I am on a small propeller plane flying from the lovely hills of Donegal, Ireland to the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for a tradeshow.  I started my vacation nearly 11 days ago with a week in Dublin, followed by a long weekend in Donegal.  Dublin, as many of you probably know, is like many big cities.  There are restaurants and stores and lovely hotels for tea…and occasionally you’ll find a Wi-Fi hotspot.

The later part of my vacation however, was very different.  You see, Donegal is the home of my grandfather.  Instead of spending my time searching for a Wi-Fi hotspot, I sat with my great aunt and great uncle and heard stories about the birth of my grandfather and his 8 siblings and what life was like 70 and 80 years ago.  We sat at her kitchen table, drinking tea and eating scones and virtual time stood still.

During my time there, we visited relatives. They all live within a few kilometers of each other – aunts and uncles, 2^nd and 3^rd cousins….all sharing the common bond of our family matriarch – Granny.  I had tea, ate biscuits and took pictures.

The second day of my visit, we woke to a strong frost and a light snow.  There were no cars on the road so it was in our best interest to wait until the afternoon to drive, when the frost would melt.  In the meantime, I sat in the kitchen with my Great Aunt and worked on the family tree for my generation – all of my 3^rd cousins (all 118 of them!) their ages and the number in each limb in the family.  My aunt would talk and she would bake. Then, she would talk some more and she would bake some more.  In all the hours that we sat there, my cell phone never rang and the beep of an email never interrupted…you see…I was unplugged.

In the precious moments of the last few days, I learned an important lesson that you can not come across easily.  As hard as we work most of the year, it is vital that we sit back and take time to get back to our roots.  For me, that meant unplugging.  My time of being unplugged has come to an end as I head to the ISE tradeshow in Amsterdam.  And as irony would have it, I will continue to stay in connection with a handful of my cousins…through Facebook.

While women have made some great strides in the tech world, there’s still a ways to go, as evidenced by Allyson Kapin’s Huffington Post article, “Giving Tech a Bad Name.” Some of the most amazingly gifted people in technology are women. Yet, women are underrepresented, making up only a small percentage of panelists at tech conferences and as go-to people for quotes.

Recently, Vantage Commubications CEO, Ilene Adler took part in a podcast interview with Suzanne Bowen of DIDXchange to explore this very topic about women and the tech industry. The two discussed how each got into working within the tech field and how it affected their lives. The conversation touched on how both women and men should support and encourage each other in order to surpass stereotypes. Also, how women should collaborate and encourage one another so more women can feel comfortable with entering such a dominantly male industry. The bottom line: to change the perception, people—women and men—need to take action and promote women in tech rather than wait for everyone else to change.

New technologies are always evolving and changing the way we communicate. According to research from IPG’s Universal McCann and AOL, “One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices…That’s expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years.” Many of our clients are looking into website redesigns in order to make them more mobile-friendly. It’s interesting to see this shift. No longer is just having a blog good enough. Now it must be mobilized. And in doing so, we are finding that content must be refreshed more frequently, so as not to get lost in the shuffle

MediaPost recently reported on a new survey by Princeton Survey Research International, which found that 90 percent of Internet users between 18 – 29 use video sharing sites, up from 72 percent one year ago. But that’s not all. Online adults ages 30 – 49 also showed big gains over the past year; 67 percent now use video-sharing sites, up from 57 percent in 2008. So we now work with our clients to produce more video content and add pictures and videos to press releases.

Additionally, how we get news and information is changing on a regular (dare I say, daily?) basis. As PR professionals, we focus on people who are influencers. Traditionally, this has been the media or industry analysts. While these folks remain influential, there is a new group of influencers. There are blogs that comment on or repackage the news, some of whom have larger followings than the original content (e.g. Gawker).  People  now regularly forward news to their friends and colleagues via social networks and Twitter.

PR is also an ever-evolving game. Not so long ago, press releases went out via fax. You read that right, fax. That little machine in the corner of the copy room that the interns look at in bewilderment. That was cutting edge. Then came e-mail. Now, as how people get their news is in a state of constant change, we are continually adapting to make sure that we are getting the word out to the right people in the way they want to receive it.  I guess it is not surprising that change has come to news, which after all, is the business of reporting on change.

