MEETINGS
Names, Faces, Dates -- Memory Expert Ramps Up the Recall
Once Ron White meets you, he knows your face, knows your name. For a loooong time. How does he do that? Business trainer White shared his memory skills with IABC/Fort Worth last year, and he's back this month to discuss "How to Have a Winning Year." Learn how to create consistent upward growth in your life and get a refresher course on the benefits of a powerful memory.
Time & date: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 3
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: $2.50 in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets (get ticket validated)
Cost: $17 members, $25 nonmembers, $12 students
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High-tech or Tech Hype? How to Thrive in the New Tech Sector
High-tech's on a comeback, with editors and reporters on the prowl for trendy stories and sizzling examples of how operating systems and outsourcing are again boosting business to dizzying heights. Right? Wrong.
High-tech's on a comeback, but tech hype is dead and gone. Whether you're on a first-name basis with Michael Dell or a neophyte who thinks XML is a new sports league, you need to know what has changed over time -- and what will always be true -- about technology PR. Learn what's hot and what's not at the Aug. 11 meeting from Virginia Brooks, APR, who has been surviving encounters with the technology media since 1994.
She rode out the Internet boom of the early '90s managing corporate media relations for EDS and in 2000 founded Brooks & Associates Public Relations, a full-service PR shop focused primarily on technology and energy. Her clients include EDS, Microsoft, Sabre Holdings and Symon Communications.
Time & date: 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: free valet in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets (get ticket validated)
Cost: $20 members, $23 nonmembers, $18 students
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It's tradition. No meeting in August. But plans are well underway for the next round of professional development meetings and the holiday party and the scholarships and awards dinner, and the high school workshop -- all guaranteed to inform and give back to the community. And that's tradition, too.
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STRAIGHT STUFF
Star-Telegram higher education reporters Matt Frazier, Jessamy Brown and Patrick McGee will headline a media panel at the PRSA Higher Education Special Interest Group meeting from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 3, in the Betty and Bobby Bragan Fellowship Hall inside Polytechnic United Methodist Church, 1310 S. Collard St. Park in the lot behind the church, walk through the two glass doors and turn left down the hall. Lunch and soft drinks will be provided; specify if vegetarian menu is preferred. Seating is limited to 25. RSVP by July 30 to Lisa Fellers at lfellers@txwes.edu or (817) 531-4498. ... The PRSA Health Care SIG fall meeting will be 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, at Harris Methodist HEB Hospital, the East Classroom in the Edwards Cancer Center, 1600 Hospital Parkway, Bedford. Lunch will be provided, and a speaker is planned. RSVP to lauravanhoosier@texashealth.org, or call (817) 882-2550. ...
Ideas will be flying about the room at the Nu Pros lunch at noon Wednesday, Aug. 18, at Cafe Express, 1620 S. University Drive. The group, aimed at practitioners new to the PR industry, also has monthly social events every Wednesday following the PRSA meeting. More from Adrienne Gaviglio at gaviglioa@aol.com. ...
Reservations deadline is Aug. 6 to stay at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin for the National Investor Relations Institute's 15th annual Southwest Regional Conference, Aug. 25-27. Early registration deadline is Aug. 13. Details here. Direct questions to the NIRI's Susie Cunningham or Dahlia Tart at (703) 506-3568, or e-mail scunningham@niri.org. Don't know much about investing? Any weekend at the Driskill is worth it just to hang out in Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn's bar. ...
UTA will debut this fall a master's degree in communication. Courses will be offered in mass communication, communication studies, communication technology, marketing and political science. See uta.edu/communication, grad.uta.edu or call the communication department at (817) 272-2163. ...
Don't dog this date -- Aug. 31 -- early deadline to register for the Cat Writers' Association's 11th annual conference in Houston, Nov. 19-21: two days of seminars on self-publishing, radio interview techniques, how to write salable articles, ad felinefinitum. Events are in conjunction with the Cat Fanciers' Association International Cat Show, the largest cat show in the Western Hemisphere. Details here.
SPJ national update: It's OK, he's one of us; it's not OK, he's not one of us; it couldn't be more OK, we're on the payroll; and it must be OK, because I did it, too. Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reportedly pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government. Allawi denied the account. See here. ... When WTVJ/Channel 6 was told that senior correspondent Ike Seamans would be barred from Attorney General John Ashcroft's June 30 news conference in Miami, WTVJ news VP Yvette Miley replied: "You really can't dictate to us who we send to cover an event." More here. ... Four of the five House ethics committee Republicans investigating Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted money in the past from the fund-raising operation involved in the complaint against him. More here. ... John Kerry, whose campaign demanded to know whether President Bush read a key Iraq intelligence assessment, did not read the document himself before voting to give Bush the authority to go to war, aides acknowledged. See here.
SPJ national update II: Those liberals, they're everywhere; and free the T-shirt terrorists! E&P's August cover story offers an unprecedented look at reporters' alleged liberal bias and concludes that, indeed, there are more liberals than conservatives at newspapers but that an overwhelming number of editors reject calls for any "ideological affirmative action" program. See here. ... Trespassing charges against Nicole and Jeff Rank of Corpus Christi, who wore anti-Bush T-shirts to the president's July 4 rally at the West Virginia Capitol, were dropped because a city ordinance does not cover trespassing on Statehouse grounds. The shirts had President Bush's name with a slash through it and the words "Love America, Hate Bush" on the back. More here. And what of Michael Larson, the man removed from a Bush rally in Duluth, Minn., July 13? Police and Secret Service agents ushered him out, but ultimately he was never charged. John Myers of the Duluth News Tribune tells The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin that police "said they'd let him go if he promised not to go back in, he wouldn't promise, so they drove him to the other end of town and dropped him off!" Meanwhile, a McLennan County judge dismissed charges against five anti-war activists who were convicted of illegally protesting in Crawford, Texas, last year. See here.
