Recently, we blogged about some new trends in social media PR—namely Stowe Boyd’s call for pitches via Twitter and Marshall’s request for an OPML from PR firms. We blogged about those items because they are areas where much of the PR world is afraid to tread, and exactly where Voce wants to be. I was talking about some of this with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext fame. He had some great insights from both a PR client perspective and as an innovative software vendor in the very space causing these new disruptions.

I think what he said would be of interest to some of our other clients as well as to other PR professionals. There is some good fodder in here for further discussions about:

- What is the big shift in PR and why are people split about whether or not to be happy about it?
- What is the role of a modern PR firm?
- Tactically speaking, how has the PR process changed?

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Stephen Baker is breaking new ground as he collaborates live on Twitter to develop an article on BusinessWeek about the business value of microblogging. While there may have been other bloggers that have collaborated on Twitter to develop a story, they weren’t done by “traditional” media brands like BusinessWeek. Dave Donahue captured some great points about why this matters:

• Twitter coverage in BusinessWeek takes it out of the echo chamber and into the mainstream. The fact that he’s apparently focusing on its business uses emphasizes just how many more people will take interest as this story develops. The finished product should allow many early adopters to finally explain Twitter to their colleagues/bosses/SO’s in English.
• This experiment will illustrate the sheer speed by which ideas take shape and turn into editorial on Twitter. It reminds me of Wired’s editorial wiki experiment from September 2006 (which ultimately frustrated Wired’s Ryan Singel), but this should move at a much faster pace and with greater community involvement.
• How many times in your career can you remember BusinessWeek putting out an open call for content, and then propose that you edit that content? It’s an opportunity for all of us to highlight how Twitter has become an invaluable tool for our clients, our companies, and ourselves.

He started this project at 2:30pm EST. Here’s the story lead that we Tweeted moments ago:

#bwstory Go ahead and laugh at Twitter. Plenty of trivia. But businesses are coming up with all kinds of ways to harness microblogging…

You can add to the discussion via Twitter using the #bwstory hash tag in your tweets to associate them with this story. We’ll post some follow up thoughts as an update to this post after this project is over.

You can also follow the discussion using the widget above created by @walkerfenton. It’s a feed from the hash tag #bwstory.

We told you we were living large in Manhattan at the BlogHer Business Conference and New York City Moms Blog launch party last month.

We knew the Today Show producers were interviewing a few of the mom bloggers at the party and the crew was filming conference panels. But we when we watched this morning’s “Today’s Woman” segment on the growing popularity of momblogging, we were stoked to see that our friends at Silicon Valley Moms Group, Graco and client Yahoo! got air time. Check out the eco-friendly Yahoo! taxis that chauffeured the moms to the party!

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Voce Nation wanted to say thank you to the crew of cardsharks that joined us last week for the second annual Interop Poker Tournament. Voce, NetIQ, and Barracuda Networks hosted the event as a chance for media and analysts to escape the grind of vendor briefings and reporting, unwind with peers and have a healthy dose of competition.

Poker pro Mark Seif was on hand to provide pointers on how to play Texas Hold ‘Em.

Check out Shamus McGillicuddy’s post on the event for a first person account of the tourney.

Larry Howard of Infonetics Research took home top honors and bragging rights for 2008. Will he be able to defend his title in 2009? You’ll have to join us next year to find out.

More pics from the event are on the voce nation photostream.

Stephen Baker and Heather Green have been working on revising their 2005 cover story on blogs. They’ve wisely expanded from blogs to social media. They’re asking their readers ‘how’ social media is changing business. I have some more in-depth thoughts on this which I’ll post shortly, but for now how about these for starters:

1. How a company that created a flog and alienated its customers, bounced back and is rebuilding trust with social media.

2. How one employee is taking it upon himself to use a blog to chronicle and relay his observations inside a company.

3. How a company is using a blog to add insight/perspective on its business at a time when its business is at its most vulnerable.

Rena Stone and Natasha Gonzalez, two of the girls from the Girls for a Change Board are on their way to New York City to participate in a panel about girls and violence on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. The show is LIVE and will be on tomorrow (Friday the 2nd) at 9am EST/PST. In San Francisco Bay Area it will be on Channel 2 KTVU

The show is discussing violence between girls in response to the recent YouTube video incident with Tori Lindsay from Lakeland, FL.

GFC is attending with the hope of showing girls in a more positive light. Although many of GFC girls encounter violence in their communities, we’re hoping that we will be able to show that girls are the solution to problems in our communities and through learning to create community change they’ll help to transform violence to positive action!

Tune in and watch!