IABC NSW Chapter have announced a range of new events over June and July including a special lunch event on 19 June – Get the inside scoop from media guru John Mangos.

John Mangos has been a working journalist for more than thirty years. He has also developed a successful media training business with FD Third Person, working with executives at the highest level. He’s in the unique position to view the corporate message from both sides of the fence.

John will discuss where corporate communicators are getting it right and where they are getting it wrong in corporate communications. Is your message getting through? Are your audiences hearing you?

For bookings visit www.iabcnsw.com

Oh, our busy friends at Ragan are nothing if not prolific! With their social media site myragan.com, Ragan Report, and the peripheral newsletters Face-To-Face, Engagement Report, and the Lean Communicator, I have had to instigate ‘Ragan Rules’ filters on my email to manage the flow.

When the content is good, it tends to be excellent. There are at least a couple of items a week that warrant sharing with the extended communication team and that make useful thought starters with the managers and leaders I work with, including today’s piece on ragan.com that covers the 10 reasons you know you are not ready for social media in an organisation.

But, with volume comes variability. Today, I visited the Ragan folder and scanned the headlines from the week. The May edition of Face-to-Face, included a piece on the types of conversations adults want face to face, based on a “recent” survey.

The material had some potentially useful statistics, and I decided to go back to the source of the data. The survey by Itsasurvey.com was conducted in early 07 for whitepages.com and published over a year ago. That is a fairly loose definition of ‘recent’.

A nine month sabbatical is inexcusable in the world of social media. That amount of time is sufficient for new forms of media to be developed, launched, create headlines and become obsolete. The web is full of enough ‘abandoned’ blogs – so time to start the conversation again. I realise that I have not published anything to Meaning Business for that long.

In that time I have come across some great resources, read some rubbish and some insightful posts on other people’s blogs.

Last week, I presented to the 2008 Melcrum Employee Engagement Conference in Sydney http://www.melcrum.com/employeeengagement/au/dayone.html

To hear the professionals from a range of organisations, all facing similar challenges and meeting those challenges in diverse, creative and effective ways was refreshing.

That, along with the activity of the IABCNSW chapter has me ready to dip my toe back in the social media pond.

A synchronistic self-indulgent footnote:
Perhaps today is the right time to be starting to post again. As I write this on a Sunday evening the ads on TV have included a Toyota ‘means business’ end of financial year sale, one for the telstra networked home pushing facebook, and some other ad that included the word engagement twice.

Speak soon

Jonathan