Countdown to Women of Vision - T-24

 Well here we are. It is 24 hours until the Anita Borg Women of Vision Awards.  So what are the last minute things a marketing person does the day before a major event.  Here's my list:

1.  A flurry of emails and a confernce call with my PR person, Denise Nelson ofVentana Public Relations. Denise has done an amazing job - we have a dozen journalists from both print and online media attending the event.   She did the reminders to the media and we finished our checklist.  We also crafted our day after press release.  So while the rest of our team takes a well deserved day off, the next day I'll be working with Denise to finish our press release and get our photos out to the news media.  My day off will be Friday.

2. I finished our press kits yesterday - these are handouts for the media that include info on ABI, the press releases and information for them on how to get photographs of the winners and our keynote speaker after the event.

3.  Loading the cars - we spent some time making sure everything on our checklist was packed up and the cars were loaded and went off to the Convention Center.  I made sure the collateral box for our collateral table was fully stuffed and we also made sure the signs, awards and gifts all made it too.

4.  Checked in with our printer - the delivery of our programs and new signs was confirmed for tomorrow morning at 10.  The courier will be there and set up will commence.

5.  Staff meeting this morning included an extended briefing on the event.  I talked about our media presence and instructed our staff what to do if broadcast media appeared. You always want to be sure the soundbyte is given by someone who will have the most impact with the media whenever possible - the CEO, the Keynote, the award winners.

6.  Made sure we are all systems go for uploading all the WOV videos I created with Total Media Group are ready to go up on Facebook on Thursday morning.  Everything is all set up in my computer.

7.  Made sure we were all set with our big announcement for Thursday morning. You'll have to check out our website then for more info.

8.  Finished working with our AV folks on our slides for the event - only 7 but we had to make sure they looked good on the big screen.

Heading home to get a good night's sleep.  Stay tuned for the followup on Thursday.  I'll publish some links then.

Media Relations Summit: The New Newsweek

Last week, while at the Media Relations Summit, I attended a panel on how to pitch to the major news magazines - Time, Newsweek and Businessweek. It was an interesting panel. It rapidly became clear to me that the only news magazine that I would probably get coverage for ABI was Businessweek. This was in large part because they covered us previously and we have a relationship, the other part was because they were interested in covering news related to business and technology - our sector.

I am a longtime reader of Time and Newsweek and have subscriptions to both. I started getting Newsweek several years ago when my friend Kathy got a buy one get a gift subscription free deal from Newsweek and gifted me with it. It's now one of my annual Christmas gifts (my sister gives me Martha Stewart Living and I now have a friend who is giving me People Magazine - great gifts all of them). I started Time last year because they made me a great offer - 1 year for $15 - such a ridiculously good deal I couldn't refuse. And I'm lucky to work in HP Labs where I get to read Businessweek in the library which is just feet from my desk.

During the conference the speaker from Newsweek spent his time, not speaking about how to get stories into Newsweek, but rather how Newsweek has reinvented itself. It has become in large part a think piece type magazine. There will be more essays and reporters views on the news rather than covering the news itself. He spoke about the redesign of the magazine and how it was making the magazine more relevant and readable. The trouble with a magazine of think pieces and essays from my perspective,as the person promoting ABI, is that there isn't much room for coverage of a study done on underrepresented minorities in technology. In the new publication there are about 10 small articles up front - each about a column long that cover the week's news. The rest was all essays - which looked remarkably consistent at exactly a page long with nary a picture for several sections. The one extended article this week was on the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street which was quite good.

I recognize that each magazine must follow its own path but as a reader I'm disappointed in the new Newsweek (I didn't like new Coke either). I know that with the age of the Internet and instant news and 24 hour news networks, that the news magazines have to change to remain relevant and offer an alternate perspective on the news. But I miss the CW which highlighted what was in and out that week, the one page of odd celebrity gossip (always amusing and quirky itself), the short articles on happenings in odd corners of the country - the crime articles always made me go scrambling to the net to read more details since I do love a mystery and I'm fascinated by how crime impacts a community. And as someone who spends a lot of time proofreading - I'm not loving the font. They did preserve Perspectives - the mixture of quotes and cartoons from the weeks news - but the page seems oddly washed out and less readable.

