The day after #wprf2010
It´s the day after the World Public Relations Forum and two intense, inspiring, singing and networking days are over. Miss it already? See the pictures on Flickr, watch the webcast later this week and see the discussion on Twitter.
Song was a common theme at the event. The opening act was Eric Whitacre´s virtual choir where 185 singers via recordings on webcam created great music. During dinner later in the evening the artist group Gentlemen performed, three men with strong voices who made the guests stand up and sing along in Abba´s Thank you for the music. On Tuesday Ronel Rensburg began hers and Anne Gregory´s session with singing, one of the very appreciated interactive sessions at WPRF.
The participants took part in creating PR-history as the Stockholm Accords were finalised. It´s main evolver, Toni Muzi Falconi, describes it as “a brief to the communicators and the national associations around the world” and pushes the fact that it is not set in stone and can be adapted in the context it is applied.
A huge thanks to our sponsors, whose supprt and enthusiasm made this possible.
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WPRF on Flickr
toni muzi falconi
Here are my more immediate take aways:
Marc Whitaker’s breathtaking chorus opening, fully embedded in the Forum’s context and contents; Sven Hamrefor’s intellectually challenging description of value networks; Mervin King’s very thoughtful key note on organizational governance and stakeholder relationships; FERPI’s six faced presentation of the Accords implementation process taking off in Italy in September; Anne Gregory and Ronel Rensburg’s engaging and courageous session on public relations’ value to organizational governance and management; and Karl Schwab’s lucid description of the coming phases of societal discontinuity and of the World Economic Forum’s vision of togetherness through a global multistakeholder platform, will remain in my mind as the more striking achievements of the Stockholm event.
My bias is explicit, so I will take a more critical perspective on the other parts of the WPRF, however happily recognizing that not one of them was lower than good.
The first session on social media, intelligently embedding Brian Solis and Robin Teigler, showed (once and for all?) the conceptual thinness of social media interpreted as the tool or the channel of choice!
The digital environment, of which social media is but a minor part, is just that: an environment.
This clearly implies operational and conceptual issues for public relations, but every conference, seminar, blog… and their cousins…. has been dealing with them in recent years and unfortunately the presenters did not say anything we had not heard, read or seen many times.
Of course, I very much missed David Phillips’ contribution but received ongoing stimuli from his twitter comments,
Not really worth a full session of the Forum.
Bjorn Edlund’s presentation was excellent in its first part, but much too hurried and dense in its second part.
The Swedish organizers also cleverly payed hommage to one of their more senior and powerful professionals, Peje Emilsson by offering him a platform to interestingly recollect some of his memoirs; Hanna Brogren’s very professional presentation of how the city of Stockholm is sustaining the claim to being globally perceived as the Capital of Scandinavia showed many clever but hardly credibile arguments, unless the program’s ‘hidden’ agenda only really wants its citizens to rally around an abstract symbol; while Carl Bildt’s final chat before the official closing of the Forum was just that: a chat.
A brilliant and cleverly construed insight into the daily life of one of Europe’s very few reputed and reputable political leaders.
I will not indulge further, beyond the simple mention that the Stockholm Accords acted as the true fine line of the Forum, if not to say that even if the GA lives up to ten percent of the expectations which have been raised it will have done an excellent service to the global public relations community and profession.