Voce’s very own Mike Manuel, better known as Media Guerrilla, became a “hitchhiker” in San Francisco today.  (Well not really, but he did present as part of a panel presentation at PRSA San Francisco’s most recent meeting.)  The session was called: "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blog Universe."  Although quite a lofty name, the session delved into the changing role blogs have offered communication practitioners and also examined challenges for legal and other audiences.  Other panelists included: Todd Friedman, Managing Director, Blueshirt, Michael Bazeley, Internet Reporter, Mercury News and SiliconBeat, and Jeremy Zawodny, Search Evangelist, Yahoo! Search.  We are now considering taking Mike’s parking pass away and letting him hitchhike more often.  Have fun blogging about that Mike!

Update: Mike’s shares his thoughts on the panel here.

One of my favorite television
shows is Fox Network’s ‘24′.  For those of you not familiar with the show,
the lead character, Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) is a Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent out to save the United States from the evils of terrorist conspiracies. Well, at one point in the show one of the
characters needs to retrieve some confidential information from a secure
network which requires fingerprint authentication to give the user entry into the network.  I almost fell off the couch when I realized
the technology portrayed on the show belonged to DigitalPersona, a Voce client
located in Redwood City, CA.  The
technology displayed in ‘24′, specifically the fingerprint reader in the mouse,
is OEM’d by Microsoft for sale in the commercial market space.

Check out this clip from ‘24′. It shows the power we all hold in one little finger thanks to technology created
by DigitalPersona. ‘24′ depicted the
technology underscoring its "futuristic" appeal. In reality this technology is becoming more widely
used as both the enterprise and home users are more readily adopting this form
of security technology.

I can say it’s very cool to
be a communications professional where
working with cutting edge technology takes center stage.

– Joshua Gershman

What makes the Voce Nation a unique blog is that it is truly a community blog.  Every member of Voce Communications can contribute their unique insight to the the world around them.  I think that is what makes us stand out a bit from the other blogs in the PR community.

Today is a very proud day for us as one of our own — Mr. Mike Manuel

A.K.A. Media Guerilla — has won the 2005 Best Business Blogging Award for Best PR Blog.

Congrats Mike!

Many of us in
high-tech public relations ask ourselves this question, myself included. You
see, while technology was never my strong-suit, I always intended to pursue a
career in PR. But how did somebody who can hardly turn on the TV end up working
with some of the most innovative technology
companies around? In my own defense, I can hardly turn
on the TV because my engineer husband has it
hooked up to just about every audio-visual product under the sun.

I met said
engineer at my first job out of college in the advertising and PR department of
GTE Wireless (now Verizon) in the Seattle area. I took the job at GTE
Wireless for three reasons: it was a job in PR, my boss was a fantastic mentor
and third, because I got a free cell phone (this was back in the day when only
rich people had cell phones). Looking back, I not only learned a lot about PR, I
also learned a great deal about a technology that is used by millions of people
worldwide today. Wireless telecommunications affects most of us, and I take a
bit of pride knowing not just THAT it works, but HOW it works.

When my more
tech-savvy half was transferred to GTE’s internetworking division outside
Boston, I packed my bags and
started a job in the marketing communications department of CIO magazine, a star publication of high-tech publishing giant IDG. So here I was, again
faced with technology as a focus in my career. At this point, I really began to
understand what technology can do to make our companies run more smoothly, our
jobs more productive, and our lives easier.

Six years
later, high-tech hubbie is now a telecommunications consultant with Detecon and I’m a communications consultant at Voce Communications. I
really feel that I’ve come full-circle. I love the fast pace of high-tech PR
consulting. I love the fact that I have a diverse group of clients with a broad
range of technologies. I love that I know what terms like VoIP, SIP, IP
SAN, SATA and iSCSI mean.

I used to be
disappointed that my career is focused on technology, instead of something more
glamorous like movies or travel. But I’m now convinced that high-tech is pretty
much the center of things. Technology isn’t just for geeks, it’s for all of us -
even if we don’t know the innermost details of how it
works.

