We Baby Boomers are benefiting significantly from the gig economy, says author, speaker and optimist Tim Drake. Not just as consumers by it providing lower prices and more convenience, but as participants too. It’s an important bolt-on to something bigger, he says, enabling new ways of doing business to emerge, and a fresh outlook on what ‘work’ is. But is it something we should think about taking a much more active role in? Baby Boomers fit into what I call …
Category: Books
One of the things I like most about The Fourth Transformation, the new book from Shel Israel and Robert Scoble published in December 2016 that I just finished reading, is the way in which it will help you to join up the dots and begin to understand the fundamental, disruptive and accelerating changes we already see around us brought by advances in technology – notably, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) – and massive shifts in …
In a few weeks’ time, the next episode in the Star Wars saga will be in the cinema. I already have my tickets and can’t wait to see it! It’s hard to imagine sometimes that the very first Star Wars film – what’s now known as “Episode 4: A New Hope” – in the Star Wars series was released in 1977, nearly 40 years ago. I was at the opening night in London. Before that, though, I’d read the book, …
#FuturePRoof, a crowdsourced book and community with the bold ambition of asserting the value public relations has, launched today. The book aims to kick start the biggest conversation ever about the future of public relations. It is available as a free download and printed copies are priced £25.99 from Blurb. Edited and curated by public relations consultant and agency owner Sarah Hall, with a foreword from Ketchum’s chief engagement officer Stephen Waddington, the 33-chapter book covers a wide range of …
Last week, a new version of #PRstack, a publication whose content was created by more than 30 contributors, was published. It’s the second edition of a highly-acclaimed guide and resource that was first published in May 2015. It comprises a series of case studies by PR practitioners exploring modern aspects of PR practice in over 40 examples of tools used in public relations, content marketing, and search engine optimization. From the ebook’s foreword written by Stephen Waddington, who started #PRstack: …
Books on politics and political issues rarely capture my attention or my imagination. During the past decade, I have read just three books about politics, all biographies – Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Probably great fodder for Freudians who’d like to pop me in a pigeon-hole. Good luck with that! My own self-analysis of why these works did attract me tells me that each addresses times and experiences of significant change and, indeed, upheavals in society, in political …
Robert Phillips stunned the PR agency world when he walked away from his prestigious position as CEO of Edelman EMEA. Phillips explains his decision in Trust Me, PR is Dead, in which he calls for an end to the PR industry and advocates instead for a new model of public leadership (as the replacement for PR) and public value (the role of corporations which, Phillips believes, need to adopt a reinvented kind of capitalism that focuses as much on contributing …
Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News is CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis‘ latest book, exploring the pressures on current news models and the directions news organizations need to go in order to thrive in the digital world. FIR co-host Shel Holtz reviews the book, which has implications for organizational communicators, particularly in imagining the role of media relations in the future Jarvis imagines. From the book description on Amazon: Technology has disrupted the news industry – its relationships, …
The Mobile Mind Shift: Engineer Your Business to Win in the Mobile Moment provides the first comprehensive overview of what it takes to develop mobile resources that accommodate the growing expectations of users who increasingly turn first to mobile devices. FIR co-host Shel Holtz reviews the book written by three Forrester Research analysts: Ted Schadler, technology analyst; Josh Bernoff, senior vice president of Idea Development; and Julie Ask, mobile analyst. From the book description on Amazon: “Mobile has reprogrammed your …
