Inaugural SNCR Research Symposium / 1st Anniversary & Awards Celebration

September 9, 2006 | 4 Comments

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The Inaugural SNCR Research Symposium, Awards & 1st Anniversary Celebration will be held November 1 – 2 at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, Mass. Don’t miss this special event featuring the presentation of our first research projects and the unveiling of the first issue of the Journal of New Communications Research.

Also, help us celebrate our first anniversary and honor excellence in the use of new communications models and solutions by professionals, businesses and academics from around the globe.

Please join us in Boston as we honor excellence in new communications and social media initiatives and celebrate our first anniversary!

AGENDA

November 1, 2006

5:00pm – Welcome Reception

6:30pm – Dinner, Anniversary Celebration & Awards Ceremony

November 2, 2006

9:00am – Welcome, Opening Remarks by Jen McClure, Executive Director, SNCR

9:15am – Keynote Presentation: “The New Influencers: How Social Media is Revolutionizing Media and Markets” – Paul Gillin

Social media will profoundly disrupt the media and marketing industries by changing economic and influence models that have existed for generations. Today, some bloggers and social news sites generate more traffic than big-name mainstream media, and they do it at a tiny fraction of the cost. Their highly outsourced publishing structure is a new style of journalism and their approach to building audience and awareness is unlike anything ever done in traditional media. This will have far-reaching ramifications for established institutions. We are in the early stages of a shift that will shake the business and media worlds to the core. Paul Gillin’s keynote presentation will explore these disruptive forces, as well as the goals and motivations of the new influencers and look ahead to the changes they have initiated. He’ll point to numerous examples of how the new influencers are already affecting markets and offer guidance for media and marketing professionals who are trying to cope with the impact.

Paul Gillin is a Research Fellow and a member of the advisory board of the Society for New Communications Research. He is a veteran technology journalist with more than 23 years of editorial leadership. Paul was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, one of the most successful new media entities to emerge on the Internet. Previously, he was editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld magazine. He writes the social media column for Business 2.0 magazine, and his forthcoming book, The New Influencers chronicling the changes in markets being driven by the new breed of bloggers and podcasters, will be published by Quill Driver Books in Spring, 2007. Gillin specializes in advising business-to-business marketers on strategies to optimize their use of online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is particularly interested in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing. Paul blogs at www.paulgillin.com.

10:15am – Best Practices Committee Report – Corporate Blogging Policies Project

This past year the SNCR has researched the issue of corporate social media policies, In order to determine the effectiveness of blogging policies and how blogging policy adoption is working inside companies. The committee is conducting a series of interviews with corporate bloggers, and those contributions will help the committee to better understand how a blogging policy can help or hinder the development of a corporate blog. Case study presentations will include: Intuit, IBM, Novell, EDS and others. The case studies presented will include a description of the company’s blogging policy adoption process, a description of the challenge and how the company resolved the challenge.

Moderator: SNCR Research Fellow & Best Practices Chair, Mike Manuel, Voce Communications
Panelists: Christopher Barger, Corporate Communications, IBM; Charles Bess, P.E., EDS Fellow – EDS-Kraft CTO; Bruce Lowry, Director, Global PR, Novell

11:30am – Best Practices Committee Report – The Emergence of Blogging in University Admissions and Recruiting

New communication tools such as blogs and podcasts are expanding the range of options for creating meaningful connections with prospective students. In the past year alone, many institutions have launched blogging initiatives involving both student and administrator bloggers. This research project focused on studying the efforts of these institutions in the interest of developing shareable best practices and case study stories addressing such aspects as the relevance of institutional communications culture, blogging policy, expectations versus outcomes, authorship and review and compensation. By interviewing institution representatives about their current blogging efforts and evaluating the results, the researchers have formulated recommendations that can benefit institutions seeking to launch or enhance their own blogging initiatives, as well as those in parallel communities seeking to learn from the experience of university professionals.

Moderators: SNCR Research Fellow Dan Karleen, Peterson’s, A Nelnet company & Rob Pongsajapan, Georgetown University
Panelists: Daniel Fredman, Assistant Director of Admissions, The University of Vermont; Glenna Ryan, Director of Enrollment Services, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute & Nancy Prater, University Web Coordinator, Ball State University

12:30 – 2:00pm – Luncheon

- Presentation from Chris Heuer, Social Media Club
- Presentation from Sally Falkow, 2006-2007 SNCR Research Chair
- Vote on 2007 Research Agenda

2:00pm – Research Committee Report – State of the Art in Social Media.

