Digital PR & Corporate Communication Conference

Next Tuesday I will be attending the Digital PR and Corporate Communications Conference as part of the Sydney Bloggers' Festival 2010. I'm really looking forward to this conference as I think it will further develop my use and appreciation of social media as a public relations and communciation tool within the education sector.

I have a particularly keen interest in Twitter, setting up @CEO_IW last year, and helping two Catholic high schools in my region set-up their accounts @HCCRyde and @DLSAshfield. @CEO_RE, the Religious Education and Evangelisation department of the CEO also set-up a Twitter account, which assists their team distribute key messages.

Obviously blogging will be a key part of the Conference and I'm glad I established EduCommsMedia well before the conference so that I can use it as a case study. The Catholic Education Office Sydney is very keen on using Web 2.0 as a teaching and learning tool for teachers and students, offering the Web 2.0 course for teachers to complete, while promoting #ceoelearn and ilearning days to share best-practice web 2.0 in the classroom. However my work is obviously not primarily focused on teaching and learning in the classoom, instead trying to reach parents, prospective parents, the wider community and also teachers in our school.

The conference will feature speakers from some of Ausralia's leading PR agencies including Fleishman-Hillard, Edelman, Text 100, and Boston Digital, while Tourism Australia and Telstra will also be represented. Some of the content they will deliver will focus on the Challenges and Opportunities of Online Communications, Strategic Approaches to digital communication, and Facebook and Twitter for business.

As an aside, for those who think education isn't a business, the increasing competitiveness for enrolments in schools, and their branding and reputation demonstrates and suggests otherwise. At a very base level, education is about delivering a certain product (the student) and ensuring customers (parents) are happy. Throw in a whole lot of other government, public and private stakeholders and key publics and you have a 'business'.

I will try to tweet from the conference using #SBF2010 however more than happy to share my learnings upon my return.