My FP Infomart blog Q & A: Overcoming the right brained fear of numbers

My thoughts are featured on this week’s Data Points, the FP Infomart blog. In it, I make the point that we need metrics to tell the story of our professional practices. The biggest challenge we have now in professional communication is our general fear of numbers. Many people who excel in our fields are creative, …

Can a warrior Canada win hearts and minds?

I was reading  Aaron Henninger’s (Director, Unted States Air Force Public Affairs Center of Excellence) JPC article “The argument against winning hearts and minds”. He makes the point that it is impossible for the United States to try and win the hearts and minds of an occupied place against a backdrop of humvees and fighter planes. …

5 reasons to join a professional association

In 2009, my colleague, mentor and friend Terry Flynn, suggested that I join the Canadian Public Relations Society. I did, and I have found it to be incredibly rewarding. I now recommend joining a professional society to every professional communicator I know. Here are five reasons to join a professional association: 1. Ethics Code: One of …

The challenges of teaching professional ethics

I have been having many discussions – with colleagues and practitioners – about what it means to teach ethics to professional communicators. Ethics is a challenging subject to teach at the best of times, because it requires that the practitioner have experience. How do you get a student or a mentee to have that experience, …

Community building in the emerging oral culture

Everyone seems to be talking about building and managing community these days. But what does it really mean? I think some of the answers lie in awareness of what culture is and how it works. We used to be a print and language based culture. Things were only deemed to be “official” or legally or …

Just published: New issue of the Journal of Professional Communication!

The new issue of the Journal of Professional Communication (volume 3, issue 1) is published. You can read it here. It is almost had dot believe that we have now been publishing for three years. During that time, we have  showcased Canadian professional communication research in both official languages. We have also had research reported …