Week 1: 1.3.3

1. At around 30:45 there is a graphic of the competencies that Breckenrige proposes as being central for the modern day communicator. Where do you see yourself fitting into this model?

2. What practical tip/s will you take forward in your work as a communication strategist?

3. What are you initial thoughts about content and storytelling in communication?

Dodgy screenshot from video

1 - I find myself fitting most comfortably into Global Comms Collaborator, Relationship Agent, but most of all Creative Content Operator. That’s me already, more or less. Moving forward is a different proposition: I want to build Tech Specialist (with AR in particular), PR Policy maker, and Reputation Task Force Member. Analytics engineer seems mandatory.

2 - The key message seems to be that you need to invest in all of the above to move forward. Collaboration and being in the middle of these competencies is essential, and the practice of siloing and staying safe within boundaries is not well suited to the times. I know from my day job that this reality is a threat to the Capital P Professions, but I see it as an opportunity.

3 - I liked hearing Deirdre saying, in the follow-up questions, that the creative content thing is going to grow. She was right about that 8 years ago. Noting this was a comment made in 2014, pre-pandemic by a long shot, the explosion in home-grown and participant generated content has been a significant change sine this conference was staged. The pandemic forced people to get creative with limited tools, and the profusion of new content has been a real pandemic thing.

End of the study day: Saturday 16 July 2022, 5.12pm

Week 1 - 1.3.2 Vice

1. What is disruptive innovation? 

2. Should we think of digital media as disruptive, or an opportunity, or both? Why?

3. In your opinion, which key trend or change will make the most difference to the work of communication strategists?

1 - Disruptive innovation is understood by me to be new methods, tools and/or practices that disturb or displace orthodoxies and the established institutions that defend them.

2 - Digital media is both. It has clearly challenged orthodoxy in all aspects of life, but new methods, tools and practices by definition are new - therefore they represent opportunities.

3 - Pervasive, irreconcilable complexity in the context of constant change are now the ambient condition. Everything is unfolding under these terms, so the challenge will be to procure a method of operation that accommodates constant change.

Week 1 - 1.2.2

1. What is the relationship between globalisation and digital network culture today?

2. How might we strategise communication knowing the communication environment is global and digital?  

1 - Globalisation as the enaction of power, as an instrumentality over time and space (collapsing, bringing into proximity). An opportunity exists (as argued in the article) to harness the capacities of digital networking and communication to bring into engagement ‘us’ and ‘others’ in a way that allows us to grow our own identity as, always, speakers and listeners. And as listeners, those whose attitudes can be shifted by exposure to the other. NOT a homogenisation or ‘flattening’, which does not happen, but a ‘bringing into close proximity’ in time and space people, as embodied in their stories, texts, voices and images, for good or ill. The argument is made for an ethical way of responding to this opportunity.

2 - It seems to me that there needs to be an ongoing and active (interactive) engagement with terms of radical difference. Not in the interests of harmonisation or homogenisation, but as an awareness as a basic condition of that engagement, one that suspends the need or attempt to ‘conclude’ or ‘be definitive’. This is alluded to as the opportunity to ‘make spaces’ for engagement that do not place conditions on similarity or difference, by either affirming sameness or relying on stereotypes of difference.