The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year (making it the second oldest public relations professional body in the world, after the Public Relations Society of America.)
I’ve been a member for the last 10 of these 60 years. Here are some personal highlights and disappointments:
Highlights
- Giving an oversubscribed talk in Oxford on Online Public Relations at the height of the dot com bubble in early 2000.
- Past academic conferences in Bouremouth (2003) and Lincoln (2005).
- Best president: Jon Aarons, for his provocative stance on the PRCA and for the lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus.
- The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regional group, which holds a full calendar of events. The next is on ‘PR and the digital frontier’ on 1 May.
- Taking the CIPR-supported student magazine Behind the Spin online in March 2008.
Disappointments
- There was a time when ten years’ continuous membership would have gained me an automatic Fellowship (FCIPR). No longer. In our professionalising age, I’m now required to sign up for CPD.
- The Education and Skills sectoral group may work for its core constituency of HE and FE communications managers, but there’s nothing in it for me (or for other public relations educators, trainers and academics).
- I registed as an Approved Professional Trainer in 2002, but have only been able to lead one training session because I soon after took a full-time job as a university lecturer.
PR Studies 
But keep it up!
My feels are also mixed as well. I wish the sectoral grops could be more active, but they are run by volunteers so there is always a limit.
But on balance, I’m happy to pay my subs. The alternatives for me as an internal communicator in the UK just don’t come close in terms of stature.
Liam
I’m also keen to stay a member of this club, Liam. Looking forward to welcoming you to the university before long, too.
Richard,
First of all thanks for your comments on my blog, I will have to sort out the podcast link.
Good effort on the last ten years, the highlights appear to far outnumber the disappointments.
Mark
Well…we don’t live in a perfect world so there will always be some drawbacks wherever we go, whatever we do. The important thing in that case, as Mark noted, is that the highlights seem to overtake the disappointments.