Andi Narvaez: All of the above

Yesterday I got up at 6:30am (an ungodly hour for me) in order to make it to the first day of BlogHer’s 6th Annual Conference in New York. I have met and had great conversations with many of the women here and picked up some great tid bits of knowledge from the sessions, but I honestly don’t think I could summarize or try to encompass all of it in one post.  In lieu of that, I grabbed links to useful BlogHer ’10 resources and the live blogs.

But my job is not done.

As a public relations graduate student and a very active (annoyingly so? please don’t tell me ) social media user, I’m always interested to learn more about both fields and the neat things we create using social media.

Enter Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO).

HAPPO is designed to help connect PR job seekers with employers looking for top talent.

The conversation has really taken off on Twitter. Using the #HAPPO hashtag on designated dates as well as on a regular basis, public relations job seekers and employers are benefiting from each others’ participation.

This was a guest post on “The Buzz by Mike Schaffer” this week. Mike writes about public relations, social media, pop culture and sports. Mike is AMAZING. Stop by his blog and follow him on Twitter. Tell him I sent you!

This semester I’m taking “Public Relations Publics” at university of Maryland, which focuses on what matters (or should) the most to public relations practitioners — the people.

We discussed the difference between the terms “stakeholders” and “publics” and agreed that stakeholders are those who are affected by what the organization does and have stakes in the results of those actions. Publics are not only affected by organizations’ actions, they also have the potential to become involved in those actions and to influence organizations that way. This concept of publics comes from the Situational Theory of Publics, developed by University of Maryland Professor James E. Grunig (yay Maryland).

It is here.

My first big project of my first semester as a public relations graduate student is here and I’m excited to dive right into it. The only problem is I need your help.

I will be conducting a single case study research on the topic of digital media and organization management. Specifically, I would like to study an organization that has seen its internal organizational structure change due to the addition of social and digital media-related functions to the organization’s communication department.

• Have organizational hierarchies shifted?

*It's a blog!*

That’s the WordPress default title for the sample post that comes published with every new WordPress account. On the surface it’s a rather generic, upbeat greeting. Underneath the surface it’s an open invitation to allow yourself to run wild and to unleash your inner blogging beast all over your brand new, endless white canvas.

If you scroll down you’ll come to realize that this is not my first post. And yet it is.

What used to be “Andi Narvaez: Down and Across” is now “Andi Narvaez: Re-learning PR.” Welcome to my refreshed blog.

This blog post (and the 30 more to come) is part of ProBlogger’s “31 Days to Write a Better Blog” challenge.

Feel free to judge.

Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog [Day 1 -31DBBB]

A mutant offspring of the 20th and 21st century I have a multitasking sort of background in public relations, marketing, social media, writing, design and advertising. I have an undying passion for reading news, blogs and books and I force feed myself more mainstream media, brands and entertainment than anyone likes to admit most of the time.

I believe it’s the way to go.

Today, Sean Wood, media specialist for KGBTexas Public Relations / Advertising, and i made a presentation about social media to our company’s PR team and a few other co-workers who are interested in hearing what we had to, humbly, say about what is quickly developing and changing our industry.

We discussed making connections, networking, participating, experimenting, applications, opportunities, challenges, privacy, commenting and whether or not to let the doors of two-way communication swing wide open, which our very own account executive and publications manager, Melanie Thompson, blogged about today as well. The question is – what now?

As of Tuesday, November 4, 2008 the country has been in an uproar. And with good reason.

Tomorrow is the big day. And people are not just going to elect a new president.