When I was 17 - getting ready to pop up from the soil as a new type of thing, a strategic stakeholder relations (PR) practitioner in Australia with a pack of old white male ex-journo’s wondering what to do with us - I was sold a * two-way * definition of PR. I thought it was about dialogue and participation.

To my idealist young self, with corporations gaining power and governments losing it, I thought working in PR might let me contribute to a new kind of democracy through “mutual understanding between organisations and publics”.

By the time I ran away screaming from the Porter Novelli propaganda machine to join academia - I was disillusioned to say the least.

A decade of activism and using my skills on the “other side” of the game, plus marrying an early net uber geek, led me to this. This? Social media evangelism, but with eyes and heart wide open.

Now I am willing to come back in from the cold and go mainstream again. I’m not buying shares in old school PR firms. I’m banking on a phoenix or two. Maybe some new seeds. Maybe some permaculture.

Let’s hope we can create some real, social/eco impact, and take this (r)evolution all the way.

With or without the dinosaurs, poseurs and pretenders.

(With a big, loyal nod to my old mate and first boss Errol Considine, then-MD/Owner of Hill & Knowlton Perth - who asked Gra and I to geek up his people in 1997, well before anyone else was starting to get the plot. But he was always a cool guy, and a demon with a red pen.

What’s the web 2.0 equivalent of the editor’s razor sharp twirling red pen, held like The Sword of Damocles over your copy? Note to self: better spell that properly in case he’s discovered Google Alerts, or is it my mother the English teacher haunting me…)

Here’s the original post World Has Changed; PR Agencies Haven’t from Will that spurred us all on, to get stuck in. He says what he means. No bullshit allowed in the Will-osphere, which is rawther refreshing, innit.