Conversationblog

Last evening was one of those nice moments for me as I finally met - in real life - with Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

Debbie interviewed me in my function at IBM several months ago in order to get an insight on how IBM uses new media in communications. We met yesterday at the birthday party of NewsenginePR, a Belgian PR agency that had the very good idea of inviting her as the keynote speaker on corporate blogging at the event.

Debbie's presentation was followed by a round-table discussion with Bruno Segers, ex-General Manager of Microsoft in Belgium and blogger, Luc Robijns from Luon, a marketing agency who "gets" blogging, Bettina Geysen, Director New Media at the VRT - our public radio & TV broadcaster and myself, both as PR blogger and IBM New Media Lead for Europe.

After having thanked her host in both French and Dutch (bravo), Debbie dived immediately into a very straightforward and clear presentation on corporate blogging. I liked one of her bullet points which said "Get over it" very much. Because that's exactly what both public relations professionals and their clients need to do; get over their initial fear of losing "control of the message" in the blogosphere.

But then again it was not the over-hyped - "blogging is the solution to everything" kind of presentation - Debbie had clear answers to the questions of time management, comment management and possible risks of blogging. In short, I liked it and was completely in agreement with her point of view.

The round-table afterward was interesting; just hearing other business managers talk about their experiences with blogging was refreshing in itself. (As a good "Ketje" from Brussels, I gladly accepted to answer questions in French - although I am Flemish mother-tongue - which was strange when the first question came but felt normal after the second.)

Here and there we had our different ideas and thoughts on the topic but in general I think we gave a clear signal to the audience - blogging is part of the new communications mix and at least you should start listening to the blogosphere. Maybe we were a bit too much in agreement most of the time to make this a real debate but still, I do think we managed to spark some ideas in the audience.

Things I take away from this event are the following:

• the BBC is still the best example of a mainstream medium (and not an "old medium" as someone called it) who has successfully embraced the new media tools we have today. It is clearly an example for our own VRT who have now the intention to implementing several of them. A move to watch.
• Time and fear of losing control are still the (false) main issues - including legal risks - when it comes to using new media in a corporate environment.
• NewsenginePR - together with Leads United, are probably the first Belgian PR agencies seriously working on integrating blogging and RSS into their more "traditional" PR expertise. (If there are others, let me know).
• Most Belgian PR professionals and journalists do not fully measure yet what they can achieve using RSS feeds to monitor and collect information and blogs to communicate with their audiences.
• and finally - I am definitely looking forward to a possible "Shanghai" workshop (wink).

Did I say I was also very pleased to see that one of "my" interns - whom I met again at the event - is really making a strong career for herself in the PR world... She is definitely part of this next generation of PR professionals who are growing up with social media and who will not even think twice using them in a professional way.

And once again, a big thank you to Ben Geysen for inviting me.

Technorati : IBM, Luon, Microsoft, VRT, antwerp, belgium, blogging, corporate+blogging, debbie+weil, leads+united, newsenginepr, the+corporate+blogging+book