PR Open Mic: Social Network for PR Students and Faculty Worldwide.

A new social network for PR students, faculty and practitioners has been launched!!! Robert French a social media-promoting PR professor at Auburn University, launched a social network for PR students and faculty called PR Open Mic. In his blog, Robert French says: "The site is built upon the Ning.com platform, so it has a sort of Facebook-like appeal. The difference? No ads. No apps sending you numerous emails. Just PR people. Hey, I like Facebook for connections, but to do what we wanted to do … a mashup of content in one place … we had to have our own platform, in my opinion."
So far, the network has been operating for 20 days and the biggest number of members = students. But, the fact that "big names" have signed up there as well (and this is just the start), makes this project very attractive, useful for all PR related to fall into step!
Phil Gomes, the Edelman Digital stalwart, has started a group called "Ask Phil." Rather than just answering questions, he produces videos! There have emerged different other groups - for European issues, for students for whom English is not their first language, for jobs and internships, student bloggers etc. Students can ask questions they are interested in. Surely, as a student I was also interested in opinions of specialists to such questions like "What do PR writers REALLY have to know about AP Style?" and "Maximizing PR when there really is no budget." The events section is getting loaded up with conference and podcamp info, job offers, notes, gadgets, widgets and nobody seems shy about uploading photos and videos! :)
People, who's articles and blogposts I have read, presentations on Euroblog I have heard and theories I have studied - have joined from the PR social space—Elizabeth Albrycht, Jeremy Pepper, Constantin Basturea, Kami Huse, Paull Young, Eric Eggertson, Richard Bailey...Dr. James E. Grunig, easily the single most prolific public relations researcher and publisher in the world (!!!) and David Meerman Scott, the author of "The New Rules of Marketing & PR," (I have been hunting for his book lately in Estonia) and, of course, the list goes on. I’m looking forward to interaction between these voices and those in the academic world!!!
To my opinion, such social network, if successful, is an awesome opportunity for developing PR community to have "a real taste and touch" of PR through online interaction rather than just looking at PR from far as we are used to looking at Mona Lisa in the Musée du Louvre.

Looking ahead: Google announces technology that searches tomorrow's web, today

Yeah, well, the technology develops! Isn't that a great thing? Now PR professionals will have additional online tool!
Google Australia today announced the launch of gDay™, a new beta search technology that will search web pages 24 hours before they are created. gDay was developed in Google's Sydney engineering centre and can accurately predict future events and internet content. It does this by using machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques from a system called MATE™ (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).

Using Google's index of historic, cached web content and a mashup of numerous factors including recurrence plots and fuzzy measure analysis, gDay creates a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now - including share price movements, sports results and news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of tomorrow's blogs and newspaper columns.
Then, to rank these future webpages in order of relevance, gDay uses a statistical extrapolation of a page's PageRank, called SageRank.
Only Australian websites are included in the beta.
But I think we can expect this feature soon all over the world!!!

Vidzeme University College Announces 10th Baltic International Summer School

Vidzeme University College announces that Baltic International Summer School this year will take place on August 1-17 in two Baltic countries – Latvia and Estonia. The focus of the school this year will be "Communication. Technologies. Integration." and it will gather motivated journalism, public relations, new media and mass communication students as well as other interested individuals from all over the world.

More information about the event as well as online application for students can be accessed here. It is also possible to apply for scholarships! One of the organizators of BISS 2008 has created a blog, where everyone is welcome to ask questions and comment.

Last summer, I was the participant of Baltic International Summer School 2007, the topic of the summer school was "The Future of Public Communication in the Age of New Media" and lecturers from the Baltics, Europe and the United States lead different classes and workshops. Dr. Cindy Price, lecturer at the University of Wyoming Department of Communications (United States), Mr. Richard Lining, Board Member of IPRA (United Kingdom), Janis Garancs, artist of multimedia (Latvia, Germany), Lauris Liberts, founder of internet portal ”Draugiem.lv” (Latvia) were only a few among the 16 lecturers and instructors.

After lectures students also had an opportunity to participate in practical hands-on workshops and produce a web site about the future of communication. Also various social activities were scheduled, for instance, field trips, sports evening, Baltic film evening, folk dance evening and international food party, also a visit to the Riga Gulf to experience the beauty of the Baltic coastline. We had an opportunity to participate in European Information Day, organized in conjunction with European Parliament Information Office in Riga. Participants could acquaint themselves about the communication issues of the European Parliament, meet members of the European Parliament and independent European issues expert. This was really my Absolutely Best Summer! Here's a video!