What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 9 June 2014

Welcome to another week and we're pleased to report that last weeks Midlands Media Awards went extremely well, with 300 guests at Aston Villa, celebrating the success of journalists and broadcasters from throughout the region.

We had lots of nice comments following the event which is also a positive and judging by the photos from the night we think everyone looked pretty happy with the event (including Qasa Alom from BBC Radio in Stoke who seems pretty pleased!) so we think it was a job well done.

No time to rest on our laurels though as this week our attention is all on the CIPR Northern Conference which is taking place in Manchester this Thursday.

This year’s Northern Conference will provide insight and learning into the skills required to operate in a digital PR landscape. Industry leaders will demonstrate how PR, Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media all work together to create fully integrated and measurable earned media campaigns.

Delegates will learn from the best in our industry about optimising copy for SEO, how paid, earned, owned and shared channels work together, content strategies for social and PR, as well as digital reputation management and monitoring. 

The Northern Conference is perfect for PRs at any stage in their career and is filled with insight, learning and no doubt a good debate! So whether you are in- house or agency, in the voluntary or charity sector, or thinking about a career in PR, this is the conference for you.

Stephen Waddington

The Speaker Line Up is pretty impressive with Earned Media Specialist from the BBC, James English, CIPR President Stephen Waddington, Drew Benvie, founder of Battenhall (Drew is the UK’s #1 most respected practitioner in New Media Age’s 2011).

 Additionally we have the Global Social Media Manager for LateRooms, The Communications Director for the Met Office, Representatives from the Co-operative Group, Harkable and McCanns as well as Google and YouTube so it should be an incredibly interesting day.

You can follow some of the activity live on the day using #CIPRNC

In other news this week it would be churlish of us not to mention the World Cup as football fever will no doubt be gripping the nation in the coming weeks. However if you don't like football the next few weeks might be a bit tortuous so we thought we'd look at ways to avoid it altogether. We have blatantly pinched this article from one we found online, but it made us laugh so much, we ran out of time to think up our own ways of surviving the tournament!

 
1. Walk around blindfolded for four weeks. Not only will you not have to endure watching all those football matches, but you could say it was a social experiment.

2. Invest in cable TV. Then you can watch E4's live coverage of Big Brother all day, and ignore the football altogether. (Although if you really wanted to miss the World Cup, you should have applied to be in the Big Brother house in the first place).

3. Arrange a last-minute expedition trekking in the Himalayas. Lots of scenery but no TVs.

4. Use the four weeks to organise your wardrobe. Have a massive clearing out spree, then go on the mother of all shopping trips. Retail therapy is the only answer to football fatigue. You know it makes sense!

5. As many of the matches are shown in the mornings (because of the time difference), have a lie in and miss the whole thing.

6. Become a nun (it's only for four weeks), and spend the time in quiet contemplation at your local convent.

7. Rent out all your favourite films from your local video shop and turn your home into a cinema for the whole of June. You could even hold your own mini film festival, and invite all your friends who are also trying to avoid the World Cup.

8. Pretend you're Harry Potter, and live in a cupboard during the competition.

9. Become an eco-warrior, and go and occupy a threatened tree. Lots of fresh air, and no soccer highlights with Des Lynam.

10. Take up football and train really hard. Then you might get into the England squad and get injured, or into the Irish squad and fall out with your manager. Either way, you'll miss the World Cup altogether. It worked for Gary Neville and Roy Keane.

So that's it for this week. Don't forget the deadline for Brand You and for The Fresh Awards is fast approaching...

Enjoy!