Turning News Into Knowledge

The recently concluded IABC World Conference (June 6-9, 2010) brought together an amazing mix of PR practitioners from world over. Though primarily North American in flavour, bumping into PR professionals from the other side of world was not uncommon.

The event organizers deserve a pat on the back for pulling off a massive event like this without a hitch. The welcome reception at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) was a great idea, I was really excited about the seeing the museum but couldn’t weave my way out of meeting people. The Dinosaur skeleton was as far as I could make in terms of exhibit

The sessions were well planned with relevant topics and right strategic focus and was well supported by top-rated speakers. I really wished I had a time machine that would allow me to attend in parallel all the great sessions. I hated to choose one over another. My absolute favourite was Max Brown’s session on “Real Leadership: what’s love got to do with it”. Max is great speaker and while conceptually the ideas were nothing that you haven’t heard before, his passion and examples chosen to deliver the concept were exceptional. His delivery style had the audience both laughing and crying.

Another session that I found full of practical tips for budding PR executives was by <Cyrus Mavalwala and Adrian Cropley. Cyrus and Adrian very articulately highlighted the tool set all PR professionals need to have and their “Communicator – Client Relationship Model” is easy to understand and implement. What resonated the most with me – “Define your own self as a brand, don’t leave this important task to others.”

The IABC 40th Anniversary Cake c/o BusinessWire blog

On the fun side, MediaMiser’s Rockets added lot of fun to the exhibit hall, OH Canada! party was lavish. And, I was literally wide-eyed seeing the widest cake ever (that I have ever seen), to celebrate IABC’s 40^th anniversary. I am still wondering how they transported that cake!!!

Just before 9:00 a.m. June 6, 2010, a couple MediaMiser staff and myself boarded a VIA train to Union Station in Toronto.

We were headed to the IABC World Conference in Toronto.

For those who don’t know what the IABC is, the acronym stands for the International Association of Business Communicators, which I and few other MediaMiser staff are members of.

IABC is an association that promotes and encourages excellence among those engaged in communicating to both internal and/or external publics, whether it’s PR, marketing, advertising, media production or human resources.

It doesn’t matter to whom you communicate; as long as you are in the business of communicating messages, IABC is an organization that helps in the art of getting your point across.

Therefore, this is not only a conference MediaMiser should be attending to learn how we can better build products to aid in the process of communication, but is one that, from a business perspective, we should be exhibiting at.

As soon as we got to Toronto, we quickly got settled into our accommodations and headed out to see the Blue Jays play the New York Yankees. Our staff works hard and we need to give back to them every chance we get.

On that note, Yankees won 4-3 ): However, Blue Jays took the series 2-1 (:

Next we headed out to the opening conference events. From a business perspective, the welcome session at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) was the most valuable.  Both the food and atmosphere at the ROM was excellent. Most importantly, we were able to meet other attendees and exhibitors.

I met both prospective and current clients, and other people with whom I shared a professional interest. Being able to establish a rapport with them could be very important in the days to come.

Monday, June 7

On Monday, our team was able to quickly set up our booth and demos. We had a good position on the exhibitor floor with good traffic, and IABC did an amazing job to promote the exhibitors. They had passport cards that people needed to get stamped, which was an excellent idea. My only criticism is that free WIFI should have been supplied to everyone at the conference. This would have enhanced both the conference organizers and exhibitors ability to reach out to the attendees.

Awards Gala

The 2010 Gold Quill Awards gala, which recognizes outstanding communication projects, was well organized and entertaining. Terry O’Reilly, CBC host for the The Age of Persuasion, was an excellent choice to MC the event.

Again, full marks to IABC.

The Next Day – Tuesday

IABC continued to impress us with the quality of speakers and, again, the continued support of exhibitors.

I was very impressed with Craig Kielburger, a Canadian activist for the rights of children — especially since he stood to talk to people for over an hour. He came across as genuine and passionate about his cause.

At the end of the day we packed up our booth quickly and planned to do the Toronto Dine-Around event. Attendees who signed up for Dine-Around event could make reservations at various restaurants in the Toronto core with other attendees. However, our team decided to go to a private product launch party hosted by Caroline Kealey of Ingenuim Communications.  Caroline created a very impressive PR planning tool, Results Map, of which I was able to get a quick demo.

The last day

As the rain came down that day and barricades for the G20 conference were going up, it seemed to signal it was time to leave.

The conference finished with a keynote by Guy Kawasaki, formally of Apple. It was entertaining, and I learned that MediaMiser was positioned high and to the right (Those who attended the keynote will get the reference).

With that parting thought, I was satisfied that the IABC conference was a resounding success.

MediaMiser Booth at the IABC World Conference

Last couple of decades, technology has more or less taken over our life, it dictates how we access information, how we make decisions – be it about buying the next pair of shoes or meeting our potential life partner, how we do business and how we socialize. No aspect of our life has been left behind.

The dependence on technology is even more intense in our business life. There is a drive to automate as much as possible. In countries where manpower comes at premium, automation is defined both by innovation and by need.

While there are many benefits to automation and undoubtedly a move in the right direction, caution needs to be exercised in its implementation.

Talking specifically, in the context of media measurement and analysis, there are many sophisticated tools to choose from and these tools and software no doubt improve the reliability, efficiency and have the ability to crunch mass volumes in minutes.

However, for any meaningful analysis the contribution of an analyst to understand the context, tone and to simply judge the relevancy of media coverage cannot and should not be underestimated. The tools are helpful aids, but that’s what they are. To assume that an automated software will pick up the right media coverage based on keywords; will judge the tonality of the coverage based on positive and negative word recognition; will gain the understanding of the context or will understand the dynamics of the various forces in play would be a harmful assumption.

A recent post by Katie Paine highlights some of these issues especially the reliance on automated sentiment analysis or the reliance on web crawlers to pick up the right content.

At MediaMiser we believe, “computers compute and humans analyze.” That is why when we sell our software we also have a strong analyst team backing up the software.

Sure our software does a great job of picking up all your keywords but it is our analyst which filters the relevant content from all the junk that is pulled in which sometimes as Katie Paine rightly points out could be 90% of the content. When it comes to toning the articles MediaMiser analysts read through each article based on pre-determined toning parameters discussed with the clients.

Time and again we have received feedback from our clients as to how valuable they find our contribution of manual vetting, toning and analytical insights. It is ultimately the thinking of humans and not the logic of machines that gets the “job done right.”

So to question ‘Can technology think?’ I have only one answer… “NO”

Come meet the team and see what’s new with MediaMiser at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) World Conference in Toronto next week.

However, we’re not your typical tradeshow booth. Here are just a few fun things we’ll have going on at booth 108:

1. Stump the MediaMiser 20Q - (20 Questions electronic game) win a prize if you succeed, most likely though, you’ll just be amazed!
2. Ask a media expert – we’ll have several members of our client services team, who work directly with our clients to maximize their media monitoring and analysis needs, on hand to answer any burning questions you may have.
3. MediaMiser Enterprise demos - want to see what our software has to offer? drop by for a demo on our iPad!
4. Oh yea, we’re also giving away an iPad!

Don’t miss out on any of the fun,  follow @MediaMiser on Twitter and follow all the tweeting conference attendees via out list @MediaMiser/iabc-wc. Come by and mention that you read this and follow us, and we’ll have a special prize pack for you!

At the CPRS 2009 Conference: Onlookers are amazed at the MediaMiser 20Q game