7:30am, Wednesday,
February 16th.  Coffee, lots of coffee.  I was up bright-n-early to check out
the "Meet the Press" panel that was put on at the RSA Conference by the folks from PR
Sourcecode.  Okay, so 7:30am might not be considered that early, but when
you take into account the late night networking activity I had with many of my
fellow security press buddies, it’s early.  As expected, the room was packed,
mostly with junior-level PR practitioners, as well as with others, including
marketing folks from the IT vendor community.  All-in-all, I think the event
went as expected.  The members of the distinguished press panel included: Larry
Walsh (Information Security
magazine), Paul Roberts (IDG News Service), Eric Knorr (InfoWorld),
Dennis Fisher (eWeek), Christine Burns (NetworkWorld).

It is always a
good opportunity to witness these types of panel discussions first-hand to get a
true understanding as to why the PR community as a whole, is not
particularly well thought of by the journalist community, as a whole. 
Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but by-and-large, this is a reality that
became even more vivid during the panel discussion.  Perhaps it
wasn’t the discussion itself, but the train wreck that shortly followed, the
open Q&A session: PR practitioners to the panelists.  As I sat there in
amazement, one ridiculous question followed another.  For example, one person asked, "How do you like to be
pitched…via phone or email?"  The irony here of
course is the fact that the event was put on PR Sourcecode, the folks who
provide PR practitioners with a tool that gives us the answer (and more) to the
many general questions that we have for the journalists that we are
pitching.

It does however,
prove the point of the panelists, and journalists everywhere, regarding the
primary problem — most PR people simply
do not take the time to understand the reporters
they are pitching. While the panel
discussion was an opportunity for PR folks to get to know the journalists a
little better, to me, the event simply reaffirmed that far too many PR practitioners, both
internal and agency-side, simply don’t get it.  Public relations cannot be boiled down to a "checklist"
of activities that need to be executed to secure coverage.  This is not a cookie
cutter profession that we work in and to treat it as such does a
disservice to everyone involved.

A special thanks
goes out to Larry
Walsh, who actually provided me personally with some kudos during the
discussion.  It sure had a few heads turning in the audience to see who this PR guy
was!

– Tim Whitman

Thompson versus Gates.  It appears as if Symantec’s
John Thompson, now with the Veritas fire power on his side, is looking to take
on Microsoft.  Well, if you were at his keynote today you’d come to that
conclusion.  A clash of the titans seems to be brewing, even if it is only
one-sided.  Bill Gates, in his second RSA Conference opening keynote
didn’t draw any surprises.  Trustworthy computing, free desktop
anti-spyware, Microsoft’s on-going plan to conquer the world, with the IT
security industry it’s next target.  This has been brewing for some time,
though, so none of it should come as a surprise, and Mr. Gates

didn’t seem to
give the media or attendees and surprises during this particular keynote.
Symantec’s John Thompson, on the other hand, provided a little more spice to
the RSA Conference keynote line-up when he made several strategically placed
jabs at Microsoft throughout his session.  It should be interesting to see
how that shakes out over the coming months.

Other than
that, though, there didn’t seem to be a bunch of surprises at the RSA
Conference so far, a telling sign that the IT security marketplace is reaching
a true level of maturity, as the hype is gone, and the rubber is finally
meeting the road for security.  In fact, the biggest surprises have more
to do with the location of the show…this year’s event, and next year’s.
For whatever reason, the event is being held across the street this year in
Moscone South, as opposed to Moscone North  Typically, this wouldn’t make
much of a difference, other than the logistics of the layout, which left many
exhibitors and attendees alike complaining about how crowded it seemed.
Some have even speculated that the RSA Conference show management did that on
purpose, making the even appear better attended than it really is.  The
reported numbers are 300+ exhibitors and over 11,000 full conference
attendees.  In fact, the event is making its way back to San Jose next
year, a location that used to alternate with San Francisco as the home to the
RSA Conference every other year, but since 2001 (I think), it has been in San
Francisco.

The one
surprising statistic to me was the number of exhibitors…300.  In fact,
the rumored numbers are that anywhere from 100-120 vendors did NOT get a chance
to exhibit.  With consolidation taking place throughout the IT industry,
especially in security, it is quite interesting to see that the number of
vendors continues to climb for events such as these.  Of course, companies
like Sybari were locked into the event
prior to the Microsoft acquisition, so they were there.  Others, like
Computer Associates and their recent
acquisition of Netegrity chose a different path, certainly due to having
more time.  They had two large booths donned with the CA look, but it was
clear that the Netegrity team was in one and CA in the other.

