May 10 2011
Last week I spoke at an evening meeting of the Cass Entrepreneurs Network (an alumni group of Cass Business school at London’s City University) on entrepreneurs, PR and social media. The event, hosted at the CIPR’s headquarters in Russell Square, attracted a mixture of Cass and CIPR people, and, judging from their answers to my initial …
Apr 15 2011
On and off for the last year I have been following the fortunes of the Construction Enquirer, an online-only free news publication established in April 2010 by former print journalists Aaron Morby and Grant Prior. As the business model of traditional B2B industry publications has come under pressure from online sources, it has been interesting …
Jan 25 2011
About two weeks ago (see Announcing the Be2Awards 2011), I launched the website for what we believe are the world’s first social media awards for “The built environment” (ie: architecture, engineering, construction, facilities management, property, etc). Nominations began to trickle in, and as Friday’s deadline approached there was a final flood, and I have just …
Dec 09 2010
Well, that was a nice surprise! This afternoon I learned that I had won Best Social Media Individual in the Sustainability Now social media awards, and that Be2camp, which I co-founded, had won Best Social Media Community. First run in 2008 (post), Sustainability Now is a two-day virtual conference and exhibition organised by UBM, which also …
Nov 24 2010
Almost exactly a year ago, the construction weekly magazine Contract Journal ceased publication (post) with several journalists and commercial staff made redundant. Some soon got involved with new ventures; Aaron Morby and Grant Prior, for example, now run the online news service Construction Enquirer, while one-time CJ community manager Will Mann joined The Construction Index (post). …
Sep 21 2010
The CIPR‘s Construction and Property Special Interest Group, CAPSIG (of which I am a committee member), is holding its next evening seminar on Thursday 30 September at the Building Centre in London. The event is branded Constructing Social Media, and some industry friends of mine will be speaking: Phil Clark from UBM (publisher of Building, …
Sep 09 2010
Having worked in-house as a PR professional in the construction industry, I noticed the frequency with which golf-playing executives disappeared from the office and (to paraphrase Mark Twain) ‘spoil a good walk’ with some business associates. Being blessed with little hand-to-eye coordination and a dislike of plaid trousers, I never took to the game, and …
Apr 28 2010
A new UK-based Construction Enquirer e-newsletter service started today. Following last November’s demise of Contract Journal (see Goodbye, CJ), this new venture is managed by two former print journalists, Aaron Morby and Grant Prior, and in a construction market where the two surviving mainstream titles, Construction News and Building magazine, have both imposed paywalls, it provides …
Mar 02 2010
Late last year I was contacted by Ryan Briggs, one of the co-founders of a new social network aimed at the construction industry. The Construction Network, or tCn, aims to become the sector’s most exclusive business networking platform and has some big name partners, most notably the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB). Other construction associations …
Jan 27 2010
The University of Salford’s Centre for Research & Innovation (SCRI) in the Built & Human Environment recently launched a more interactive offshoot of its main website. SCRI Live is built on a customisation of WordPress, delivering a blog (covering housing, health, education and technology) and an RSS feed of news from Building magazine. I first …
