You might have noticed where I put on my nappy-head and moaned about bloggers being told not to blog/film at the SECC in Glasgow for the Scottish Baby Show.

Now, I should shrug it off, but you know what? I can’t. Not out of any perceived slight to me but when you look at the list of businesses going, some of them are small companies who will have paid good money to go there and get all the exposure (and sales) possible.

But more importantly there’s some potentially life-saving organisations going and by blocking the likes of bloggers and tweeters doing what they like to do (to one of the most active online brigades there is) you are stopping potential avenues for these people getting their message out, saving lives, alleviating pain (like the Scottish Cot Death Trust, Scottish Childminding Association, Pelvic Instability Network and The Meningitis Association of Scotland).

And that makes me sad. And angry.

So for them – and for anyone else ever putting on an event – here’s simple, easy pointers and advice on how you should engage digitally. None of this is tricky or hard. With some planning, it’s easy to do and shouldn’t cost a lot. I hope it helps

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This is certainly different. The main agencies in Belgium have put their websites on strike as a protest over the ridiculous amount of pitching – and the numbers of agencies invited along. Talk about digital communication.

It’s a different approach, good luck to them – but would never work here because someone would stab the others in the back to get the work – but what do others think? I like the fact that they are trying to be sensible and get a charter out of it, but when did sensible and advertising/PR/marketing ever come together?

And yes, inviting 10 or so agencies along to pitch is just nuts, but what’s a sensible limit?

We announced it last Friday in Business7 but now it’s time to go wider with it: to combat the rip-off companies and the phonies out there who claim to be the Google Ranking masters or social media gurus we’re launching a £1000 traditional and digital/social media PR package aimed at getting Scottish businesses online and benefitting from 21st Century communications.

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As part of Aye Write, The Herald is putting on charging for an event called The Future of Media. But when you look at the panel of speakers, it’s anything but. In fact it’s more Aye, Wrong than an Aye Write…

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Proper write-up soon for the Scottish Social Media Dinners, but here’s some dates that may prove of interest:

• Feb 17 – Glasgow – Politicians and Social Media. MPs, MSPs and councillors from all parties talk about digital engagement.
• End of March – Edinburgh – topic to be announced.
• April 21 – Glasgow – Podcasts Matter. One of America’s most popular podcasters and two of Scotland’s best talk about podcasting and share tips.
• April – Dundee – Gaming and Social Media – more details to be announced in April.

Also, a website for the Scottish Social Media Dinners will be going live this week – www.ssmd.biz.

Trying this as an experiment as some people said they didn’t fancy food as part of the Scottish Social Media Dinners. So, there’s a range of tickets, priced at £10. These tickets will only gain you entry to the event, nothing else. You’ll still get to hear the Daily Record’s award-winning digital editor Iain Hepburn, Daily Dust Supremo Ewan Spence and just-launched Caledonian Mercury editor Stewart Kirkpatrick.

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No need to spam reporters, this is the email address for PRs wanting to reach the Caledonian Mercury. Or you can pitch via Twitter.

It’s a never-ending battle: journalists v PRs. On both sides, many a person claims to be harassed by the other while many others on both sides keep making mistakes in communicating (it’s not really that hard – the communicating or, sadly, the mistake making), but this list by Bristol Editor (which is a thumpingly good blog) shows one of the great errors that journalists often make in their ‘let me tell the PRs how the world works’ in that they don’t understand a lot of PR – some through ignorance, some through having no experience of the other side of the fence.

Anyway, I’m going to go through the list, offering some observation and if anyone ever compiles the three million blog posts and articles that have been written on this topic, perhaps it may help.

Many of the points are fair, I don’t doubt it’s been written with a sincere desire to improve communications and should be taken on board by PRs, but it shows three failings:

• An understanding that journalists are no longer the sole providers/outlets of news
• A lack of understanding of what PRs do.
• In parts it comes across as incredibly smug and arrogant, which is probably not the point but tone is important.

Anyway, it hasn’t been written to start a flame war or anything like that, but perhaps in 2010, PRs and journalists can understand each other a bit better and we can get rid of lists like this, along with the incessant ‘why social media rulz’ postings.

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The Register posts a very good comment piece about the Google/China spat, making some observations – including a note about the PR of the actual ‘we’re not censoring anymore’ but the main thing that stuck out was this:

Amnesty International was among the human rights organisations scrambling to congratulate Google for threatening to pull out of China today.

Which just shows how much human rights activists know about technology. Come to think of it, if human rights campaigners did know more about technology, they might think twice about using Gmail accounts.

Which ties in with what I said here when asking why the human rights people weren’t using the likes of PGP in Google’s China PR spat.

Article is well worth a read. Well done to El Reg.

Quick summary: Google and China are having a spat over allegations of hacking, with (quite likely) claims that the PRC – or representatives of the PRC – have been involved in the hacking of human right’s activist email accounts. But the way Google has played this has been a fantastic piece of online PR and turning a negative message positive because:

• it’s managed to lessen the impact on the fact that email accounts have been hacked (and are therefore insecure)
• it’s diminished the fact that Google has been censoring what it does in China for years
• it gives Google an excuse to leave a market where it isn’t the number one search engine

But the human rights campaigners have shown themselves to be complete idiots while China won’t give a damn about the row…

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