On Tuesday, June 29th, Sean Hallett of Erinwood Ford presented a 2011 Ford Mustang to an Erindale Secondary School graduate and award winner for outstanding leadership on Rogers First Local, Mississauga.

Check out the clip:

On Friday, June 18^th, Doug Heeney of Campbell Ford demonstrated SYNC on A-Channel with Kurt Stoodley.

Check out the clip:
A-Channel – SYNC – Campbell Ford – June 19, 2010

On Saturday May 29th, Dupuis Ford Lincoln’s Mutang Poker Run raised $101,666 for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Check out this previous Capital PR post about the event.

On Saturday, June 5^th, Michel Dupuis along with other organizers of the Mustang Poker Run appeared on A-Channel to discuss their great fundraising success.

Check out the clip:
A-Channel Weekend – Dupuis Ford Mustang Poker Run

On Wednesday, May 26^th, Kirk Joseph of Donnelly Ford demonstrated Ford’s Active Park Assist Technology on CTV Ottawa with reporter Paul Brent.

Check out the clip:
CTV Ottawa – Ford Active Park Assist

Yesterday, I moderated a news conference at the Canada Aviation Museum at which Tony Frese, Lockheed Martin program manager for the Canadian CC-130J project, announced the Canada In-Service Support Team for the CC-130J fleet and $1.5 billion Industrial Regional Benefits confirmed to date under the CC-130J program, including $307 million for companies in Ontario.  News Release

The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, then welcomed the news that Lockheed Martin is providing in-service support contracts to businesses across Canada and that the company has confirmed to date $1.5 billion in Industrial Regional Benefit projects under the CC-130J program, including $307 million for companies in Ontario. News Release

Keelan Green of Thornley Fallis

Tony Clement, Minister of Industry

Tony Frese of Lockheed Martin

L to R: Tony Frese, Keelan Green, David Schellenberg of Cascade Aerospace, Minister Tony Clement

In an earlier era the Personals section of daily newspapers often carried short ads from people looking for lost loves, estranged family members, past neighbours and so forth. There was an element of sympathy for the person who placed an ad encouraging someone to “call home, all is forgiven” or wondering whatever happened to the boys from the Cub Pack.

We read these ads knowing we would never know what happened to long-lost Uncle Joe, or if John and Marsha patched things up.

The Viet Nam War—a miasma of grief broadcast to hundreds of millions of living rooms on the evening news decades ago—created the modern take on the storied war correspondent. Images from the battlefield, field hospital or ruins made war real, and perhaps routine, to the audience back home. Given the media consuming habits of the Viet Nam War generation (tune in at 6 for the evening news, with a trusted anchor) the war could be presented, positioned and edited for public consumption.

Someone, somewhere, was exercising final approval on what made it to the network. Brutal images (still available all over the internet) from Viet Nam played no small part in sickening public opinion and helped turn its tide.

In due course the public lost their appetite for the war and the confrontation ended, after too many years, with a whimper and not a bang. Perhaps the audience had seen too much?

The image on the newspaper yesterday was not edited. It was real, raw and as unscripted as life itself. The growing bank of images—of mind-numbing devastation coupled with the awareness that Haiti is a place of poverty, struggle, dictatorship, crime, violence and a complete lack of hope—are reaching a new audience.

The audience today has countless options for information. Social media updates about the earthquake in Haiti will continue to proliferate as NGOs, news organizations (legitimate and illegitimate), charities, support groups, interested bystanders, family members and the  public reach out online for information, images, context and, most importantly, understanding of the events in Haiti as they unfold. Moment by moment.

I believe that this change is a good one. Unhindered by an editorial bias, citizen journalists are at their best when presented with a story that begs to be shared with others. Sharing the images, stories, experiences and developments in Haiti using social media tools empowers us. It is impossible to ignore the suffering of strangers when our knowledge of that suffering comes from a stranger.

The late Walter Cronkite was often called “the most trusted man in America.” I trust the citizen journalists, social media users and others “broadcasting” from Haiti just as much.

We have watched the destruction and its aftermath. Social media tools and citizen journalists will enable us to watch the response and reconstruction. We will know what happened to the people affected by the earthquake; watch hospitals, schools, police stations and presidential palaces reopen and—thanks to strangers on the ground—remain involved.

Daniel LeBlanc, Globe and Mail, won the 11th Annual Press Freedom Award.