It’s time for a fractured fairy tale: Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley, courtesy of the New York Times.  Once upon a time in a Sand Hill Road conference room, an entrepreneur, a VC and a PR consultant met to discuss the launch of Wordnik, a website about language and word usage. The PR person suggests a press tour of leading tech blogs (TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc.).  This suggestion is rejected by the VC as not a good match for a language website. Instead, they decide that they would have influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs mention Wordnik in social media.  As so it came to be.  Digg founder, Kevin Rose, twittered that Wordnik was “truly amazing.”

From there, people started madly retweeting, which led to Wordnik becoming a trending topic on Twitter. Then, everyone in the Valley was abuzz about Wordnik. People will look back on these past few months as the “Summer of Wordnik.” And they all lived happily ever after.

Except that in the real world, the launch of Wordnik went virtually unnoticed.  As Michael Arrington reported in TechCrunch, Wordnik received a small blip in traffic and then quickly returned to its previous minuscule level. Since this is a fractured fairy tale, the frog doesn’t get turned into a prince.  But there are some lessons to be learned.

Hipsters vs. Word Nerds:  Before starting a launch plan, the first imperative is to determine “who is the target audience?” Then, look for the best way to reach them.  Here the target audience was …. Wordniks. The VC was correct that word nerds really don’t follow mainstream tech blogs.  But targeting hipsters using twitter is more about making a fashion statement than a viable launch plan for a language website.  

Something Old, Something New:  Much of the debate generated by the Times article is about whether social media is replacing PR. This is based on a false premise. The rise of new technologies doesn’t mean that the old technologies are banished to a virtual thrift shop. The new supplements the established. The old technology adapts to fit in with the new. At the time of the original Fractured Fairy Tales, PR people mailed press releases to the local newspapers. Today, the number of communication tools and influencers has increased exponentially. But press releases now incorporate SEO and still remain in the mix.

PR and Social Media, Better Together: Combining PR and social media into an integrated strategy can deliver great results. PR provides an efficient way to quickly gain traction with the targeted influencers and audience. Social media builds connections with these folks.  By social media, I mean participating in conversations on Twitter and Facebook, joining the blogosphere by writing and commenting on blogs rather than having Internet celebrities tweet on your behalf. You could argue it would be better to just use social media to gradually grow an audience (especially with a niche product).  But these days, VCs and board members want to see immediate results, as evidenced by Wordnik’s VC participating in the PR discussion. Though prior to launching a PR campaign, it is important that the product is ready for the attention (see: PR for Tech Start Ups – Are you ready for your close up?).

The Happy Ending: Completion of a product launch should be the first of many interactions with customers, partners, and influencers. There are many opportunities to build, even on a less than successful launch. After all, it’s more important where you end, than how you start. And this is where this post happily ends.

Popular social networks, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter seem to  think that they would be better if they more like one of the other social networks. Instead, they really should follow the advice of Popeye whose motto was “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.”

LinkedIn: LinkedIn has developed a case of Facebook envy. Each person’s page now has a Facebook-like status box at the top asking “What are you working on now?”.  I can’t recall anyone actually using this box (other than reposts from Twitter or Facebook). 

Attaching a social element to LinkedIn is the equivalent of a three piece suit with a backwards baseball cap. People use LinkedIn because it is all business. This means there is no risk of an embarrassing photo turning up in a search by a potential employer or customer.

Facebook: Facebook is turning itself into Twitter with pictures. A person’s home page is now dominated by Twitter-like status updates, accompanied by photos and attachments. Welcome to the slide show from Hell.  Facebook now puts pictures of kids, pets, and vacations front and center on a daily basis. As much I like keeping up with friends and family, I prefer the ability to decide when and if I want to see another cute cat picture or a 2×3 picture of someone’s dinner.

Once popular Facebook applications have been moved to the four corners of the site. Once popular applications like Superpoke (thowing sheep!) , Funwall and “Cities I Have Visited” now are the Web 2.0 equivalents of Golden Oldies that evoke nostalgia for a bygone era. While many of these applications were time wasters, Facebook is draining the social part that makes it unique.  

People who are power status updaters eventualy move to Twitterand and make Facebook a secondary source via an application that posts their tweets on Facebook. Take a look at your Facebook news stream and you will likely see many standard Twitter abbreviations and hashtags. More and more, Facebook  is making it seem like all of the action is on Twitter.

