Yesterday a colleague noted that the front page image of a major Canadian newspaper was credited to Facebook, the social media site that many use to keep in touch with friends and families. Birthdays, family vacations and pictures from a golden wedding anniversary are the stuff of social media lore. Long-lost high school chums finding one another on Facebook were, for a time, a staple of soft journalism.

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.

I am pleased to announce the launch of Thornley Fallis & 76design’s new online presence.

Our new websites, conceptualized, designed and developed by our team of creative masterminds and technology all-stars, exemplifies our capacity to push the limits of innovation in the world of social media and digital marketing.

Thornley Fallis & 76design is made up of individuals with fun, smart and professional personalities; personalities that have all contributed to the success of marketing & communications projects. To fully demonstrate the range of personalities, talent and intelligence our team has to offer, we’ve done something a little outside the box. Something very brave… or maybe something very stupid – we’ll let you know

We’ve created a live LifeStream for every one of our employees. This is more than just a standard funny profile picture and biography. It is an aggregate of their work and online profile, intended to paint a picture of who they are, what they do, what they think and what they are interested in.

To explore the diverse and unique characters at Thornley Fallis and jokers at 76design, take a look through our people profiles and find out who you could be working with on your next project.

Not only is our team exceptionally talented (and good-looking), we are experienced & passionate about the work we do. While adventuring through our People pages, zoom over to the Work & Services sections to see what Thornley Fallis & 76design has to offer.

My colleagues and I hope you enjoy perusing through our new sites.

Oh and one more thing… if you like what you see, don’t hesitate to call us, we’d love to hear from you!

I am pleased to announce  the launch of  Thornley Fallis & 76design’s new online presence.

Our new websites, conceptualized, designed and developed by  our team of creative masterminds and technology all-stars, exemplifies our capacity to push the limits of innovation  in the world of social media and digital marketing.

Thornley Fallis & 76design is made up of individuals with fun, smart and professional personalities; personalities that have all contributed to the success of marketing & communications projects. To fully demonstrate  the range of personalities, talent and intelligence our  team has to offer, we’ve done something  a little outside the box.  Something very brave… or maybe something very stupid – we’ll let you know

We’ve created a live LifeStream for every one of our employees. This is more than just a standard funny profile picture and biography.  It is an aggregate of their work and online profile, intended to paint a picture of who they are, what they do, what they think and what they are interested in.

To explore the diverse and unique characters at Thornley Fallis and jokers at 76design, take a look through our people profiles and find out who you could be working with on your next project.

Not only is our team exceptionally talented (and good-looking), we are experienced & passionate about the work we do.  While adventuring through our People pages, zoom over to the Work & Services sections to see what Thornley Fallis & 76design has to offer.

My colleagues and I hope you enjoy perusing through our new sites.

Oh and one more thing… if you like what you see, don’t hesitate to call us, we’d love to hear from you!

Yesterday Thornley Fallis submitted a proposal in response to Canada Post’s RFP to develop a social media strategy, guidelines and policies for the Corporation, and to provide ongoing support and training.

Canada Post Evaluators: when you visit our websites and blogs to check us out, please leave a comment to let us know you were here!

Our team looks forward to drawing on our leading experience and expertise in social media and online communities to help Canada Post develop its social media framework.

I enjoy newspapers and still read—or at least scan—a few each day. The content is as interesting to me as the advertisements can be. Savvy readers today will note that there are fewer advertisements for high-end jewelery items and that car prices have dropped. Precipitously.

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.

Readers can consider this a blog post by popular demand. The blogosphere and twitterscene (a word I hope I just coined) are small places; look around and you’ll see a familiar handle.

Futurecasting—something I enjoy as a mild hobby—is a career byproduct. Most PR counsellors practice it at some level. As a lazy blogger (I want to, but I find I don’t make time for it) I have been encouraged to blog more, worry about it less, and go for broke.

This, therefore, is broke. This is what I am following, noticing, observing and paying attention to across various media, scenes, sites and places:

The world’s greatest ponzi scheme is unfolding; Bernard Madoff (which google) is in jail and the legal entities of the United States and Elsewhere are now eyeing his family’s assets with narrowing eyes and a sceptical expression. In a time when many people are questioning how oversight bodies (SEC et al) failed to catch a theft of such magnificent proportion it behooves government agencies to now—perhaps “at last”—step in and show that they are up to the job at hand. That means that la famille Madoff can expect a large team of forensic accountants to exhume every cheque, chit, IOU and other financial instrument going back to who-knows-when and—I hereby predict—confiscate anything that isn’t nailed down. (Even the family piano, according to one report, is under threat of immediate confiscation.) Taking possession of Mrs Madoff’s piano will not nullify her husband’s crimes, but it looks good (the optics of it, if you will) for a public eager to see justice served no matter how late or cold.

