Today’s panel discussion on how social media and online networking are changing the communications landscape was excellent: informative, entertaining and a SELL OUT!

This is the first time in a while that CPRS Ottawa has sold out a Professional Development event – and we did so well in advance, unfortunately having to turn some people away.  This is a real testament to the growing interest in the area amongst PR and communications professionals in the national capital region and also to the great moderator Rob Henderson, President of CNW, and panellists that agreed to participate in the session.

Joe Thornley, President and CEO of Thornley Fallis & 76design and author of ProPR.ca kicked things off with his presentation that provided an overview of many of the various social media tools that are available and how they can be used.  He went on to explain why he thinks the Public Relations profession, rather than Advertising, should own social media.  He also provided attendees with suggestions on how they and/or their organization can engage in social media.

Next up was John Blackmore, leader of the Internet Marketing and Content team at Cognos.  John conveyed why he thinks “web 2.0” is not tactics; but an approach and philosophy.  He discussed how his team at Cognos has evolved cognos.com from educational “brochure-ware” to its current role as demand-generation engine that delivers tens of millions of dollars in marketing pipeline.

Finally, Colin McKay, aka CanuckFlack, Director of Public Education and Communications at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner talked about the recently launched Office of the Privacy Commissioner blog and provided advice on how Government communicators can go about over-coming skeptism and ‘fear’ to implement social media tools and practices within their organization. For anyone that didn’t get enough of Colin’s very entertaining presentation, he’s performing again at the Third Tuesday Ottawa Social Media Meet-up on the evening of Monday, November 19^th.

Following their presentations, Joe, John and Colin provided insights on a variety of topics in response to questions from event moderator Rob Henderson and the audience.