Preparing to get into the swing of things, re: classes, I spent some of the weekend looking around at what is happening in social media. Not too much with direct PR implications, but did find a few interesting news items and activities.

The news of Michael Deaver’s passing was quite sad. Deaver, a master – if ever there was one, had been serving as vice chairman of Edelman in Washington, D.C. Politics aside, this is one person that had an enormous impact on media relations. He changed it dramatically. I so hoped our former students, a few of them working there now, would have the opportunity to get to know him. Our sympathies and condolences to Mr. Deaver’s family and those at Edelman.

Update: Mike Krempasky eulogizes Deaver at RedState. Krempasky also offers a Charlie Rose interview. The interview below comes from the Edelman sixtysecondview produced by David Brain, President and CEO of Edelman Europe. The pre-election (November 8, 2006) video illustrates Deaver’s keen insight into, and understanding of, US politics. The follow up video proves his predictions true.

Speaking of former students (not mine) now working in PR, Stephen Davies is doing remarkable work with his new employer, webitpr. Their work in social media releases is interesting to watch. Stephen began his blogging while a student at the University of Sunderland (UK), studying with Philip Young. His blog? Quite silent since April. You OK Philip?

Turning to the more geeky set, I looked at the un-conferences taking place this weekend. There were four BarCamps scheduled.

1. BarCampVancouver2007 – (49° 17′ 3 N, 123° 6′ 2 W)
2. BarCampFloripa2 – (27° 35′ 53 S, 48° 32′ 53 W)
3. BarCampNashville – Exit/In, Nashville, USA – (36° 10′ 6 N, 86° 46′ 38 W)
4. BarCampBlock – Palo Alto, CA, USA – (37° 26′ 34 N, 122° 9′ 40 W)

The BarCampFloripa2 seems to not have taken place. (Interesting how they put the GPS locations on there, isn’t it?)

The Scoble Show had a very entertaining and interesting interview with Marc Canter, by the way. Who knew he had such a rich opera voice?

BarCampBlock in Palo Alto, CA was the only live video feed I could find. Bless their hearts, I’m sure the people doing the video were volunteers and it was a bumpy ride. Video was jerky and audio was mostly non-existent (in the first few hours). So, that was a bit of a bust. But, uStream.tv is, I still believe, a good service to explore. Sadly, to do a video presentation at a conference like that, you need some pretty heavy duty professional equipment. Your consumer grade cams / mics – they just won’t cut it. Ya’ need to be a Scoble or a Pirillo to pull it off well.

I also tried to follow BarCamp Nashville via their Twitter feed. It was a bit “inside baseball” and likely more useful if you were actually there. However, there was one telling bit of info revealed by one of the attendees. On Twitter, a Nashville Bar Camp participant shared “bcn the CEO of my company (200+ employees) has a blog… Our human resources writes it for him!” Oh, how that would not go over well with the blogeratti, should the name of the company be learned.

And, finally, along the lines of consumer generated content, I am still enamored with the photo shared by Kara Graves (Samford University ‘09) from Camp ASCCA. Kara shared (in Facebook) this photo of Jessica’s, a camper, prosthetic leg. Kinda tells the whole story, doesn’t it?