This is a short narrative about my up-and-down fitness journey, how it has affected my happiness, and how I have tried to manage it. I was quite the athlete as a kid and as a young man. I swam a lot, played ice hockey until I was 17 and then fenced sabre competitively into my …
Continue reading "Becoming fit, staying fit, while staying happy"
This blog post has seven tips for you on how I try to be a productive writer. I hope you find them useful. I am in the midst of writing a book with Martin Waxman on how public relations, marketing and the other strategic creative professions can take charge in the emerging new world of …
Continue reading "7 things I do to stay creative and keep writing"
I have been reflecting on what it means to live and be alive. I know that sounds a little grand. Bear with me. So often, we will live for the future, for promise. So often we live in the past, for sentiment and nostalgia. We even sometimes -- rarely -- live in the present. What …
I’ve been thinking of the power of attention to shape our lives. What we attend to sets the public agenda in terms of what we collectively think is important … in politics, society, culture, the market. However, I think the more insidious power of attention is very personal. Indeed, we attend to what is most …
Continue reading "Some thoughts on fear vs belonging in digital life"
What a year 2021 was. I ended up spending it mostly at home, although I got an incredible amount of work done. Working from home seems to agree with me. In 2021, I focused on my virtual, physical and spiritual lives. I tried to reimagine my teaching and I think I did so, pretty successfully, …
This week, I went hiking in the evening with my night light. My walks took me around the Heritage Loop in the Dundas Valley Conservation Area. I leave from my backyard and walk down the Bruce Trail section that leads to Sherman Falls, in the direction away from the Falls. After navigating a hilly trail …
We are in a new yeaI have taken up a daily habit of going on a 7-10 kilometre walk on the trails behind my house in Ancaster, which is tucked into the escarpment. It is an advantage of being able to access the Bruce Trail from my backyard and I am grateful for it.r and …
This year was a strange year. COVID-19 kept us at home and made many of us sick - I had extended family members who caught COVID-19 and survived, thankfully. As many of you know, my life revolves around my work as a professor of communication studies and communications management at McMaster University and my work …
The field of professional communications has been evolving for the last 100 years. When it began, with the early work of Eddie Bernays and Ivy Lee, the focus was largely on promotions. This larger communications field split into several over the years. One can argue that public relations, marketing, advertising, investor relations, etc. are all …
Continue reading "Datasci is the third pillar of PR and comms management"
Last week, we had the Summer Residency of the Master of Communications Management program at McMaster University (offered in partnership with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University). However, this was MCM Residency with a COVID-19 pandemic twist - for the first time, we delivered the entire residency via Zoom. It was …
Continue reading "Learnings from teaching online for an intensive week"
