prsa first local professional organization to skype

The March, 2011 meeting of the Public Relations Society of America Tampa Bay chapter was the first local professional organization to feature live, over distance technology using Skype VoIP to bring in talent from afar and marked my debut as a producer and moderator of streaming social media content.

Skype allowed for a remarkably comfortable exchange of see you-see me conversation between the presenters beaming in from Baton Rouge, LA and Seattle, WA respectively. In addition the cloud presentation software Prezi was utilized for the first time as an alternative to the ubiquitous and to many banal Powerpoint bullet lists. Both techniques were employed after first being experienced at the Poynter Institute’s first Social Media Day in November, 2010.

The historic event featured two dynamic presenters from two different time zones: Monica Guzman (above, onscreen), Director of Editorial Outreach at Seattle’s intersect.com, and Louisianian Whitney Breaux, fellow PRSA and PRAL member, founder and exec director at Baton Rouge Social Media Club.

Whitney’s one of the first Baton Rouge practitioners I met as a new PRAL member, while my (virtual) introduction to Monica was at Poynter’s Social Media Day, which was also my first exposure to intersect’s remarkable social site. (Read more about the powerful features available at intersect in the PRSA December chapter newsletter here.)

Business Social Media uses Prezi cloud technology

With the explosion of social media niche channels circling the linchpin giants facebook, YouTube and twitter, tending the content garden is becoming a real exercise in time management and it’s become increasingly clear that the need to prioritize – triage might not be too strong a term – is becoming critical, as is the insight to quickly adapt to new channels as they become available.

Whitney (above, in monitor) spoke first about the evolving interest in her favorite project, the Baton Rouge Social Media Club, from startup to a fresh new design makeover just recently launched. Evidence of the buzz social media gets in Baton Rouge, state capital and home to Louisiana State University, is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that Tampa Bay – defined by St. Petersburg, Tampa and several professional sports teams – hasn’t yet caught up. She also talked about how her new position as director of social media at Wright-Fiegley Communications is already showing measureable results for the firm’s client roster, which includes several projects for the State of Louisiana.

Monica’s focus was on the remarkable flexibility offered by intersect that enables users to tag content in a linear fashion using both time and place locators. For example, looking for the intersection of Washington, DC and January 2009 returns a set of events remarkably different from the community view on the same day in Tampa, Baton Rouge or Seattle. For pr practitioners, there’s a very clear advantage to deploy intersect in the social media toolbox. I call it Google.

For business social, a term that seems to successfully encapsulate the real differences that exist between casual and professional internet chit chat, how that challenge is met could mean the difference between a well built out communications strategy and one that shortly after facebook falls off the radar.