Adopt a word - genius or pure lunacy?

I've just picked up the news of a website called Adopt a Word through rumblings on Twitter. The idea is that you pay £20 to adopt a word for one year. In return for your £20 you receive an adoption pack to confirm that you have purchased that word. Sound crazy? Okay, now chuck in the fact that the £20 you pay goes towards the charity I CAN, helping children with communication difficulties in the UK develop skills to help overcome what can be at times some very challenging problems. Still sound crazy?

Of course it still sounds crazy. I mean, why would anybody in their right mind want to adopt a word? It's meaningless.

It's for that very reason that this site is pure genius. It's so ludicrous, that it gets everyone talking - plenty of buzz on my Twitter feed about it as everyone discusses whether it's crazy or not, which of course has an exponential effect as more and more people pick up on it through other networks on Twitter. And then there's people like me blogging about it too, and probably others tagging and bookmarking the site with digg, del.i.cious, stumble upon etc etc.

Reminds me a bit of the million pound gallery site developed a few years ago. At least this one's for charity though.

Now, what word to buy for my other half for Christmas ...

Social Media for Business - one day training programmes

We're launching two one-day training programmes to help businesses understand how they can use social media tools to enhance their marketing and PR activities online for free or very little cost. Both will be held at Warwick HRI's conference centre in Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. The first is on 5 December, and the next on 16 January.

Click here for more information.

When you start thinking in 'tweets' is it time to worry?

When I was 14 years old I took part in a fairly typical school exchange trip, staying with Carola Herman and her lovely family in a small town just outside Frankfurt, Germany. I was three years into learning to speak German at the time, but a couple of hours a week at school and no previous exposure to native German-speakers meant that my language skills weren't up to much. I stumbled my way through the week able to understand much of what they said to me, but struggling to communicate back. So focussed on trying to speak the lingo, a few days into the trip I found myself unable to think in English. If I couldn't think what I wanted to think in German, I couldn't think at all. A very frustrating and bizarre experience.

There's something about immersing yourself in a culture with such vigor that means you inevitably end up thinking in terms of that culture too. And so, as I was driving along this morning and thinking about the day ahead, I realised that I was thinking in 'tweets' - that is to say, every one of my thoughts had to be 140 characters or less, or I would be thinking about how I would communicate this or that on Twitter. At regular Friday afternoon pub sessions with friends we've also giggled to ourselves about how you stop thinking about people with their real names and start thinking about them and referring to them as their Twitter alias instead. Even my fiance is at times no longer Nathan, but instead @NZMorris. I think there should be a medical name for this condition - twitteritis?

An apology to my blog (look what I've been up to!)

I'm afraid I've been ignoring you, my beloved blog. It isn't that I've fallen out of love with you, it's just I've been a little distracted lately. I'm afraid, dear blog, that I have been playing away a little. At the beginning of this week I created a new social network on Ning for communications and marketing professionals working in the Higher Education sector. HE Comms has been so much more popular in its first week that I ever dreamt it would be, so I've been spending time building on it and further developing it in a bid to spread and retain that initial interest. And, yes, I have also been blogging on HE Comms. It's not the end of our relationship, my dearest lovely blog, but I just need to share my time equally and work out what I post here and what I post directly to HE Comms. You're part of HE Comms too, and feature on the 'other blogs' feed, so don't feel too left out. Who knows, perhaps even some of our new friends on HE Comms might come and spend some time with you my little blog. Keep heart, I haven't lost interest.

Letter to PR Week

Week before last PR Week published an article suggesting that PROs could learn a lot about social media from the US presidential election campaign. Sure, I agree that the candidates are using social media extensively in their campaigns, but I'm not convinced that they're using it particularly well in some cases - Twitter being one such example. So, I wrote a letter to PR Week to say as much, extracts from which were published in Friday's edition. I thought it would be good to post the unedited (albeit restricted to 200 words anyway!) version of my letter here:

Watch but don’t learn from Obama and McCain

Observing the use of digital media in the US election campaign is indeed fascinating. However, I would warn against PROs ‘learning’ from Obama and McCain’s online efforts (News, 10 October). Both campaigns use online media as a one-way communication tool. Their use of Twitter is one example. Obama’s ‘tweets’ tell us nothing more than what rally he is at and where to watch the video. Of the nine tweets made by McCain so far in October, seven of them merely provide links to the latest ads.

Both camps are failing to maximise the true value of social media: community and conversation. They can use social media as a listening tool, and certainly are using it to enable Joe Public to endorse their campaign, but they should also be using it for real conversation that they participate in. Through platforms like Twitter you want to know that it is the man himself busily tweeting on his blackberry between speeches and meetings, not someone hired in to churn out impersonal announcements. PROs could learn far more from the latest celebrity ‘tweeter’ @stephenfry.

International PR - focus on India

Some of my readers may recall that back in February I chaired a CIPR Education & Skills sector group panel discussion on international PR. Following that event I blogged about the ethics of engaging with PR 'norms' in particular countries (specifically in China) and how easily this sits with a UK perspective of PR conduct. This blog post was also converted into a shorter article for ConnectEd, the newsletter of the CIPR Education & Skills Sector group.

Today the headline 'Why do PR people pamper the media?' posted by @IndiaPRBlog on Twitter grabbed my attention. This blog post, written by Vikas Kumar provides an interesting insight into the practice of gifting journalists to get them to cover your story or event. I thought my readers might be interested to read this too, particularly in light of earlier posts.

THE headline guided by student blogger

It's a rather miserable looking Saturday today so I'm sticking indoors for now, instead choosing to catch up on reading this week's Times Higher Education (THE). There's a great example here of new media influencing traditional media, and showing that what gets said on a blog - even just a passing comment - can influence one's reputation on a wider scale.

The article, introducing the new Chief Executive of the BBSRC, Professor Douglas Kell, is delightfully headlined 'New BBSRC chief "Olympic gold medallist" of research'. Great headline for the BBSRC and Professor Kell, hey? However, the really interesting thing from my point of view is that the headline was influenced by a simple statement on a student blog:

If research were an olympic sport, the new chief executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) would win gold for "weightlifting with citations", at least according to one online blogger.

The article goes on to mention how Professor Kell engaged with the discussions on the blog that ensued, thus showing him to be 'keen to engage with students, colleagues and the wider public'.

I think this says a lot about journalism when the source that influences their headline is a student blog, but it also speaks volumes about Professor Kell himself. Go Professor Kell! Let's hope more academic leaders can be celebrated for engaging with publics in this manner.