Women of Vision - the Aftermath

So one of the major things after any event is the PR cleanup. And boy was there a lot of clean up last week.  Let me start by saying Women of Vision was an enormous success.  We had a record breaking number of attendees, all our speakers did a tremendous job and I had the great pleasure of being Arianna Huffington's handler throughout the event. 

I was very glad that in a previous position I had the opportunity to work with celebrities so I was prepared for all the contingencies.  Arianna was lovely to work with - well prepared, charming and so happy to help us with photographs, etc.  Her speech was a crowd pleaser. 

Our three winners were all amazing.  I was a bit stunned that all three chose to wear red and black but it looks great in all the photos.  Arianna had shared her talk's theme of embracing risk prior to the event and I'd notified the three winners.  Each of them talked from her own perspective about embracing risk, and making a difference in the world. 

Post event the work continued. I actually went home and did a final review of the newsletter we were issuing the next day since it was part of the launch of our Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award.  I also fixed a few glitches along the way.

Then Thursday began the work with the press.  We had 11 press people attend Women of Vision. The next day was spent working on our post event press release then issuing it to the 11 press people along with a picture of Arianna and the winners.  The press release itself went out the following morning. The coverage has been amazing - San Jose Mercury News, Forbes, Silicon Valley Watcher all wrote about the event and more are still pending.  We also posted the winners biographical videos on youtube so they could be linked to as well from the press release.

This week the work continues - I'll be editing the footage from the event and getting it back to our editors so we'll be able to launch the videos on Youtube in our next newsletter.  I'm also waiting for the photos to come in so we can distribute them to the media as well as our sponsors, Arianna, the winners, etc.  And of course we're tracking the coverage as it comes in.

I'd like to thank a few people who make my job possible - Megan McKenna from Total Media Group; Denise Nelson from Ventana Public Relations, Dang Le from Jungle Digital Printing and Alex Atkins from Alexander Atkins Design.  These are the folks who make everything possible in doing the marketing for our events. I couldn't do it without them. 

Marketing: Saying Goodbye to Publications

I've noticed in the past few months that I've been saying goodbye to a lot of publications and as a reader and a marketer that makes me sad. Here is a short list of just a few that we've lost:

• San Jose Magazine - I subscribed when I first moved to the Bay Area - I didn't feel it was really my taste since it focused on the more luxury market but it was a great magazine to learn more about what was going on in this area.
• Pink Magazine - Pink did a great job celebrating women leaders - ABI was mentioned in it in an article about Helen Greiner. The editors were nice enough to send me a file copy when I couldn't get it in the stores here. Distribution is a major thing and a women's business magazine didn't seem to fly. The Magazine also did a great Best Companies for Women to work for listing.
• Memories - my crazy little scrapbooking/card making magazine. I loved reading it for ideas of things to make. Since I did actually subscribe I found their method for fulfilling my subscription - giving me access to some other magazine online was very frustrating since they never send reminders that the new issue is available.
• PCWorld.ca - who've covered ABI several times. They sent a lovely note to their online subscribers and directed us to other online newsletters. It's just sad to see some great people losing their jobs.

What do they all have in common? All 4 are niche magazines? Will niche pubs survive? Perhaps not. Online and print magazines face the same thing - shrinking advertising budgets, shrinking subscribers.

So what does this all mean? In hard times some companies survive and others don't and the same is true for the media. I know that personally I have taken a very long hard look at all the magazines that come into my house - and there are quite a few. I have taken note of what I read right away and what linger in piles for weeks and months before being read. The ones that linger are not being renewed, the ones that I consume immediately are getting my dollars. So what magazines are you cutting out of your mailbox and what have you noticed disappearing?