He’s done it again. Robert French, the educator who offered the world PR Blogs, has now gone further with PROpenMic. Someone has described it aptly as ‘Facebook for the PR community’.
Here’s why I like it already.
- There’s something fun and anarchic (lords of misrule, world turned upside down) about the speed at which the tradional model of education is being reinvented. In the old world, old people knew more than young people, so young people tried hard to become old(er) people. See where I’m going with this?
- You never know what you’ll learn. One lesson for me came from Robert French, responding to my teacher’s angst with this: ‘I try to motivate every day. I fail every day.’
That’s worth the entry fee alone, except that this is another Web 2.0 site with no fee and no ads. There’s no catch, but like any social network, its value grows as people gather and conversations develop. Please come and join us.
PR Studies 
Couldn’t agree more. And I’ll add one more thing.
I managed to convince a few colleagues to sign up. We are talking about present/future PR practitioners who don’t pay much attention to Social Media.
It became a common ground for me to start a conversation and share with them a bit of what social media is and will be in Portugal.
The thing I enjoy most about PR Open Mic is that I get to interact with so many students from all over the world and find out how things are done differently. This is something that I found interesting during our New Media class and the reason why I will continue to use PR Open Mic.
Hey Richard, thanks for the post. I’m so happy you’re pleased with the network. Love seeing your students and colleagues joining us, too.
Bruno and Rachel, your comments make me happy, too. Glad you’re finding value in the network. As it grows, I pray it will only get better.
OK, now off to class and likely fail again. ;o) The good thing about that, Richard, is that we often have another chance to find something else to offer the students and finally see that “Ah, ha!” experience occur.
I find that social networking is very helpful when it is concentrated. To have a social networking site for those studying, teaching and/or practicing PR, I think, is very helpful and can become a great tool in getting to know one’s colleagues. The Internet is an amazing tool, and when used for worldwide networking like this, is very helpful.
I think this is such a great idea. I hadn’t heard of it before reading this post, but being able to interact with PR people from all over is a really great tool, especially for students like myself. Social media as a whole is such a huge part of the online community and using it to our advantage will be really beneficial to all the members of PROpenMic. I’m interested to see the kind of discussions that get started!