Now that the dust has settled from the whirlwind that was Edelman Digital Bootcamp, I’m finally getting a chance to pause and write up my own thoughts from the event.

First of all, I’m blown away by the work done by the UGA campaigns class that headed up the planning of this event! Lead by UGA grad student, Connie Braesch, this team of 13 students put in many long hours over the course of 46 days to plan and execute an event that typically would have taken months to pull together. But who needs months when you’ve got Kaye Sweetser leading the charge?? Not us! So thanks to the students for doing a phenomenal job with the event (learn more about them and what roles they play here), and thanks to Kaye for making the arrangements to have this event be the “client” for her campaigns class for the semester. Would this have all come together otherwise? Nope.

Speaking of top-notch educators, are you fully familiar with the educators that we had helping with the event? Are you reading their blogs?? Well, you should be. Go. Do it now. We’ve got Kaye, Robert French, Mihaela Vorvoreanu and Karen Miller Russell. Leaders in social media education — bravo!

In addition, Dr. Russell’s WOM class was doing the live coverage of the event. They did absolutely everything! Live blogging, tweeting, flickring, audio and video podcasts … it’s unbelievable how much great content these folks produced.

Through all of that coverage, we hope you got a taste of what the event was like. But I must say, nothing beats actually being there. For my part, I spent the day helping to lead the student track and, like my other Edelman colleagues, had my own group during the break-out sessions. (Go Pink Team!!) So I had lots of face time with the students. I was very impressed with the thoughtful questions posed by the students; there were so many deep, probing questions. Lots of “what if” scenarios were raised, leading to invaluable conversations filled with insight into what we professionals do on a daily basis. I know when I was a college student (which — shh! — wasn’t all that long ago), I was never able to wrap my brain around what an actual day at the office would look like for a professional — especially for those at an agency. How does all that stuff you do in class actually translate to effectively serving a client?? Truth be told, you just have to DO it to get it. But hopefully, the students came away with a better sense of that than I ever got while I was in college.

Beyond that — the practical sense and skills gained — we were aiming for something bigger. I know I’d like to get to the point where social media relations is as integral a part of the PR skill set as traditional media relations. The professional world is asking for it. The demand for practitioners skilled in both is there. But the learning curve with incorporating social media in the classroom is tough! With this bootcamp we’re just hoping to help jumpstart that process of adoption and work toward giving educators what they need to do this. The educators that attended the event demonstrated a commitment to that higher level of excellence (students — you better appreciate that!!). It’s a process, but at least we’ve got dedicated people like these on board.

So with that, one last big THANK YOU from me to everyone who worked on and attended the event. We’ll be adding a few more pieces of content and news to the site, but I know my student team is heading on spring break this weekend … so GO HAVE FUN!

Tags: edb, edelman, Grady College, pr education, social media, UGA, ugaedb08, University of Georgia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Edelman Digital Bootcamp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.