delivering digital transformation through IT and comms

'Comms at the top table...' It's shorthand for having comms involved with the big strategic discussions early on. If you reach this place you can help to shape and deliver with people. This example which will be presented at #commsforchange14 about changes to tax discs really shows how working together can be really powerful.

by Victoria Ford  

‘This just shows how important comms is! Technically the code changes are in and ready to go........without comms it's useless.'

This was a text I received from our Chief Technology Officer, Iain Patterson, earlier this week.

He was referring to media coverage of a major change for DVLA - the abolition of the Tax Disc.

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the search for practical examples of ‘co-production’

Increasingly, we talk about designing and delivering services through ‘co-production’. But what does this mean in practical terms? One organisation has been working with a range of partners to develop an event to provide clear examples of good practice in ‘co-production’.

by Ena Lloyd and Dyfrig Williams

Co-production is about changing the relationship between those who deliver and those who use services. It is about re-shaping how you design, plan and deliver services, but doing this alongside members of the public.

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how the referendum is affecting one scottish comms person

It's dominating debate in Scotland and could have a siesmic effect on the rest of Britain. Here one public sector comms officer writes about their frustrations about not having a voice because they are politically restricted.

by Anonymous Communications Officer 

So far the impending referendum hasn’t affected my work – it’s my personal channels of communication I’m finding tricky to navigate.

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survey: creative comms is alive

Can you help? Would you like to win a free afternoon of brainstorming thanks to a creative agency? You would? Brilliant! Have a read of this and fill in the survey.  

by Alan Oram

We’ve got a cunning plan. We’re creating a valuable, practical tool to help internal comms folk find smart and effective ways to get organisations across the land working more creatively by sharing top tips, key trends, practical advice and cracking ideas… And we’d like a little help from our friends to cross the finish line.

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trust me, pr is dead: welcome to the progressive corporate future

There is a lot of thinking right now about what the role of PR is in the future. In this guest post, one PR veteran explains why he has turned author to set out his ideas for the future as he re-thinks what the sector must look like. This may be uncomfortable reading for some.

by Robert Phillips 

My forthcoming book, “Trust Me, PR Is Dead” has attracted a lot of chatter in social media, since the first article appeared last summer. It charts the fall of Public Relations and the rise of Public Leadership: activist, co-produced, citizen-centric and society-first.

It calls for new measurement and accountability metrics, based on Public Value, which will be unique to every organisation that develops them.

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music2point0 - your essential summer playlist

by Darren Caveney

So there I was sourcing insightful comms links on a Thursday evening, when I put out a tweet asking for a cool summer tune for our Friday song of the day. What resulted was, in no time at all, a crowd-sourced list of not one but 22 summer tunes. Some of them absolute belters.

I'm considering re-branding to music2point0 and I figured that this should be an essential summer playlist.

So here’s the list.

Enjoy.

Summer Fun by The Barracudas for @sarahlay

The Night by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons for @Cal444

Summer Breeze by The Isley Brothers for @Gemma_Finnegan

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step back and look at the view

We're all so busy racing around trying to get good at the latest 'next big thing' that sometimes we forget to take a step back...

by GUEST EDITOR Nic Davies Uley

Working in communications, reading about communications, communicating about communications, it can all get a bit too much. If working for myself has taught me one thing, it’s to step back and look at the view.

But you can’t look at the view, unless you take the step back.

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navigating internal comms? it’s plain sailing.

Remember when you didn’t work in comms? When you didn’t have access to every possible piece of information about your organisation? When you had no idea who the chief executive was and there was more chance of winning Euromillions than you ever meeting them in the flesh?

by Jo Smith

I have to go back 20 years to my graduate days to be ‘BC’ – Before Comms.  Back then people still used typewriters. Email was barely born, mobile phones were the size of suitcases and if you wanted news you read the paper.  Since then I’ve watched communications techniques evolve and have done my best to keep up with every exhausting and exciting step.

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when I learned about pr from millwall fc

So what happens when your passion becomes your work? For one fan a love of a London football team helped her public relations career. 

by Karen Jeal

I have been a Millwall fan all my life, so I always jumped at the chance to include the club in everything I did. Every school project revolved around Millwall.

I redesigned match programmes and wrote reports after games. But where it all started was a project where I designed an anti-racism campaign. I got an invite to the ground to meet the press team and from there my connection with the club grew. I was very persistent and ended up working with them on a voluntary basis, until one day I got a job offer. Unfortunately due to timings I had to turn it down. But here's what I learnt:

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