As our online worlds become more and more social, conversational, and collaborative, we are seeing many traditional PR processes evolve as well. One of the most recent changes we’ve witnessed is how our clients submit to speak at industry events. No longer are we simply writing an abstract for the presentation, putting together a bio for a company executive and clicking ‘send’ on an email.

Several events are now actively involving their audience in the selection process, and allowing potential attendees to vote on the sessions they would be most interested in seeing. Some of these shows include Oracle’s OpenWorld, the Web 2.0 Expo, and Enterprise 2.0. Some potential speakers have taken it upon themselves to use their blogs to promote submitted panel ideas- see a good example here.

One of our clients is currently in the running to present at another popular tech industry event, the South by Southwest Interactive Festival next March 13-17, 2009. The SXSW voting process is probably the most technologically advanced and socially-savvy we have seen yet. Their ‘Interactive Panel Picker’ interface allows anyone to go in and browse suggested panel ideas (along with 50-word descriptions), organized by technology area, and rate the panels they would be most interested in hearing about at the event. Loomia’s topic is Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match?, which will expound on the controversy that online ad targeting (i.e., Beacon) and personalization has created in terms of user privacy standards.

If this piques your interest, you can vote for it here- and feel free to pass the word along!