The Globe and Mail for Monday March 23rd (Globe Life Section; page L1) published an article outlining the pitfalls of social media tools used injudiciously. Net-net: Share judiciously. One citizen of the Twitterscene slagged a client (not a good idea) and another insulted a city that happens to be home to his client and their head office; also a bad idea.

Careeristinas with a past will recall—perhaps fondly—a time when office deportment was more strictly outlined. There were definite expectations for “professional” and “personal” spheres of life. It was not uncommon to know little about the private lives of colleagues; one woman I worked with some years ago kept her engagement and subsequent marriage so carefully under wraps that knowledge of both escaped notice until she arrived at the office on Monday sporting a wedding ring.

Social Media tools have changed how we communicate and how we expect to communicate with one another. Immediate communication tools, strategies and needs trump the now charming, decorous professional demeanour of yesteryear. There are no secrets on the Internet and exposing your life—in all its normal glory—is now commonplace.

The concept of the much-dreaded “personal phone call” at work is obsolete. Never mind a call from your physician, sibling or family lawyer: wide-open work spaces and team-based cubicles mean that co-workers often share intimate details merely by having ears. (Personal phone calls, fyi, are obsolete because cellular phones take up the slack.)

Social Media tools—from MSN as an inter-office yakker to the Biggies like Twitter and Facebook—enable people to indulge in sharing, posting, commenting and more from the relative comfort of their keyboard and an ergonomic chair.

Social Media tools are, however, forever. Each tweet, update and notification is a public announcement.

The ability to instantly communicate is wonderful. It is also powerful in more than one sense of the word and it includes the ability to have your thoughts spread like wildfire across a digital network of untold numbers of people. Publish for sure, but don’t publish and perish because you hit “send” before reflecting on your post.

Emcee Stephen Heckbert entertained the audience with his “Top Communications Moments of 2008″ presentation and he announced the winners of each category when he opened the sealed envelopes. “This was a creative ad compelling program with a great use of new technologies and an innovative way to involve your audience,” Heckbert quoted a judge as saying.

Canwest’s David Akin was the keynote speaker of the night. He regaled the audience with his behind-the-scenes take on CIBC faxing private banking information to a junk lot in West Virginia. It was a story he uncovered while working at CTV News. Listening to his storytelling was like imagining a kimono being unwrapped. Except this story involved the nation’s most trusted anchor.

Three other awards were presented. The Earth Award for Internal Communications went to the Queensway Carleton Hospital, the Air Award for External Communications was awarded to the Canadian Association of Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists, and the Fire Award for Communicator of the Year was bestowed on Robyn Osgood of Blueprint PR.

CPRS pulled off this inaugural event by pulling together a solid group of volunteers, led by CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau President-Elect Laurie Murphy, LeeEllen Carroll (Thornley Fallis), Leisha MacDonald (76design), Katie Boland (Algonquin student), Adam Weitner (Service Master), and Calline Au (Queensway Carleton Hospital).

“We have very talented public relations practitioners in this area who uphold the values of the profession and of our society through their excellent work,” said CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau Chapter President Danielle Côté. “It’s important for us to recognize their work and their contribution to the field of public relations. Awards like these allow us to celebrate this excellence and share it with other who can learn from their work,” she added.

The attendees were engaged, interested (and interesting) and all were either operating with social media tools now or preparing to launch them in the near future. It was a high-energy day with ideas, innovation, thought-leaders and learners collaborating together in sessions, presentations and meals. (Kudos to ALI for creating dynamic lunch and supper sessions that offered both choice and networking.)

Joe has a following among innovators who are active with social media tools and there were a number of people who already interact and communicate with him now plus a new cadre of people who joined social media sites–for the first time–yesterday and learned directly from Joe how to make these cutting-edge tools a part of their work lives.

This was a connected day. I was learning myself while chairing the day and I made some great contacts among the crowd.

Today (Weds) Thornley Fallis was again present; Joe is back to chair and lead the day while John Sobol and Nick Rusczkowski (my colleagues) presented at the morning session.

I will be adding more information about individual sessions as soon as I touch base with the presenters. As a teaser, however, I can announce that there are a number of federal government entities who are planning to launch social media tools in the near future. What I would like to do is post some Q&A sessions on CapitalPR with these innovators and share their message and knowledge with  an even broader base.