AGM 2018 - CIPR International Committee

Did you miss our AGM on 21 February? Please find below the transcript of the Chair’s address - do let us know your thoughts. Don't forget to have a look at #CIPRintAGM to read a summary of the engaging panel debate that took place, and make sure to sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about our future events.

By Shirley Collyer

2017 was a busy year for anyone working internationally. Not only have we seen increased geopolitical tension, the rise of populist movements, elections, but there are global issues which are becoming more widely known - such as artificial intelligence and crypto currencies, which can impact our every day and working lives.

The CIPR International Committee has been very busy this year. Our aim is to become the 'go-to' hub for global PR expertise by organising educational events, encouraging young talent and communicating with our members around the world.

We know from a previous survey that you wanted to hear more from us, and we have had a number of initiatives this year to ensure that we do communicate on a regular basis, and we will continue to build on this going forward.

The highlight of the year, certainly for me was the Global PRactice conference, CIPR International’s first conference. I learned a lot that day and there are many lessons that I will not forget - Donald Steel’s ’15, 30, 60, 90’ and the office layout, with dogs, at Ben and Jerry’s to mention just a few.

After the success of last year we are currently planning the second Global PRactice conference, which will take place in May. This year’s themes reflect the challenges that we are all facing – technological change, measurement of the value of our work, and how we create a global strategy.

We are putting together an exciting programme of debate, workshops and presentations that will help you tackle the challenges we all face in these areas – keep an eye on our website for further details. And if anyone would like to contribute as a speaker or on a panel, do contact me.

Once again, we will be holding the conference the day after the Maggie Nally lecture so that those people not based in London could enjoy both events.

At the Maggie Nally lecture last year we heard an insider’s view of Africa from Robin de Villiers from Burson-Marsteller. Her insight into the practices and ethical challenges really brought to life the issues that we as International practitioners can face in our work.

This year’s Maggie Nally lecture takes us to Latin America. Our speaker is Ricardo Carioni, deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Nicaragua and also director of the LATIA, the Latin American Trade and Investment Association.

Ricardo will give us his views on The Latin American region, an area of unfulfilled potential. Considering why countries within that region aren’t capitalising on the potential, how companies and organisations can tap into that potential and how they need to communicate effectively.

​We have continued our popular series of webinars “Doing PR in” – They are interesting, easy to take part in ...... and you can even earn a few CPD points! We have done India and Cambodia this year and we are in the process of planning a webinar on Russia, the USA and Australia. We would love to have more ideas and help with these – if you are able to help us organise any, then please let us know.

In October, to coincide with the CIPR Ethics Festival, we will be running a session on the ethics of research.

We have increased our activity on twitter and LinkedIn, sharing interesting news with you – and we would like to get you involved in discussions – do you agree with what is being said? Is there something you have seen which others might find of interest? We would love to find out more what is going on around the world!

A key objective for us is to encourage young talent in the industry. This year we continued to run the Douglas Smith Student Award and we had joint winners from Cardiff and Newcastle. We will be running the Award again this year.

We have also increased our ongoing communications with you and I am pleased to see that we now have over 1300 followers on Twitter and nearly 700 members in our LinkedIn group – do join us on social media if you have not already.

On social media we are regularly sharing events, views and news – so invite you to get involved in the conversations. We very much appreciate your feedback and would love to hear more from you with interesting news and views that you would like to share with other members.

Finally, I want to talk to you about our committee. Our committee has become even more international - we have members from all over the world, including as far afield as Jamaica, Singapore and the US! This is all done on a voluntary basis, in our spare time. Therefore, I would like to thank everyone on the committee for all their hard work over the past year.

Thank you very much.