Still I will continue to give them a chance - I have months left on my subscription and a few of the essays were somewhat interesting though I didn't find them as riveting as the more hard news articles that were on the pages just a few weeks ago.

Media Relations Conference; The Keynotes

I've spent the last three days at the Media Relations Summit that was put on by Bulldog Reporter. There's a lot that has taken place in the last few days so I will be doing multiple posts about my time at the event.
This first post is about the two keynotes for Day 1, Dan Rather, Former anchorman of CBS News, and for Day 2, Dan Abrams, from CNBC. And you couldn't have any more different speeches.

Dan Rather, who I remember seeing as a kid when he was a correspondent from Vietnam, was a perfect speaker. He was beautifully prepared - telling two very funny stories that bookended his talk. His talk focused around Speaking Truth to Power and the need for everyone to support a strong and independent media. The media remains an additional check in the system of checks and balances. He spoke of how he discovered that Richard Nixon's White house attempted to pressure William Paley of CBS to stop the investigation of Watergate by CBS. CBS stood firm. Contrast this with the way today's much weaker media, confronted with a punitive FCC failed to followup on things like why we were going to war in Iraq.

Dan Rather spoke for over an hour, graciously answered our questions in a Q&A session and received an enthusiastic standing ovation.

Today's keynote was quite different. Dan Abrams spoke about his formation of a new firm, Abrams Research which hires freelance journalists to consult with companies on media strategy. It seems that this is an issue fo great controversy and Mr. Abrams seems to think that everyone in the room was strongly disapproving of this action - and that we considered him some sort of axis of evil - a lawyer, a journalist and gasp - perhaps worst of all -a media strategist. His talk, also an hour, was very up and down in tone. I felt like we were getting some very odd kind of sales pitch. That since other journalists (those not laid off that had full time jobs) were somehow disapproving of people hiring their former peers - people who have lost their jobs in media and needing a job - he had to explain why his firm was great. I can't help but feel he was giving some bad information. Few people in the room were aware of his firm, and far fewer seemed to care about the issues he was raising. We gained little insight from his talk and sadly no inspiration.

I will treasure getting to see Dan Rather. As for Abrams, I'll look forward to seeing him in the pages of Us Magazine at the hair dresser when he is shown out and about with Renee Zellewegger. A better talk might have been how it feels to go from being a reporter chasing the news to being a celebrity consort being endlessly chased by the paparazzi.

Check Out My Guest Blog on Non Profit Conversations

One of the great ways to increase visibility is to do writing as a guest blogger, guest columnist, etc. It's a great way to gain access to a different audience. I wrote a blog post this week for NonProfit Conversations. The blog post was all about how the Anita Borg Institute launched a new program - Savvy Geek Chix. Enjoy.

Nonprofit Conversation - http://nonprofitconversation.blogspot.com/

The 10 Day Event Countdown

When doing a program the final 10 days are probably the absolute craziest. That's when your plan either comes together or falls apart. We're in the 10 day countdown to Women of Vision and as Hannibal used to say on the A-Team - I love it when a plan comes together. I can't talk to the other parts of the plan but the Marketing plan has come together beautifully.

• The ads are done, the print program is finalized, the proof copy has been slightly tweaked (one ad looked a little dark in the print run), and the printer has 10 full days to get the printing done - piece of cake for 680 24 page programs. This is weeks of work by multiple companies and it is finished.
• The videos are in final review. The winner videos look terrific, the soundtrack sounds good and we will make that deadline.
• The PR firm has kicked in and are doing the outreach - inviting local and national print, radio, tv news and online media to the event. We already have two media people coming so the hope is more will come.
• All the signs are with the designer except for our one last minute item - the seating chart. Signage is usually done last since it is quick to produce and so forgiving when you need to make last minute changes. We actually had all the sign content to the printer on Friday.

So does this mean I get to relax this week? Sadly no, still to be done - the post event press release, finishing the event script and doing the run through, prepping the photographer who'll be doing the shots at the event. But I can say we're in better shape than last year.