The start of a new era

This week is the start of a new era for me, one of an empty nest, with both my girls starting their first weeks of the autumn university term.

The last few weeks have been a manic (and expensive) time, getting them set up in their various accommodations, travelling, sorting IT access, course registration and student finance.

So, how am I feeling at the start of October? I have mixed emotions in a very quiet house with space on the shoe rack for several pairs of MY OWN shoes. It’s just me and the cats in the house for a few weeks until they both come home, with washing and wanting food.

And so, we look ahead to Halloween and the countdown to Christmas. I’ve made some sloe gin this year with sloes picked on an August camping weekend in Wales. It will be ready for Advent and I can’t wait. I’m also celebrating Strictly Come Dancing being back on telly which I am watching this year (I didn’t last year) as Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy is among the celebrity contestants and, already, after just two weeks, standards of dancing are high.

Also this month, it’s three years since I started working for myself as Lucecannon PR offering independent PR and communications services including copywriting and social media plus all the attendant planning and strategy. So far, I’ve worked for Activate Performing Arts and the Inside Out Dorset festival, ITN and Channel 4 News, The Halo Trust, The Cheltenham Trust and others on a mix of marketing, internal and external PR and all kinds of digital, social and print communications.

I did a stint for Channel 4 News again as PR manager in September while the incumbent manager was on holiday and enjoyed it thoroughly. I got C4 News mentions on the Today programme on Radio 4, plus mentions in or on The Guardian, ITVX, Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Independent, Evening Standard, AOL, Yahoo, The Times, The Sun, Daily Star and the Telegraph. Now I’m ready for the next challenge.

Also, how could I forget? Last night was the Chartered Institute of PR’s awards for the south of England in Bristol and I won! Silver for Independent PR Practitioner of the Year. I’m thrilled and delighted.

Do get in touch if I can help with your projects, or if you know of someone looking for an award-winning senior comms professional.

In other news

In late September I went to an evening discussion of the future of AI in PR, organised by the CIPR Wessex committee, of which I am a member.

It was a really interesting evening. We heard from Dr John Flackett, head of AiLab, who said alarming AI – where super computers create other super computers – is years away and we don’t even know how to get to that future. Tania Duarte, co-founder of We and AI, talked about the hype that surrounds much of AI and warned of lazy tropes such as glowing brains which are alarmist and misleading. And Andrew Bruce Smith, chair of the Chartered Institute of PR’s AI in PR panel covered the pros and cons of AI.

In essence, I learnt that AI is not coming for our jobs and was reconfirmed in my thinking that it’s us humans and the decisions that we make about how to use AI that are fundamental to the way the technology develops.

Press Gazette has identified live blogs as a format, along with email newsletters, that seem to be unaffected by the ups and downs of digital media in this story. I remember when live blogs started and The Guardian was live blogging TV programmes while I was baking cakes and raising children down in Somerset. The live blogs – like Twitter in 2008 – were a welcome and, at the time, vital connection back to London media-land.

I was alerted to a new podcast from the BBC with former Sun editor David Yelland and former Queen and Gordon Brown PR Simon Lewis called ‘When It Hits the Fan’. David and Simon talk through some of the PR ‘fan-hitting’ moments of the past week including, in the week I listened, Elon Musk’s confessions to his biographer about geofencing a Starlink satellite to foil a Ukrainian attack on Russia and Liz Truss’ ambitiously titled book ‘Ten Years to Save the West’. It’s well worth a listen and you can find it here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The past month has been dominated by allegations against Russell Brand and, clearly, if he has done wrong, he must face due legal process.

It’s worrying that the Attorney General is warning journalists off reporting concerns about or allegations against Brand, according to Press Gazette in this story.

Dan Wootton is in trouble, suspended from GB News and the Daily Mail following an interview with Laurence Fox in which Fox made offensive remarks about journalist Ava Evans. The Sun is investigating allegations involving payment for sexual material during Wootton’s time as showbiz editor of the paper.

In brighter news, this caught my eye about millennials favouring work life balance over the constant grind of paid work. Then the Guardian ran this story, about businesses opening work spaces outside city centres as some companies accept that people no longer want to commute two hours a day and that hybrid working, partly from a shared office space and partly from home, is here to stay.

That’s plenty for October. See you after Bonfire Night.