I presented this weekend at the annual New York State School Boards conference, held at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. It was a great, receptive group, although (and this happens often) a few faces were quizzical and downright skeptical. Nevertheless, there were many questions from the standing-room-only audience and I truly appreciate the interested many people have in Web 2.0 and social media.
School leaders are always a tough sell, but I’ve noticed a dramatic difference in the way everyone has become a bit more willing to suspend their disbelief about PR tools like Facebook and Twitter.
If you’d like to take a look, my presentation, Communicating in a Web 2.0 World, is available on my Slideshare page.

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From the top of Issuu’s “In the Media” page:

Here’s what the media are saying about Issuu. Be sure to check out our testimonials too.

“We’re big fans of Issuu.”
- TechCrunch

“What a breath of fresh air! Digital publishing done right.”
- Issuu reviewed on The Future of Publishing

“The first word that comes to mind with Issuu is ‘awesome.’”
- Dallas Marketing Services

“Issuu is the IKEA of documents.”
- Technology and Opiniated News

“Downloading a PDF and reading it in Adobe Preview is sooooo 2008.”
- Quickrelease.tv

“This is an awesome app that I intend to use frequently.”
- School Communications 2.0

I appreciate the mention and definitely appreciate the link. Thanks, Issuu.

Speaking of which, I used Issuu as an example in my presentation, “Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Reach Your Audience,” at last week’s National School Public Relations Association conference in San Francisco. People seemed to love the application. “And it’s free?” they kept asking me. I’m always a bit floored by the fact that people still think there’s a catch to Web 2.0. But hey, we’re school folk and we’re jaded.

I stumbled upon Issuu (pronounced “Issue”, and tried it out. This free website makes it possible for you to download any publication you’ve created from your hard drive, which Issuu then displays on your homepage and turns your clunky PDF publication into an interactive digital publication. You can zoom in, use the right and left arrows to turn pages, and view your publication in a variety of ways.

What’s more, you can use Issuu as a library, storing all your publications and adding favorites from a growing library of other publications, all categorized by interest. The best part of using Issuu is the fact that once your publication is converted, you can then post or embed your publication anywhere online, including on your blog, website, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Issuu also provfides viewer statistics about your publication.

To test it out, I uploaded a recent Budget Book my office created, which now lives on the shelves in my Issuu library but also has been embedded on our organization’s website. Issuu provides you with detailed how-to videos as well.

This is an awesome app that I intend to use frequently.

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Image via Wikipedia

Those of us in the public information business, particularly the non-profit public information business, should rip a page out of the Barack Obama public engagement manual. The lessons are many.

A case in point – the new whitehouse.gov website, a clean, well-organized, interactive place that makes the previous White House website look like your grandmother’s kitchen cabinets. Old, outdated and hard to open.

The new site invites you in. After all, you are the owner. With videos of Obama’s Inauguration address and the whistlestop tour, a White House 101 Fun and Facts page, a frequently updated blog, and the Briefing Room, a way to keep tabs on the President, whitehouse.gov has been overhauled for the 21^st century.

Prominently displayed on the home page is a link to the Office of Public Liaison & Intergovernmental Affairs (OPL-IGA), “the front door to the White House through which everyone can participate and inform the work of the President.” When you reach the Public Liaison page, you’re invited to email your thoughts and ideas to the White House. When was the last time 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue asked you for anything? Other than taxes?

It’s a new day indeed. Check out whitehouse.gov.

BlogSpine

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Although I’m just getting to this post at ReadWriteWeb, I think it’s so important to read it. Writer Marshall Kirkpatrick lists Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond. I hear these objections a lot — from colleagues still getting to know this stuff, from superintendents who don’t want to blog because of the reactions they might elicit, from adult students who say they just don’t have the time. But Kirkpatrick says that anyone using this media now should be ready to meet these recalcitrant objections with a handy list of responses. For example, when they groan that “our clients don’t use this stuff/it’s too geeky,” let them know nicely that:

Many of these tools provide value vastly disproportionate to the literal number of people they reach. These are like high-value focus groups where you’ll gather information and preparation to engage with the rest of the world.

Editor and Publisher also featured a story earlier this year that looked at how newspapers need to seriously consider making cultural changes, including more use of social media and the web. (I just heard recently from a handful former newspaper colleagues who’ve suddenly found themselves out of a job, and I’m personally losing money on my Gannett stock.)

For me, as a public relations professional with work in the public education sector, I find myself always urging people to get on board this online media train. I hope they begin to robustly use the tools the web offers them to communicate and to promote their fine schools.

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I stumbled across Hyplet, a neat-cool-fun website that instantly lets you create your own “signature” for emails or mini-postcards and business cards that you can copy and paste onto just about anything — emails, blogs, websites, etc. Just sign up with the free Web 2.0 tool and choose your design and words. Then Hyplet will give you a code, along with the Firefox plug-in, that you can use to paste your online signature anywhere. A great little PR device. Here’s what my Hyplet looks like:

Save this Hyplet | Create new

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It seems the good Dr. Weast likes to refer to his District as “the cream of the crap.” No — that’s not a typo.

According to an Examiner.com article, the slogan was revealed at a June conference held at Harvard University. The Examiner reports that Deputy Superintendent Frieda Lacey and other District administrators were speaking at a national conference on school achievement gaps when Lacey told the crowd, ““Our superintendent likes to say we are the cream of the crap…They’re his words, not mine.”

In other words, if I can translate, Dr. Weast frequently uses the provocative statement as a reference to the dismal state of America’s public schools. It’s a play on words, people. On the other hand, as a PR professional who represents a number of school superintendents, let me interject this thought. Was the clever play on words worth the reaction?

Dr. Weast is under fire from parents, who have interpreted his words as a reference to their kids. You can’t be serious, folks. (Do we automatically lose our focus when we become parents?)

But again, I ask the question — was it worth it? Could Dr. Weast have made his point another way? Most likely.

As my high school English teacher, Miss Petrella, used to say — “With all the words in the English language, you had to choose that one?!?!”

Crap is just a crappy word.