Concise Bio:

Neville Hobson, ABC, is a communicator, blogger, podcaster and Second Life explorer, one of the leading European early adopters and influencers in social media communication for business.

He is an accredited communication practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in public and media relations, marketing communication, employee, compensation and benefits communication as well as investor and financial relations. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals.

Throughout his career, he has been a passionate advocate for new and emerging technology tools and channels and how they can be deployed as highly-effective agents of change in better aligning organizational needs with the marketplace and the needs of employees, customers and other stakeholders.

Neville blogs at NevilleHobson.com with commentary and opinion on business, communication and technology, and co-presents “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” (www.forimmediaterelease.biz), a twice-weekly business podcast at the intersection of online communication, business and technology, which he began with Shel Holtz in January 2005.

Neville is currently based in Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Neville offers a range of services to companies in the broad area of social media for business. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, seminars and other public professional development events on the subject of social media communication and its effective use in organizational communication (see list of current speaking engagements).

Detail:

I first started a weblog in 2002. It wasn’t until July 2004 that I really got an idea of what I wanted to do with it, which is to talk primarily about business communication and technology - my twin passions - and stimulate some interesting conversations and discussions, in this blog and elsewhere.

So I started NevOn with daily commentary and opinion on business communication and technology. Many of the posts I wrote there (and write here now) are syndicated through WebProNews, the ebusiness news service, part of the iEntry network.

I no longer write at NevOn which is now the archive of my blogging and conversations from December 2002 until February 2006.

I’m British and I’ve lived and worked in Europe (Western, Central and Eastern), the Middle East and Latin America. I’ve worked for large and small companies, and for myself, in communication management consulting and in the software industry. I returned to the UK in October 2006 after being based in Amsterdam, one of Europe’s great cities, since 1999.

I’m a communication practitioner with a passion for technology, focusing my knowledge of and experience with current, new and emerging technology tools and channels to help companies build dynamic relationships with customers, employees, shareholders and other key audiences and influencers.

In addition, I research emerging communication technologies, and engage with companies, journalists, industry analysts, business bloggers and other influencers. I work in close collaboration with like-minded communication practitioners in Europe and the USA in helping people understand the true value propositions of such technologies for organizations as strategic communication tools and channels.

Activity highlights:

• In January 2005, I joined my friend and fellow communicator Shel Holtz, who’s based in California, to launch a business podcast, the first in the communication profession. Called For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, our bi-weekly show includes comment and opinion on topical communication, business and technology issues. ‘For Immediate Release’ is now a podcast series with separate occasional podcasts for interviews, book reviews and events such as seminars and conferences.
• In March 2005, I co-founded Blogging Planet together with fellow communicators Elizabeth Albrycht, Guillaume du Gardier and Christof Ducamp, who are based in Paris. Our goal was to provide counsel and training to organizations in Europe and the United States on how to effectively adopt new communication tools such as business blogging, wikis, RSS and podcasts. But in October 2005, we dissolved Blogging Planet. We had sound reasons; you can read why in “The alliance is dead… Long live the alliance.”
• In October 2005, I joined the Society for New Communications Research, a California-based non-profit think tank, as a founding Advisory Board member and Research Fellow (see the launch press release). (I receive no financial compensation for my affiliation with SNCR.)
• I’m a member of the Corante Network Marketing Hub which aggregates the thinking of some 20 of the most innovative business people blogging today.
• In October 2006, a new marketing company was launched in Second Life. Headed by Joseph Jaffe, that company is called crayon, LLC. I was one of the founding principals, originally there as a Vice President of New Marketing. I left crayon in June 2007.
• In June 2007, “How To Do Everything With Podcasting” was published by McGraw-Hill. This is a 360-page ‘how-to’ book, written by Shel Holtz and I, that covers planning, recording, editing, distributing, marketing, building community, monetization, and a host of other topics about podcasting. See the companion website for more information).

I spend a bit of time in the three-dimensional online world of Second Life, which I joined at the beginning of 2006. My in-world identity is Jangles Junot (that’s me in the picture).

Virtual worlds like Second Life present enormous potential for business, something I write about in this blog at times and speak about at conferences and in conversations with companies.

I’m constantly on the look-out for interesting things to get involved with, so if you have something interesting you’d like to talk about, do let me know. This blog, and my one of historical record I mentioned earlier, will give you a good sense of the kinds of things I’m interested in.

I devise and run workshops and seminars for companies, among other things. You can see what I currently offer businesses from a consulting point of view on the services page.

In addition, I’m a frequent speaker on the subject of social media communication and its effective use in organizational communication. My list of speaking engagements has information on events I am speaking at in 2008.

I’m an active and committed member of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), my professional association. I’ve served IABC and the profession in a range of formal leadership roles since 1989, most recently (2002-2004) as Regional Director in Europe and member of the Executive Board and Executive Committee. I do other more informal things for IABC, eg, co-produce the monthly Cafe2Go podcasts and, in 2005-2007, the ConferenceCast conference podcasts.

English is my native language / también hablo español fluentemente / ein bisschen deutsch / en een beetje nederlands.

For more details about my professional background presented in a formal CV-type fashion, see my profile.

If you’d like to talk, do get in touch anytime.

[Updated: May 13, 2008]

The photo at the top of the page is by Fabrice Robin. Taken in Dublin, May 9, 2008.