VirginiaMiddleton.ca | Category Archives: communication

The boss was calling

Posted on February 19, 2014 Posted in 2014, Baby, communication, Parenting, PR, Random, Silly .

Image credit: Babble On Communications

EMPLOYEE REPORT:
Last night my current boss decided to call an emergency meeting.

It seems she was rather upset with some internal documents and needed them dealt with right away. Having a passion for crisis communications, I knew I wouldn’t let her down.

After some troubleshooting with my team member, we set into motion what we thought would help de-escalate the situation.

Afterwards, the boss asked me to stay behind to discuss some internal restructuring she was recently made aware of.

Continue reading →

Is Your Cow Purple?

Posted on September 25, 2010 Posted in 2010, books, communication, Marketing, PR .

I’m finally finding time to read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. I’m about a third of the way through and really enjoying it.

Hoping it can inspire me to think of new ways of marketing and communicating the exciting things happening in our faculty.

Some learnings thus far:

The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken – it’s no longer remarkable when you do it. In other words – if someone else has done it, it doesn’t matter if you have lots of money to promote it and advertise… you’ll never have that same original and unique feel as the one who came first. You have to make sure what you offer is different in a significant and better way (a game changer).
Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new. This speaks for itself…
Ideas that spread are more likely to succeed than those that don’t. I call ideas that spread, ideaviruses. LOVE this concept! Also love his analagy that the people who help spread your ideavirus are called sneezers.

That’s all for now until I read more. So what are YOUreading right now? Anything on your bookshelf or on a wish list you’ve been meaning to get started on?

That Thing You Have

Posted on September 24, 2010 Posted in 2010, communication, Dilbert, MR, PR .

After meeting me, the average person isn’t surprised to learn that I work in communications or that I’m someone who enjoys public relations and media relations…

Perhaps it has something to do with not getting ride of that thing I have. LOL

I <3 Dilbert. There have some recent comics on social media that I’ll be posting up here and commenting on. Perhaps on the weekend.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig

Posted on June 22, 2009 Posted in communication, NL, Photography, PR .

My husband and I are in St. John’s, Nfld. until June 29. One of my closest friends is getting married and I’m her Matron of Honour. We’ve been friends since we were 12 and have been through a lot together. Darleen and Mark’s wedding is going to be so much fun with lots of friends and family together celebrating.

This is going to be a rather busy week for us, but hopefully there will be time to relax here and there. I’ll be helping Darleen with various wedding things and of course helping her to stay relaxed before her big day. The bachelorette happened this past weekend and wow, we had a hell of a time! If you’re ever stuck at a party for a game that involves a lot of people, seriously consider playing Dirty Pictionary. Trust me, everyone will have fun and be laughing all night long.

During the bachelorette, I also incorporated some video into the evening that involved the groom. Normally at a bachelorette, you’ll ask the bride questions about her groom and for every question she gets wrong, she has to drink. In my past experiences, a groom normally answers these questions by email or sits down with a bridesmaid and answers them before the party. I decided to take it up a notch and instead video the groom’s responses the day before so that we could play them for Darleen after she provided an answer. There were some technical difficulties that came up (and caused me a lot of stress!) but it all worked out in the end (mainly because one of the groom’s sisters is awesome and provided on-site tech support). I also set up my new point-and-shoot, a Canon Powershot SD970 IS, on a tripod and videoed Darleen answering the questions. I’m hoping my friend Steve can help me edit the videos to mash up both Mark and Darleen’s answers to be something fun they can watch together.

I love coming home to visit. Newfoundland will always be my “home” no matter where I live. It’s hard to explain, but there’s just something about being here that puts your soul at easy and leaves you feeling connected to the land.

On Saturday, Darleen the bride, along with two of the other bridesmaids, Stacey and Sabrina, and I took the bride out to spend the day doing some fun things before the Bachelorette. We went out for lunch and then headed out to Logy Bay to visit Memorial University’s Marine Institute. This is a beautiful area, but you have to be so careful if you try to go near the water. It looks lovey and you want to go down on the rocks and get close to the crashing waves, but if you get swept up or slip and fall in, it’s unlikely anyone will find your body.

At the Institute, they have seals (four to be exact) and you can come and watch them play and splash around. We didn’t stay long because it started to get cool, but I was able to grab some decent photos with my Canon 55-250mm lens. It’s a great zoom lens for the price and I’ve been able to use it in a number of situations (including last year when my husband was Dragon Boating).

We have exactly one week left here and I plan to take a lot of photos and possibly video as well.

Speaking of video, I recently created my first video that ideally will be part of a continuing series. Feel free to take a look and provide feedback and suggestions. I’m also planning to try and get some footage while I’m home to have for future use and probably another video.

ADMB

Posted on April 18, 2009 Posted in communication, PR, technology .

Abbreviations Drive Me Bonkers!

No doubt I’m not the first person to feel this way, but when abbreviations are used without an explanation at all, how is a mere observer or reader who has stumbled upon the scene suppose to understand?

Example: I was on Ravelry and came across a pattern that referred to a shawl KAL (it’s one of the most popular patterns right now). Huh? “KAL”? What the hell is that? After a thorough Google search, I finally found out that it means “knit along”. Now that’s all fine and good, but I’m more annoyed that I had to actively search for a term and felt helpless and confused when I first read the term (until I used the magical power of teh tubes).

As someone who is in Public Relations, I know the importance of communicating your message to a broad audience. And that’s when jargon often comes out to play and mess around, especially in the corporate world or a focused industry. At work, we often make references to my office’s SLT (Senior Leadership Team), but anyone outside of our organization usually looks at me bewildered when I ramble on about “I read an article on *insert topic* and sent on info to the SLT to keep them in the loop”.

Back to the knitting example above – I suppose one could argue that because I was in a very focused community (we’re all knitters and/or crocheters) that I should be aware of the common terms. And the counter argue is that in the many months I’ve been on Ravelry, I’ve never heard of a knit along shawl (or anything like it). Not to mention that I only started knitting about a hear and a half ago, so I still consider myself to relatively new to the craft. Heck, I’ve only ventured into crochet in the last month (so I’m a total newbie!).

I will admit that sometimes it’s a lot easier to say a few letters than it is to garble out a mouthful of words that may seem commonly used, but for anyone who is new to the scene, they could bet thinking “WTH (what the hell) does that mean?!” and are probably not even listening to the rest of the conversation.

There’s also room for misinterpretation. OK I’ll confess… for months, when I first saw “FTW” I thought it was “f*%&-the what?” Alright, go ahead and laugh, I understand. I just thought it was a play on l33t speak and a fun way to express confusion; as if your taking WTH or WTF to a higher level of exclamation. For anyone wondering, FTW means “for the win” which is still within the nerd-l33t genre.

So the next time you’re writing or talking to a group of people, try to remember that there may be a reader or attendee who has NO idea what those few letters you just spewed our mean. By spelling it out (literally!) you may have a better chance of someone saying “wow I see your points that’s really interesting *continues conversation and you get into a deep discussion*” instead of “um yeah, that’s… ah, interesting *insert changing of the subject*”.