunity to stop by her stand, to say “hello”, complain, suggest, demand, propose, enquire, insist and every other word that the thesaurus can come up with!

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cake and the real risk of defamation on social media

Media law. For years it felt largely like an ever constant. But along came social media and all of a sudden things felt dangerously different. Add some law changes and the landscape has tilted somewhat. One issue? Your staff's social media accounts. With media law consultant David Banks we're running workshops. This is a flavour of why.

by David Banks

Just so we're clear, the following are my views alone and do not reflect those of comms2point0.

That's fine then, anything I say on this platform they've given me is my responsibility alone and the good folks at comms2point0 should bear no responsibility for anything I write here.

Here goes. I don't like cake. Not only do I not like cake, I don't like people who like cake. They symbolise all that is wrong with our country, sitting there eating cake when they could be doing something much more useful.

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we asked 10 people what they wanted to learn next

Back to school signs have been up for weeks, the new shoes have been bought and children across Britain have been heading back to the classroom. In a crowdsourced blog, we asked some bright people what they want to learn most next.

by Dan Slee

'Never stop learning,' should be written on big letters and pinned up in every press office, comms team or agency.

Why? Because it's the one triuism in communications and public relations. It's the pole star to navigate by in an uncertain world with an uncertain future.

Don't believe me? Think about what you were doing 10 years ago. Think about five years ago. They're worlds apart. Cast a look into the future and the trajectory of change will increase, spiral and leave some behind.

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the rise of troll farms... can you really trust social media in a crisis?

Web 2.0 saw a promise of online collaboration for social good. But is the party over? Or at least, has the shine come off?

by GUEST EDITOR Chris Bolton 

Way back in 2008 I read ‘Wikinomics’ by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, and it pretty much changed my life. At the core of Wikinomics was the idea that the large scale collaboration of people online, was going to change everything we do. The ‘phrase d’jour', was Web2.0; used a lot at the time to describe the ideas around 'online mass collaboration', including what we now recognise as social media.

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how to give the smaller people a bigger voice

Know your stuff. Know who covers your patch then get to know them. It's an approach that's as old as the hills but one that continues to bear fruit if done with skill.

by Russ Cockburn

It’s interesting to view how much the economic pendulum has swung since the global recession of 2009.

Back then a large part of the media’s agenda was sewn up with the big boys, the car producers, aerospace giants and the financial powerhouses would regularly adorn the pages of the nationals and the airtime of our major broadcasters.

Stories from SMEs - small, medium enterprises - did get covered, don’t get me wrong. However, more often than not they were neatly packaged away in their own special enterprise section and very rarely did they make it into mainstream news.

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telling the story of srebrenica - offline and online

Some communications tasks are straight forward. Others need careful handling. So, how do you communicate the memory of an event whose darkness musn't be forgotten?

by Tony Moran

Humanity has lived through the darkest of times, but few events have stained our collective soul more than the Srebrenica genocide. Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered in July 1995 during the Balkans conflict – just because of who they were.

The UN described Srebrenica as ‘the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War’.

Lessons learned from the genocide demonstrate how hatred and intolerance can flourish if left unchallenged - even in a country such as Bosnia and Herzegovina where people of different faiths had lived peacefully together for many years, yet an integrated society disintegrated.

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why your communications strategy might fail without text messaging

Govdelivery's annual UK Public Sector Communications Conference has become an essential part of the September calender. Why? It delivers good content. You can learn more about this year's line-up here. We take a look at one of the key speakers on the role of text messaging in comms.

By Michelle Lee

Look around in a public setting. You will notice more people hunched over a mobile device to communicate or access information than ever before. More than 35 million UK residents own a mobile phone and they’re accessing their devices for an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes each day – the equivalent of almost a full day per week.

Mobile, as a marketing channel, can no longer be ignored in order to succeed in today’s world – especially in public sector communications. Accessibility, convenience, clarity, and universality make mobile an essential channel to communicate with the public.

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other influences make you a better communicator

Every now and then we have a guest editor. They pick five links, write a post and pick a tune and we post them to Twitter. We also ask for a random fact about them that not many people know. Today's guest editor? She was in a team that finished 2nd in the Irish Dancing World Championships in 1995.

by Bridget Aherne

Drawing on other influences is a vital part of being an effective communications practitioner whatever level you work at and that was the thought process behind the random fact I shared today.

Public relations does not exist just to serve itself – it helps businesses perform at their absolute best whether that’s to sell toys or fight fires – so it’s important to soak up other sources of information to understand organisations and those they need to communicate with.

A good place to start is with what’s around us, what culture we’re from, who family members are and, perhaps, what hobbies we’ve been exposed to.

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making video to kill the radio star

Making videos doesn't have to be an epic production as one communications officer discovered on one of our courses.

by Rob McCleary

My memories of making videos at University mainly involved me falling asleep in editing rooms whilst my colleagues did all the work. I always had more of an aptitude (and face) for radio so when I decided to get into video making for my council’s social media page I hopped on a train and headed to the comms2point0 video course only armed with my trusty iphone 4 and a sandwich.

The day long course started off with introductions from Steve from the Film Café whose CV includes working on Dr Who and Torchwood. Our first icebreaker task was, in pairs, to go out onto the distractingly pretty corridors of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry and film each other talking about what we wanted to get out of the day.

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are emoji’s a fad or a new language?

Emoji's. Here's a very timely and helpful post on the little blighters ;-)

by Lou Invine-Rawlins

Some of you may use these friendly little icons in your messages, some of you may hate them with a passion…but as Sony announces they’re making a movie about them I decided I had to blog/acknowledge their overwhelming existence.

Whatever you think about emoji they’re growing in popularity at a rapid pace and more marketers are using them to communicate with customers and team members alike.

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why handing over those social media reins to customer services isn’t going to do comms people out of jobs

Customer services using social media to meet the needs of customers has been a growing trend for some time. But many organisations are still to crack that nut.

by GUEST EDITOR Nicky Speed

Social media tools offer far greater customer insight than we could've imagined even a couple of years ago. We can respond to posts about services, thank customers with immediate replies and give them useful info about the other great things we do.  We can even scour sector hashtags for possible issues.

In short, social media is quickly changing what's expected in today's customer service world.

So why are so many organisations still scared to hand over the reins to their customer service teams to operate social media channels?

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