PRSSA Conference

Hello Everyone,

As promised, I'm just going to give you a few details on the PRSSA. Just some background. The PRSSA stands for the Public Relations Student Society of America and is a sister organization to PRSA, Public Relations Society of America. PRSA is primarily an ethical institute that focuses on proper education of PR students and creates an ethical code for members to follow.

PRSSA is not so ethically driven, at least that is the sense I get. It's not that ethics aren't important, but it's just not discussed. All of the sessions and speakers were there to discuss their role in the industry and what the industry is doing today.

I am going to talk about my two favorite sessions, just so you can get a taste of what it was like.

The first guy was there to discuss social media, as you could imagine, a very hot topic in PR right now. The interesting thing is he discussed how important it is, but then ripped it down and said we overly depend on it. He said that it wasn't about the tools, but the tactics, which I just loved. He just had so many good quotes, so I'll list them:

1. Social Media makes small companies look bigger and big companies look smaller
2. The future of business should not be about technology
3. Social media is a touchpoint
4. PR should create a passionate conversation, not a product conversation
5. Movements have powerful identities
6. Campaigns should be beyond spasms of passion, but collective shouts

Now just image all of these quotes by a middle aged, eccentric and gray haired main who was basically in skinny jeans and bright red shirt. He was very cool. He backed all of his ideas with video examples and made the topic interesting.

The other session was by a Disney guy, Gary Buchanan, Social Media managing editor, who was there to talk about creativity. (See the Disney Blog) He stressed how important every idea was and how every idea needed to be considered before being thrown out. You can see some of the things he did below:

Anyway, its inspirational to know that there are jobs out there that aren't stuffy, but exciting and innovative in nature. Gary showed a ton of energy and loves his job, which makes me look forward to my future.


Until we meet again!


Thanks for reading,
Joe