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Phil's Blogservations
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Posted by philgomes 11:12 AM
Can't Be BotheredI apologize if this comes off as "get-off-my-lawn" grumpy, but I emerged from the lab last week and wasn't into what I saw when I peered into my neglected RSS reader.
So much to react to out there online and, yet, so much real work to do.
So, I've decided I can't be bothered.
Can't be bothered with the discussion of Strumpette's second or third "resignation". If (finally) true, then good riddance to bad rubbish. Based on everything I've read this week, I'm strangely reminded of the line from Heathers where Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer observed that "Suicide gave Heather depth, Kurt a soul, and Ram a brain." (There's also another part of me that keeps hearing Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction yell "I won't be ignored!")
Can't be bothered with how narrow views of public relations continue to force some people to bump repeatedly into the same inch-high curbs, recoil for a few months, then repeat the exercise like a flummoxed Roomba.
(iRobot, makers of the Roomba, is a client of A&R Edelman. Those of you who think there's an evil conspiracy behind every PR person's post or utterance can calm down now. I used the reference because it created a uniquely entertaining visual, not because I'm some kind of evil online Svengali trying to manipulate you subliminally through your retinas. You won't find the fodder for your next Technorati-rank-amplifying blogstorm here. Move along.)
Can't be bothered with folks who expound about how great and wonderful open-source is when their only exposure is maybe the BSD foundations of MacOS, which is kind of like when kids flash the heavy-metal "horns" sign with the index and pinky finger and, yet, can't even hum the riff to "The Man On The Silver Mountain" or "Run To The Hills". To those people, I say try trusting a decent chunk of your computing life to it, and experience why InfoWorld gave the Linux community the "Best Technical Support" in 1997. Learn from it, 'cause it could inform how you look at community engagement in general. I may not be a coder, no, but I can certainly appreciate and offer some insight as to the personal rewards that come from being closer to the machine.
Can't be bothered with Web 2.0 luminaries whom I'm expected to look up to and emulate, only to consistently observe that, to paraphrase H.P. Lovecraft, their "real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals [they] profess to hold."
Can't be bothered with the fact that the art of influence and persuasion is slowly being devalued into what William S. Burroughs derided as "getting there firstest with the brownest nose".
Can't be bothered with the latest round of "You. Just. Don't. Get. It." arrogance. Those who "get it", don't. Sometimes irresponsibly so.
Can't be bothered with Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize, especially since you have to jump through several rhetorical hoops to get from "Global Climate Change" to "World Peace" and still keep the starting point in sight. Then again, this is the same prize that Yasser Arafat won thirteen years ago, so I'm wondering about the esteem to which we should be holding this prize anyway.
Can't be bothered with the gibbering over the latest "list of top blogs". Oh, gasp. (Above-cited H.P. Lovecraft quote comes to mind, as well as this earlier post.)
Can't be bothered with the fact that PayPerPost gets $7M in funding when I'm pretty certain that there's a struggling innovator in Silicon Valley who just needs $500,000 in seed capital to get his Moore's-Law-extending idea for a new high-k dielectric material (and process for depositing same) off the ground. Of course, if you want to read all about it, you can of course check out the posts from this search, most of which (no, not all)appear to be from PayPerPost members.
(Ok... I'm kinda bothered, then...)
So, what has kept me occupied?
Well, I'm getting client work done, advising clients both current and (perhaps?) future.
I'm congratulating Voce and Josh.
I'm helping a bud with his talk for UGA Connect. (Always make time for students.)
I'm finalizing my monthly report on the immersive social media and community engagement training program I've developed, thinking about what was learned from the experience and how to make the program better.
I'm preparing for an ABERJE session in São Paulo, plus a visit to Edelman's local office.
I put the final nudge-and-aligns to my PowerPoint presentation for the PRSA conference in Philly. Very much looking forward to it, as it'll be my first talk at the PRSA international conference and I'm there at the recommendation of my good friend, The Charlie Rose Of PR himself Eric Schwartzman. Of course, I'll be dutifully showing up with my 80-100 printed-out copies of my session, since PRSA basically promised to bar any speakers from the podium who don't. (And that'd be a helluva note after flying up from Brazil, eh?)
Then I spend one week back in the Chicago office.
Then I'm gone for two weeks to get married. *8-)
Count on dispatches from São Paulo and Philly.
But I think you'll probably understand if you don't hear too much from me for those couple weeks afterward.
In any case, a couple of weeks between posts seems to be SOP around here.
So, I'll see you in a few.
Try to behave yourselves, blogosphere.
Oh...
...and get off my lawn.
Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, social media, blogging
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This is the blog of Phil Gomes, VP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL.
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