Swurl — Your Online Presence
For anyone who’s a Web 2.0 junkie like myself, Swurl is another tool that allows you (nay, encourages you) to follow yourself and your online presence — all on one page. But it’s not just about vanity, folks. It’s also a great tool that provides you with quick links to all your web places — Facebook, blogs, Twitters and more. Swurl gives you two ways to view all your web entries — in list form, which looks like a bookmarking site, or in a cool timeline view. You can see mine here:
Every item is in the small box next to the date, and direct links to those items are in blue. Check it out and see if it works for you.
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Cruises and Conga Lines
NSPRA was a great success, with the highlight (at least for me) a cruise on the Potomac with a lot of crazy, hungry and dancing school PR people. What a sight – a good one-third of the NY delegation on the dance floor of the Odyssey, using their bodies to spell out “YMCA” and doing a Conga line through the dining room. But we also stood out on the deck at sunset, admiring our nation’s capital from the waters of the Potomac. I thoroughly enjoyed, once again, meeting people from all parts of the country, chatting with a woman from Missouri on the bus ride back, Joe Lyons of the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School (can you imagine doing PR for a virtual school?) after my Gold Mine Session, and having breakfast with a gang of folks from Capital Region BOCES. Two highlights of the conference were the morning keynote presentations of the irreverent and brilliant Dan Pink and the hilarious and moving Riney Jordan, complete with his Texas drawl. Someone needs to email me some photos, particularly from the cruise, and I’ll post them on our Westchester Wiki and my blog.
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Educate for a Creative Society: The Voice of Tom Peters
I love this little snippet of video from Tom Peters, corporate trainer and author of “In Search of Excellence.” I thought you might, too.
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Who Stole My Newspaper? More Insights from NSPRA
I am placing the Powerpoint presentation done at NSPRA earlier this week by Jim Van Develde of the Lakeland Schools, Lanning Taliaferro of the Harrison Schools and Stephanie Gouss of Rockland BOCES — all in my neck of the woods. It’s titled “Who Stole my Newspaper — The New Media and School Communications,” and provides some cool tips for using Web 2.0 technology in educational PR work, along with some interesting examples. You can find it here or on the NSPRA website — if you attended and know the password.
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A Few Great Websites Picked Up at NSPRA…
NSPRA’s first real day of workshops and seminars provided us with an exhausting mountain of information and tips, and without recounting everything I learned at this late hour, I will instead provide you with some of the great links that were thrown out by presenters today. I’ll have to do more in-depth summaries when I have a bit more time and I’m not out partying with the NY delegation. (Great time, by the way.)
First, check out Wendy Puriefoy’s websites at the Public Education network, including the PEN website, PEN’s Give Kids Good Schools website, and the Civic Index website she discussed in this morning’s keynote. Great reading all around and evidence that PEN is doing good work throughout the country.
I attended Tim Carroll’s skill session, “Byte Into Technology to Energize Your PR Efforts,” a fun workshop that looked at all the ways PR folks can use technology to communicate with constituents. Tim’s session examined podcasting, blogs, e-newsletters, web streaming and the dreaded database management issues we’re all tackling these days. So many things are possible. I trolled through some of his web resources, and discovered this blog done by the Mansfield Independent School District. The most recent posts were from a Mansfield delegation of educators visiting China.
By all means, check out the presentation done by Brian Woodland, APR, of the Peel District School Board in Canada. His presentation, titled “The Top 5 in 5: The Key Trends that Will Occupy You and Your District in the Next Five Years,” and most others taking place here, can be found on the NSPRA website. Mr. Woodland’s special session was informative, entertaining, and downright hilarious.
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NSPRA Kicks Off
The National School Public Relations Association kicked off its 55th annual seminar today in the nation’s capital, home of George Bush and humidity. But heck — this is a great place for a conference. I’m a jaded New Yorker, so I was pleasantly surprised when I caught a cab ride from Union Station to the hotel with the friendliest cabbie I’ve ever met. What a decent fellow — we talked about the differences between the Capital Fourth and the Macy’s Fireworks display. A far cry from the screeching, hair-raising New York cab ride I experienced just the other night. I found myself praying for the safety of the subway and digging my nails into the vinyl upholstery.
Back to NSPRA, where we attended the Opening Reception and caught up with fellow school PR folks. I was delighted to finally meet NSPRA Senior Associate Carol Mowen, APR, who discovered my blog post about NSPRA and is quite the web whiz herself. She’s giving a tour of the organization’s new website on Wednesday, in case you’re here at the conference this week. If you haven’t discovered the new NSPRA site, check it out at the same web address — www.nspra.org. Carol and I spoke for a few minutes about blogs, wikis, websites, social bookmarking and social networking sites. It was fun to speak with someone whose eyes don’t glaze over when the talk turns to netspeak.
The New York contingent already had its first surreal moment when it was approached during the reception by a couple of actors portraying ultra-conservative author Anne Coulter and former Democratic prez hopeful Hillary Clinton. Wasn’t it Coulter who recently said she’d rather support Hillary than McCain? You had to see the male actor playing Ms. Coulter. Someone took a photo of him next to none other than Vicki Presser of the Scarsdale schools — and I’ve posted it here.
Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to a keynote by Wendy Puriefoy, president of the Public Education Network and a nationally recognized expert on school reform and civil society. I’m also going to cruise as many workshops as possible, but particularly Tim Carroll’s workshop, “Byte into Technology to Energize Your PR Efforts, and Gary Marx’s “Five Forces…That Will Profoundly Impact Our Future.”
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NSPRA Website
Image via Wikipedia
Carol Mowen of NSPRA sent me a Facebook post to let us all know that the new NSPRA website will be available at its old URL in a couple of days, after some testing. So you can find it right now at the link I provided in my earlier post, then it will revert back to the old website address. I guess I should start packing…
NSPRA’s New Look
The National School Public Relations Association has a new look, and it’s interactive and a lot more Web 2.0. Here’s a screenshot of the new website and the link.
They’re starting out immediately with an online membership poll — see the right-hand column on the home page. It’s a smart, forward-thinking move that is likely to encourage and perhaps re-ignite participation and collaboration.
