By Becky Frost
PRSA held its annual "what’s on the horizon" dinner last night at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The room was full of PR pros looking to learn from the seasoned panel of journalists, including Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, Business Week’s Rob Hof , Forbes’ Victoria Barrett, Jim Goldman of CNBC, The Wall Street Journal’s Don Clark, and Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and BoomTown.
The panel provided interesting insights into what technologies have been or will be compelling, while entertainingly thrusting verbal jabs at each other. One topic the panel seemed to agree on was the disruptiveness of social media. This caused me to reflect on how the need to use technology for social purposes has and will continue to shape quite a bit of the innovation that we see emerging from Silicon Valley.
Hot topics that were mentioned included social networks, improving mobile technology, and the likelihood that the press will re-focus on the enterprise next year. (As someone who represents enterprise clients, this made me quite happy).
There has been quite a debate throughout the last few years about how the pervasiveness of social media will change PR. Some have predicted doomsday scenarios, while others have opted to completely ditch traditional PR methods in an effort to adapt. Ultimately, I think the best PR starts with relationships, no matter if they are built on a social networking site, or in face to face meetings. Like all things, a balance is needed to garner the best results.
To check out more coverage of the event, visit Kara’s post, or Rob’s post.
To view video of the event, visit: http://www.podtech.net/home/category/marketing-voices
Posted by: Becky Frost | December 06, 2007 at 09:00 AM