Live cheaper to live better? When times get tough people turn to kith and kin for solace and comfort. What is more comforting than a home-cooked meal? A pleasant stroll through a local bookstore conglomerate reveals the new reality of kitchen fun: Cookbooks promoting casserole cooking, slow cooking (see: Futurecasting) and all manner of delectable meals on the cheap are currently in vogue. The very notion of “cooking” is now back in vogue after a long-ish hiatus as a pleasant pass time for busy people. Cooking—the dreary need to prepare meals for yourself or family—was a basic fact of life through much of history. In the latter end of the 20th century, however, cooking—the bane of housewives for eons—morphed into a soci0-economic totem of the good life. Cooking became an activity for couples to share as they entertained on weekends with artfully turned out meals paired with the proper wines, artisan cheeses and unique appetizers. By the turn of the century (that is, 1999 into 2000) fast food, take-out, home delivery, personal chefs and “assembled meals” had taken precedence at the family table and cooking was firmly established as a hobby.

Luxury that shows is no longer desirable. Famous brands (Royal Daulton, Waterford Crystal, Wedgwood) that reigned for the longest possible time in the finest homes and dining rooms are facing the sad fact that they are in trouble. Public Luxury—which used to something most people aspired to—is now unfashionable. While it is possible to hide your luxury at home (you can drink beer in a Waterford goblet if you draw the curtains) it is impossible to hide your luxury in public. Famous automobile marques (Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Bentley and so forth) will sit longer on the showroom floor while a careful public reconsiders its values. Marketing luxury in an economic storm requires a deft touch; the focus needs to change to “value” and “craftsmanship” and there can be no references to ego-features (custom stitching on leather seats, say, or engines with 8 more cylinders than are strictly required) as in the good old days of joyful and exuberant conspicuous consumption.

This blog is dedicated to Jason Ashton.

While we can’t be accused of opening a hardware store, our front lobby has started to accumulate a nifty little collection of awards. Last week we were honoured at the inaugural CPRS Awards Gala when we won the PuRe Elements Awards of Excellence for Innovation in Communications (Water category). VPs Aimee Deziel and LeeEllen Carroll accepted the award on behalf of Thornley Fallis and 76design. They were part of a great team that ran the SHARP 1080pD82 challenge and helped Sharp succeed in getting Canadians to identify the Aquos television as the leader in high definition televisions. To take the TV from trade publications and into family living rooms, the team conceived and ran an integrated campaign which engaged first time bloggers in social media while reducing their carbon footprint.

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.

More knowledge from the recent Social Media for Government conference that took place in Ottawa this week.

Following demographic developments is a fascinating study. Society is changing as new technological advances change the face of one generation and redefine how that group interacts, understands, consumes and advances their culture.

From a presentation from some thinkers at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum I learned about Millennials (for more on the ROM surf this). Intrigued by this demographic, I did some research.

Millennials are broadly described as being born post 1980 (say, between 1982 and 1994) and only know a world with digital technology. They signal the largest shift in media and behaviour since the dawn of television, which separates them in numerous ways from an older generation of media consumers.

Millennials have some interesting characteristics that further define them as a demographic group.

Socially expressive and inquisitive individuals, Millennials are the product of a society that included high rates of divorce and two-income families. Some theorists believe this translates into Millennials lacking an automatic deferral to authority and a new take on romantic and personal expression.

The ability to recreate, remix, retrieve and reconfigure the past (through technology) is expected. Millennials are resourceful and collaborative and have proven to be innovative thinkers.

Highly social and interconnected, Millennials work well in teams but are not considered highly loyal to employers, work places, or even–it is believed–romantic partners. There is no broad consensus if this “lack of loyalty” stems from social conditions (for example, divorce rates) or from some other factor. Millennials expect–and subsequently create–challenging and stimulating work experiences and places with a strong focus on the “team” and social life. (That is, they work and play together.)

This is an interesting demographic now assuming positions in the workforce and in the broader community of consumers. It will be interesting to watch them and their impact on society, consumer culture, communications and social media development.

Yesterday I substituted for Joe Thornley and chaired a conference in Ottawa about Social Media for Government. The conference was hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute under the direction of Kelly Flynn, who put together a one-of-a-kind event.

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.

Blogs, links, jumps, sidebars, comments and emails. Spend enough time on the Internet and you will come across hundreds of thousands of each one.

This one lead me to this.

Then I saw this and I encourage you to read it. It is important, it is Canadian, and it is good. I am even going to encourage you to forward the link to people you know.

Then I read this.

No matter what happens over the next few weeks the spirit of these discussions will not go away. Even the requirement that foreign journalists will need to apply for access to Tiananmen Square 24 hours in advance if they want to interview, broadcast or film in the plaza won’t turn this story off. (Intrepid journalists will, I believe, find people to interview, film, record and photograph at other venues. I’ve visited Tiananmen Square and it isn’t the only venue in Beijing where one can reasonably expect to find citizens milling about. It is, after all, a big city.)

It is just not possible, you see, to shut the Internet down. Nor can true public conversation be silenced. Shouts might become whispers but never silence.