This session will discuss the work SNCR Research Fellow Giovanni Rodriguez has done on the 33 wikis project, revisiting some of the changes over the past few months, plus early examples of what is happening with emergent behavior in organiations, as described on Corante’s Future Tense group blog. In this session, SNCR Research Fellow Giovanni Rodriguez will review early findings, highlighting innovation across a broad spectrum of organizations.

Research Panel Leader: SNCR Research Fellow Giovanni Rodriguez

3:15pm – New Communications Law Committee Report – Podcasts: Download or Broadcast – Legal
Implications

There is currently a significant vagueness regarding new communications law, particularly with regard to podcasting. Is podcasting a digital download, a broadcast, or some new hybrid? The determination is key to determining who owns the rights and who has standing to sue another for violation of those rights. In the terrestrial plane, when a radio station spins records, it is considered a broadcast. Broadcasters must pay for licenses from performing rights organizations, such as ASCAP and BMI, and they distribute the funds to the songwriters. These fees are in the small to mid- price range. However, when someone buys a record, the rights are held by the record company. Those who want to mass produce (duplicate) a recording must obtain a mechanical license and pay a royalty to the record company, a portion of which flows through to the applicable artist. These fees can climb into the thousands, as they are typically computed by the number of copies (downloads would be the equivalent of copies for a podcast). Podcasts can also be viewed as both broadcasts and digital downloads. Both the performing rights organizations and the record companies offer “licenses” to podcasters, but until we know how a podcast should be classified, it remains unclear whether the podcaster is legally protected even if he could afford both licenses.

Currently there is no precedent to answer these questions. For the moment, podcasters are on their own. However, our committee has attempted to find out how a suit might play out. Questions to be addressed in this presentation include:

What is the proper classification of a podcast or is there a hybrid/third type as-yet to be created?
Who should a podcaster pay for the rights to play a recording?
Are computer and Internet companies liable when they enable podcasters to distribute their shows?
What are the international ramifications, if any, on podcasting?

SNCR Research Fellow & Board Member Elizabeth Fairbanks Fletcher, Esq., Law Offices of Elizabeth L. Fairbanks-Fletcher, PLLC & Dennis Cotton, Host, Time and Wired magazines podcasts

4:30 – Conference Wrap-up

5:00 – Farewell Reception

REGISTER FOR THE EVENT:

Pricing:

Nov. 1 – Awards Gala/Anniversary Celebration Only: $100

Nov. 2 – Research Symposium Only: $295.

Register to attend both events & save nearly 20% – Awards Gala + Research Symposium for only $325!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE & use promo code “NCR20″ to save nearly 20%!

HOTEL ACCOMODATIONS:

The conference hotel will be the lovely and elegant Colonnade Hotel in Boston. A special rate of $219. has been arranged for SNCR event attendees. To register for overnight accommodations, call (617) 424-7000 or (800) 962-3030 and mention the Society for New Communications Research Symposium.

For more information, contact Jen McClure at jmcclure@sncr.org or call +1 (650) 331-0083.

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SNCR Extends Awards Entry Deadline One Week to Friday, September 15th – Don’t Miss Out!

September 5, 2006 | Leave a Comment

The Society for New Communications Research has extended its awards entry deadline from September 8th to Friday, September 15th. The awards will recognize excellence in the use of new communications models and solutions, and will be granted at the inaugural SNCR Research Symposium & Awards Gala, which will take place November 1-2 in Boston, MA. Additionally, the award-winning case studies will be published in the New Communications Review.

The SNCR awards will recognize innovative organizations and professionals who are pioneering the use of social media (i.e. blogs, wikis, podcasts, collaborative tools and other forms of participatory communications) in the areas of marketing, public relations and advertising, politics, entertainment, academics, and community and cultural development.

Only individuals and business users and academic institutions are eligible to win the awards, but entries may be submitted by product vendors, consultants and professional services firms worldwide.

Awards will be granted in the following categories:

· SNCR Professional Awards — honors leading new communications thinkers, bloggers, journalists, citizen journalists and professional communicators

· SNCR Academic Awards — recognizes leading work/research/studies from students and academic institutions

· SNCR Business Awards — honors organizations that are successfully adopting new communications models and leveraging them in innovative ways for business purposes

The final deadline for entries is now September 15, 2006. The online submission form can be found at http://www.sncr.org/awards/use/awardssubmission/submission.html. For more information, contact the SNCR at (650) 331-0083 or email jmcclure@sncr.org.