Category Archives: IABC

FIR Interview: Chris Hall and Natasha Nicholson demonstrate IABC Discovery

Posted on June 18, 2010 at 10:21 pm UK

IABC – the International Association of Business Communicators – launched the beta version of the member-only service Discovery at the World Conference in Toronto, Canada, earlier this month.

iabcdiscovery According to the Discovery site, "Discovery is a powerful, new, online tool that will help you find the content you need – fast. More than a search engine, Discovery is a gateway to a vast array of business communication best practices, templates, research, how-to information and more. It’s your virtual library and librarian in one, taking just seconds to give you what you need."

In this FIR video interview, IABC’s Operations SVP and CIO Chris Hall and Publishing VP Natasha Nicholson offer a guided tour of Discovery at the IABC booth at the world conference.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

IABC 2010 conference underway

Posted on June 7, 2010 at 8:06 am UK

iabc2010 The IABC 2010 World Conference takes place in Toronto, Canada, this week, where an expected 1,400 communicators from around the world gather for four days of listening and learning.

Pre-conference events started yesterday – including, for the first time at an IABC event, an unconference session – and the actual conference runs until June 9.

The annual conference is a terrific event, a distinct highlight on any communicator’s professional development calendar. I remember the 2009 conference that I took part in as a valuable investment of my time. And a huge amount of fun.

Luckily, tech tools available means we can follow along (and contribute if we like) with some of the events via a variety of channels, notably:

  • #IABC10, the Twitter hashtag that captures all comment that includes the tag
  • In Session, the official conference blog, with great content including interviews (podcasts) with speakers and others

2010 also marks the 40th anniversary year of IABC’s foundation. I’ve been a member for just over half of that time and haven’t regretted a single instant.

“How well do you know IABC?” was an informal quiz for members recently. The 10 questions are posted publicly online if you want to check your own knowledge. The answers are there, too.

In the current issue of CW magazine, executive editor Natasha Nicholson pays tribute to IABC’s history, with a terrific conclusion:

[...] To continuously share that brilliant glimmer of light, to help others prevail over personal and professional hardships, to touch so many lives for 40 years—this is a true achievement for which we can all be proud.

Yes, happy birthday, IABC.

FIR Interview: Linda Johannesson and Christopher Swan on the IABC Unconference

Posted on May 31, 2010 at 9:57 pm UK

torontotalks For the first time, the IABC World Conference – set to begin this coming Sunday in Toronto, Canada – will be preceded by an unconference. Several online properties have been developed around the “Toronto Talks” unconference, including a central repository of information and interactivity at http://grou.ps/torontotalks. Here’s what the IABC website has to say about the unconference:

From the newest online social networks to the latest internal microblogging tools, social media are changing all the time. How does a communicator keep up? At the “2010 Unconference: Emerging Communication Channels,” attenders will come together for a series of collaborative sessions to share case studies, best practices and technology tips. It’s the wisdom of the crowd at its finest!

In this unconference, you will learn:

  • How to incorporate emerging communications programs into the larger communications mix
  • Why “shiny object syndrome” will lead you astray
  • How to use social media tools to strengthen internal communications

The unconference facilitators include Bryan Person, Jeremy Schultz, Christopher Swan and Linda Johannesson. In this FIR Interview, Johannesson and Swan discuss the origins of the conference and what attendees can expect.

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About our Conversation Partners

lindajohannesson Linda Johannesson is a strategist, marketer, communicator, brand champion, connector, relationship manager, blogger and social media advocate who believes that technology, innovation, conversation and community are essential in creating effective marketing and communication solutions.

My 20+ years of marketing and internal communications experience includes projects that showcase a trademark use of new media and emerging technologies. My portfolio includes a variety of professional service branding and integrated marketing campaigns, product/service launches, change management communications, website redesign, blog creation and management, and the development of project wikis, online discussion forums and personal learning networks.

christopherswan Christopher Swan is the Manager of Training & Communication, at The Walt Disney Company. He is responsible for training and employee communications, including intranets, branding, social media, and technology. Christopher has been devoted to reinventing intranets and core communication standards to empower employees and to change the corporate culture throughout Disney. Christopher’s excitement for information and the future drives his passion to make a positive footprint in all of his spaces.

FIR on Friendfeed
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

A conversation with Roger D’Aprix

Posted on August 29, 2009 at 7:33 pm UK

Roger D'Aprix A couple of days ago, I had the great pleasure of engaging in conversation with someone who has been a huge influence over the past twenty years in shaping a great deal of my thinking about organizational communication and employee engagement.

That ‘someone’ is Roger D’Aprix, a man who IABC named as “one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.” We have one coincidence in our professional lives in that we both worked for William M Mercer (as it was then called, today known simply as Mercer), the actuaries and human resources management consultants, at the same time in the early 1990s, on different sides of the Atlantic.

Among many things, Roger is the author of seven books, one of which – Communicating for Change: Connecting the Workplace with the Marketplace, published over a decade ago – is the business book I have referenced most in my professional life, even today.

So I was thrilled to be able to speak to Roger as co-host of Cafe2Go, the IABC podcast, for the August interview edition, which I’ve just published on the podcast blog.

If you’re involved in employee communication, I’m sure you’ll find the primary topic of our conversation pretty interesting.  Here’s the run-down of what we talked about in our 20-minute conversation:

[…] Among his many contributions to IABC is authorship of  The Face-to-Face Communication Toolkit: Creating an Engaged Workforce, the second edition of which has been published. The first edition, published in 2004, has been one of IABC’s best-selling publications.

In this interview, Roger talks with Cafe2Go co-host Neville Hobson, ABC, about the toolkit, what’s changed in the five years since the first edition, how the nature of face-to-face communication has changed in recent years especially with the advent of social media, tips on communication strategies to foster employee engagement and rebuild trust, plus some advice to those who say they have little or no time for face-to-face communication.

Worth a listen (click that link to retrieve the MP3, or you can listen right here with the Flash player at the top if you see it), even if you’re not involved in employee communication.

See what you can learn.

IABC employment survey paints mixed picture

Posted on July 31, 2009 at 9:17 am UK

jobs-discipline The results of the latest IABC member survey on employment issues carried out in June indicates that over 14% of members have lost their jobs in the last 12 months.

That’s a lot of people as the professional association currently counts 15,500 members worldwide, so if you project the figure out, it translates as about 2,170 members.

That’s an increase over the survey taken three months ago, when fewer than 11% of members reported losing their job in the last 12 months, and it’s well above the average unemployment rates in major markets in North America and Europe.

Is it a worrying trend? Hard to say as the survey results page on the IABC website (sorry, access to members only) is a bit sparse on detail, eg, what type of communicators were the respondents, geography, etc. 154 members took part: is that a representative figure to draw any credible conclusions from in a bigger-picture way?

Still, two quarters in a row of increasing unemployment among members sure looks like a trend, and no doubt would be one if a jump is shown in the next survey.

Here are the headline figures:

  • 14.29% of members surveyed said they’d lost their jobs in the past 12 months. (The survey doesn’t indicate how they lost their jobs, eg, redundancy, acquisition, employer or own firm going out of business, etc.)
  • If 28.67% said they were looking for a new job, nearly 73% of everyone surveyed said they were not looking for a new one.
  • Of those who were looking, 43% said they had found a new job during the past 12 months.

IABC is the International Association of Business Communicators, a not-for-profit international network of professionals committed to improving the effectiveness of organizations through strategic interactive and integrated business communication management. It’s headquartered in San Francisco and has members in nearly100 countries.

Many members are highly active online, notably on Twitter (and @IABC, the official presence).

I’ve been an IABC member since 1989.