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Is there a client I can download to easily write WordPress posts? There was one for Livejournal which made it very easy and even detected the music I was listening to! Oh, I still love that Livejournal.

I’m still more nervous to blog than I ever was with my LJ. Maybe if I will have time I will import some old posts of mine over to here and expose myself even more.

Now onto PR things.

I’ve been trying to attend more PR events to expand my education out of the classroom. I attended 360 Degrees: All Things Connected which was great to connect with PR professionals and other PR students. I didn’t know what I would get out of the event because before signing up I didn’t really understand what the event was about. I didn’t feel it was communicated well with us students as to how the event works.

The even works like this: you sign up for one of four main groups and rotate between tables with two PR professionals per table chatting about a different topic. I was in Group A: International Relations, Agency and Government. Here are my two cents on each:

• International Relations – Much more interesting than I thought it would be. I think I gained the most information about PR from all my three sessions at this first table. We heard from Tanya Wymer and Siobhan Dooley from BMO. It was nice that a Centennial grad was one of the speakers because the event was predominantly Humber College grads. Siobhan talked about her experience doing internships abroad and Tanya discussed her experience working at a multi-national and getting to travel as part of her job. A key point I took away and found interesting was Tanya said that media relations is very different in every country, what works here doesn’t necessarily work somewhere else. How the media operates here is very different than other parts of the world, which I knew but hadn’t given too much thought.
• Agency – We heard from a person who worked at Optimum PR and another from Fleishman-Hillard. I didn’t really get a lot out of this session that I didn’t already know, but my classmate who was in my group but another table got some more interesting information than I did. It seemed as if they just wanted to scare us to not do agency. At least, that is what I got out of it.
• Government – In this session we heard from someone from Humber College’s Public Affairs program and another person who had 30 years (if I remember correctly) experience working in the provincial government. This session actually made me very angry and I was tempted to leave but figured I should suck it up and get used to having to listen to things I don’t agree with. The group of us 8 young PR enthusiasts sat down at the table and essentially were accused for all the problems with youth today because young people don’t vote. We were young therefore we probably didn’t vote. For the record I have voted in every provincial and federal election since I have been eligible to vote. I also voted in every student union election throughout university. I don’t think I can be lumped into the category of youth who don’t participate. One of these speakers also said that NIMBYism is wonderful and responsible for getting things done. It has done some good thing but as my friend who is an urban planner has told me, most people say as a principle they support affordable/government housing but the majority don’t want it in their neighbourhood.

In the end I’m very glad that I went to the event, I just wish we had the opportunity to go to every table, there were so many interesting people to hear from.

The common advice we received was in order to succeed in public relations you have to be an excellent writer, have good attention to detail and learn to know and love the media. I think I can handle that!