Twitter: Twitter’s identity crisis revolves around what is wants to be when it grows up. Twitter still does not have a viable revenue model. In a recent blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that it is looking  at account authentication, management tools, and discovery mechanisms. Twitter has done some preliminary experiments with advertising on user’s profile page.

But I think that they will look to follow Google and monetize on search. By virtue of Twitter posts mostly being public,  a company can search Twitter to find out what people are saying about them, their competitors, and the hot issues in the markets in near real-time. Twitter can derive revenue from selling ads on search pages, premium search tools, or making a deal with with one of the large search companies.

Sticking to short communications in real time and monetizing like Google should be a personality that wears well for Twitter.

Nine months and two Facebook redesigns ago, Jennifer Kutz wrote a post about the Wisdom of the Crowd Goes to a Trade Show. She discussed the trend of trade shows opening the show agenda selection process to their audience.  She mentioned one proposed panel in particular: Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match?, for the SXSW Interactive show in Austin, and invited people to vote for that panel.

As SXSWi just completed, I thought it would be fun to fill you in on how things turned out. Our efforts to get the word out about the panel was successful. Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match? received enough support that it was selected. The Guardian featured the panel in an article: @SWSXi: The impossible balance between privacy and personalisation?, and called the topic: “one of SXSWi’s core conversations.” The picture on the top left of this post is from the panel courtesy of the Guardian.

The experience also gave us an insight into the power of blogs and social media to create conversation about key issues.  We used Facebook and Twitter to point people to Vantage Points to get the word out. Rather than asking or pitching people to vote for our client, all we did was to discuss the topic and offer people a link to vote. This was a departure from the traditional PR model. But we believed facilitating conversation was more appropriate for topic and the SXSWi show audience.

The wisdom of the crowd approach has extended to voting for awards. This year, CTIA is allowing people to vote for its Emerging Technology Awards and Best of Show.  One of  our clients, Ditech Networks is nominated for its cool mStage platform which allows people to use their voice to access web applications in the middle of a mobile phone call.  You can read more about it in Technology Review. If you would like to vote for mStage for Best of Show, follow this link and choose mStage (third from left on the third line) as one of your favorites.  Feel free to check out and vote some of the other great nominated products too. It is good to part of the crowd that leads.

As you probably already know, last week was the first week of the new show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”While I don’t watch many late night shows myself, his is truly one that I have come to enjoy. He brings geeky to a whole new level. Not only is he on Twiter, but he recently attended this year’s CES show.

On Monday night, Jimmy brought on Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky to talk about the new Palm Pre. Not very familar with the other two guests, I quickly jumped to the end of the show to catch this hilarious, but awesome interview. Acting like good ol’ buddies, Jimmy and Josh discussed the new Palm Pre and how it competes with the iPhone.

What really gets me is the fact that so many of my friends don’t know about Twitter or Engadget for that matter! A fellow geek, Jimmy is pushing all of the blogs, articles, social media, etc. that we deal with on an everyday basis into the view of others. Not only that, but he COMMUNICATES to the rest of the world. Commenting on other tech blogs, getting interview questions from Twitter, regularly updating his show’s blog - these are all actions that I find really impressive.

Want to satisfy your inner-geekiness too? Catch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon each weeknight at 12:35E/11:35c (or DVR it!). If not for the geek factor, then at least for the Like it for $10 and other fun segments! Follow @jimmyfallon and @joshuatopolsky for some additional entertainment.

This year, I used the power of social networks to expand my Mobile World Congress experience. In past years, I took a tunnel vision type approach to the show with my experience the sum of previously scheduled meetings and press briefings at the show.  With social networks, you get the sense of being part of a larger experience.

Following other Mobile World Congress attendees on Twitter gives the effect of flipping across multiple channels where you tune in and out of different people’s show experience. Before the show everyone is preparing for and traveling to the show. The effect is like the opening number of a Broadway show, where everyone sets up their roles in the show – like Putting it Together from Sunday in the Park with George. It is hard not to get caught up in the anticipation and the sense that you are part of something bigger.

Each day before I arrived at the show, I checked in on Facebook and Twitter to see what my Tweeps were up to at the show. It ranged from reporters who were providing real-time reports from a seemingly endless run of handset and OS press conferences to hung over people that missed their first meetings of the day. If it was happening people were tweeting it and it created a fascinating kaleidoscope.