I’m looking
forward to yet another exciting evening of networking with industry
friends.  First stop is The
W, then off to the Microsoft party.  More to come from day two at the
RSA Show tomorrow….

–Tim
Whitman

Business on the front-side. Party on the back-side. These are the mullet days at this year’s DEMO@15 conference.

After all the demonstrations, handshakes and business
meetings, the other side of DEMO comes to life. The Jam Session!, held
on Monday, gives attendees a chance to party well into the night with some
gathering on stage, such as Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal, to play music
together. And why not? Some of the new companies and technologies
introduced this year make you want to dance and some just make you want to
drink. It’s the perfect mix.

Let’s hope the hair style never makes a comeback, but the
mullet never looked so good than at DEMO. OK, Tuesday morning came quick. Back to business and more demonstrations…

 – Jeff Urquhart

Another year, another start-up extravaganza put on by Chris Shipley. DEMO@15!,
the name signifying the event’s 15^th year in existence, kicked off today
and showed why this is the place to be for journalists, VCs and execs who want
a look at the next best technologies.

You can really feel the good energy and excitement all over
the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa. So it was no surprise to hear Chris and PC Mag’s Michael Miller say the industry is
not coming back, rather - the industry is
back!

One difference I have noticed this year is how fast any
activity or word uttered at the conference has leaked out to everyone
else. Yeah, it’s been quick in the past,
but the blogosphere has exploded on the scene and blown away “quick.” I had a chance to speak with technical
evangelist Robert Scoble, who
is probably enjoying his job more than anyone on the planet right now, and is
one of the bloggers getting out news and updates at lightning speed. It almost seems like he is posting updates
even before the presenters say the words.

One of the many things Robert said that caught my ear was
that this show is about the “best of breed” and if you don’t (or do) have the
best products these days, everyone knows about it right away.

No doubt some of the companies presenting this year will
crash and burn. There’s also a chance
one or two could become the next big thing. One thing is for sure — we’ll know which one’s make it and which one’s
don’t faster than ever before.

– Jeff Urquhart

Okay PR consultants,
it’s time to finalize those game plans for the RSA
Conference.  Among the exciting events
planned at the show, one that should be at the top of every PR practitioners
list is the "Meet the
Press" panel that will take place on
Wednesday, February 16th.  A distinguished list of some of the industry’s finest
IT security reporters will be there to provide background on their
respective publications and offer invaluable insight on how to most effectively
communicate with members of the press. These key editors and reporters will
explain what they look for in a news story, how they prefer to work with public
relations professionals, and how to best leverage your organization’s news
announcements.

This year’s
RSA Conference press list boasts nearly 300 names ranging from the industry’s
top business, IT trade and vertical reporters, as well as financial and industry
analysts.  On top of that, many will register on-site as well (to avoid the
barrages of pitches beforehand).  A collection of the industry’s top influencers
all gathered in one location at the same time…a PR practitioner’s dream-come-true, right?  But how about
those folks on the list themselves?  What does it mean for them? 

It means
dozens upon dozens of email and phone call pitches over the past couple of
weeks, leading up to the security industry’s biggest event, to have them meet
with their respective companies and/or clients.  But how bad can it really be,
you ask.  Last week, one leading security journalist lent me some perspective by
saying "I have had over two hundred meeting requests so far, and they keep
coming in.  Do you know how many fifteen-minute time slots I had to work with
from the get-go?  Twelve."

Twelve time slots
over three days?!?

Many of you might be saying that sounds ridiculous, but what
we need to be aware of is the fact that most, if not all of the attending
reporters, already have set agendas for their time at a given event.  There is
more going on at trade shows than just vendor meetings.  Keynote sessions,
education tracks, industry pundit roundtables, networking events, major
executive meetings.  Oh yeah, they still need to leave time to actually
write those stories…not to mention eat!

Our
job, as public relations consultants is to
ensure that our constituents, be it in-house or external clients get as much
face-time with as many industry influencers as possible.  Face time is huge, even if it means just a quick booth
visit to say hello, or to make an introduction.  And if you do get time…use it wisely.  Have a
game plan going into the event and remember, it isn’t necessarily
how many meetings you arrange ahead of time, it is how you use
them.

– Tim Whitman