Lessons Learned From the Obama Campaign
Now that I’ve been back in D.C. for a few weeks after the PRSA 2009 International Conference, I finally find myself sitting down to reflect on a couple of the sessions I attended. This is mostly because I wanted to be able to do so thoughtfully, and not rush through my posts.
The first of these was “President Obama and the Citizens’ Campaign: Lessons Learned,” which was conducted by Mike Smith of Mike Smith Public Affairs. Leave it to a PRSA conference all the way across the country to be the place where Mike and I finally met “in real life (IRL),” even though we both live and work in the D.C. area. Ain’t that somethin’? (By way of disclosure, you should know that Mike’s firm was a sponsor of #shonalitweetup, which was a ton of fun that weekend.)
Since Mike graciously agreed to have his presentation, President Obama and the Citizen’s Campaign, reproduced here, I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow description. I will tell you that his presentation was standing room only, at least until the latter half of his session. When it came time for the workshop part of his program, he broke us up into four groups to discuss an assigned topic, and report back to the entire room. There was a beeline for the door when he announced this; I kid you not. C’mon, PR peeps, where’s your sense of adventure?!
What was Interesting? Well. . .
- It was interesting learning about Mike’s experience as a citizen journalist during the Obama campaign. There were some great examples about building communities and letting them run (which is a concept that, in my opinion, nonprofits know how to do particularly well).
- Actresses, no matter how well trained they are on messaging, can sometimes let blatant honesty shine through. Mike gave the example of an interview he conducted with Anne Hathaway where she admitted she doesn’t know anything about Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
- One of the most interesting parts of the program was when we were put in breakout groups (I’ll get to that later).
Tweetupin’ a Storm in San Diego
Disclosure: no one’s asked me to write this post, and I’m sure not getting paid for it, but I do thank sponsors of a certain event coming up. Now that you know all that… read on.
I don’t know what’s gotten into everyone lately, it’s tweetup this, tweetup that… oh wait, it’s that whole thing about moving your online relationships offline. My bad.
So in a few days, when I head to San Diego for PRSA 2009, I have not one, not two, but four tweetups to try to attend… and three of them are on the same day. Wow. We PR people sure like to party.
The one I’m doing a shameless plug for, though, is #shonalitweetup. Yup, you read that right. Before you start throwing rotten eggs at me, I didn’t come up with the name (I’m not that egotistical… I don’t think…). Here’s how it happened:
When I knew I was going to be in San Diego for PRSA09, I wanted to make sure I’d be able to meet up with some of my friends. A certain Jen Wilbur (who appropriately uses @rockstarjen as her Twitter handle) took on the unappetizing task of organizing it and next thing I know – she christened it with my name.
Filed under Networking, Shonali Burke, Social Media, Speaking, Twitter | Tags: dna13, downtownrob, eric leist, jennifer mitchell, jennifer wilbur, lauren vargas, mspa, natalie joy, nick lucido, prnewswire, prsa09, richandcreamy, tressalynne, tweetup, Twitter | Comments (10)