Readers of Vantage Points know that I was part of arranging the first Mobile World Congress Tweet Up (an in-person meeting of people on Twitter and other social networks). The Tweet Up was an opportunity to share opinions about the show and the future of mobile. It also generated over 300 hits to Vantage Points. Between the Tweet Up and posts on Facebook and Twitter, I now am part of the global mobile community, although I never had met most of the people before the show.

As we move from Mobile World Congress to CTIA, I intend to build on expanding this social approach to trade shows. Look for a Tweet Up in Las Vegas, and more interaction with the global mobile social community.

Prime time television is full of makeover shows which feature people who are totally clueless about how they appear to others. Yet, businesses also do not take a sober look in the mirror and see how their customers perceive them.

Rich Tehrani of TMCNet.com recently wrote a brilliant blog post that is built around a very simple question: “In This Recession, Would You Buy From Your Company?”  According to Tehrani, businesses need to “put yourself in the customer’s position. Do you think they want to buy from companies they aren’t familiar with and those who do not invest in their customers? No – they don’t… If you think just wining and dining decision-makers is enough to win the business, you are wrong.”

On the makeover shows, before the intervention,  people think that others somehow will see the  ”inner beauty” that lies beneath a slovenly mess. Similarly,  in tough times, tech companies think that their products will sell themselves because customers will  see their underlying engineering brilliance. So when money gets tight, they cut their marketing, and stop communicating their successes to their customers. The result is that these companies are not making their best cases at the time when their customers are making decisions about what needs to be to cut.

I am not just making this point to carry the flag for marketing in a tough time. Fortunately,  when the economy started changing at the end of 2007, the Vantage team did take a hard look at how we were perceived by our customers. We saw room for improvement. So, we re-branded the company. To highlight our thought leadership, we started this blog. We now regularly communicate our successes with press releases on new clients and practice areas. We are becoming leaders in social media such as on Twitter and Facebook. These actions led to an extremely successful 2008, and positions us well for 2009.

At the end of the post, Tehrani provides some very important advice: “Ask yourself this question – are you spending your dollars as wisely as you can? What are your goals and are you altering them to suit a rapidly changing economy?…Yes, now is the time for prudence and now is the time to cut unnecessary expenses. But remember – be careful where you cut from – after all, your customers are trying to find a reason to cut you.”

Like on the makeover shows, your business may need some outside unbiased assistance to improve its appearance. If you need help to answer the tough questions that Rich raises at this critical time, please do not hesitate to contact me at radler [at] pr-vantage.com.  There are no obligations or strings attached. So what’s the benefit to Vantage? We get to make a connection with a group of companies that know they need a change and that are more likely to succeed over the long term.  As we have been in business for 20 years, this is the company we like to keep.

Update: Tweet Up at Mobile World Congresson Wednesday Feb. 18 at 5 pm. Location: 7 Sins, Muntaner 7, 08011. Please check out http://blog.pr-vantage.com/?p=1036 for more Tweet Up details.

Surprisingly, less than a month before Mobile World Congress 2009, no one had set up a hash tag on Twitter for the major wireless industry trade show. A “hash tag” uses the symbol – # – followed by a name to allow people to search and find information on Twitter. With a hash tag, people attending the show could connect with other people at the show. Also, people not attending the show could follow in real-time what was happening at the show.

So into the breach jumped the Vantage Communications team. With the help of Tory Klaubo, we checked out who recently had posted Tweets on Mobile World Congress. We then got a discussion going and came up with #mwc09. Then we tweeted the name out to the community, and it was retweeted and retweeted. Our imediate goal is to connect more people attending the show via Twitter. Eventually, the plan is for me to be Live-Tweeting during the show.

Although social networking will be a hot topic for MWC 09, it is surprising that the organizer, GSMA, is not actively using Twitter, Facebook, etc. to enhance the experience of people attending the show. There have been sporadic posts on social media about trying to make a connection. Yet, there seems to be a large void in connecting these people. With travel budgets under siege, trade show organizers need to go the extra mile. Using social media to make connection seems like an easy and inexpensive way to add value.

Until this comes to pass, Vantage is stepping up. Join us by spreading the word about the show via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. To keep up with my Mobile World Congress experiences, follow me on Twitter: @robadler. If you want to meet at the show, e-mail info [at] pr-vantage.com, leave your contact information in the comments or send me a message on Twitter.  But social networking will only be successful if  we all are responsible and take action. Look forward to connecting with you.