May 30 2019
News today (see The Guardian, The Drum, for example) that marketing agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made (part of the multinational Publicis marketing and public relations agency group) has manipulated Wikipedia on behalf of its client, outdoor apparel manufacturer The North Face, has spectacularly backfired. The North Face has been forced to apologise for its campaign, …
Jan 10 2019
A survey carried out by the UK’s Construction Knowledge Task Group has found that a third of construction practitioners do not have easy access to the knowledge they need. Feedback from 299 practitioners from every part of the industry, found almost two fifths (38.5%) said they did not have easy access to all the knowledge they …
Oct 22 2018
Last week saw the launch of ‘Platinum’, a book celebrating 70 years of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). The book includes 45 essays providing an insight into contemporary PR practice, alongside the history of the formation and development of the CIPR. Written by a diverse group of practitioners, working in a broad range …
Dec 02 2016
The English football sexual abuse scandal is being extensively covered in newspapers and on TV and radio. It is also being captured in Wikipedia articles; articles about organisations or individuals involved are being widely read. Wikipedia statistics can help indicate interest in a subject, but care is needed in editing articles relating to an ongoing …
Feb 19 2016
Sometime earlier this month, I passed a Wikipedia milestone of sorts: I submitted my 20,000th edit. I started editing the English Wikipedia 12 years, four months and 16 days ago (there is a handy counter on my user page that tells me this). As I noted on my 10th anniversary, my first edit was a …
Sep 23 2015
The Institution of Civil Engineers has become the latest supporter of the Designing Buildings Wiki.* Launched in 2012 (see my November 2012 post and February 2013 follow-up), Designing Buildings Wiki is an industry-wide endeavor to share best practice, promote innovation and break down single-discipline barriers. Just like Wikipedia, anyone can access, create and edit articles, …
Jun 22 2015
As a construction technology blogger, I sometimes encounter tools that have wider potential including use by communications professionals. City-Insights helps ‘tell stories about places’ via mobile devices, and could be used for a host of hyper-local internal and external communication purposes. At a recent COMIT* community day, I met Tim Gardom, the founder of City-Insights, a …
Jun 21 2015
Photographs including modern buildings and other creative works may fall foul of new European Parliament copyright proposals. New constraints on ‘freedom of panoroma’ may stop PR businesses using photos and videos taken in public places for professional purposes, including reuse on social media. Do you take photographs on your foreign holidays? Perhaps share some of …
Jan 05 2015
An unsubstantiated addition to a little-watched Wikipedia article can quickly become accepted as ‘fact’. Having neglected Wikipedia for a while, I got down to some serious editing yesterday, starting an article on a firm of consulting engineers, Sir M MacDonald & Partners (since 1989 part of the Mott MacDonald international multidisciplinary consultancy). While searching for …
Aug 28 2014
Voting for elections to the Council of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) opens on 1 September, and I am standing for election (read my personal statement here), having been nominated by the CIPR’s Construction and Property special interest group (CAPSIG) to stand in the groups section. The CIPR has revised its constitution …
