I saved Gary’s interview for last because along with his practitioner experience, Gary teaches a graduate level PR course at the University of California-Irvine. A unique course, at that.

The course is called Edge. It is described as follows, “Edge is the Merage School’s new and ground-breaking course that explores how technology and globalization are transforming the business landscape.” The course is led by John Seely Brown along with Merage professor David Obstfeld and features a long list of great contributors. I want to learn more about this course.

With that in mind, I thought it would be good to hear what Gary thinks about the best practice / approach to a digital media course at universities.

Enjoy the interview and many thanks to Gary for sharing his thoughts with us.

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Yes, I’ll be pointing the students here and saying, “Hey, now there’s a success story. Admit it! You want to be like MK.” 

You see, it is quite true to say that Mary’s so wonderful. You know the type of person you meet and say to yourself, “Now, that’s a truly nice person. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be like MK.” Yeah, that kind of person. That’s Mary.

So, I asked Mary about the conference, why Edelman chooses to host it each year, and generally what she’s doing. MK gives us the straight story in her inimitable style. Here it is. Thanks, Mary!

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Neville recently wrote about his Summit experiences in What academics think about social media.

I had a chance to pull Neville away during one of the breaks, and he shared his views of what is happening in Europe, regarding digital practice and higher education’s involvement. He noted that two themes seem persistent: measurement and pitching. Everyone wants to get to a position where there is accepted best practice that delivers results.

Thanks, Neville, for taking time to do the interview.

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Starbucks recently launched (March ’08?) their site – my Starbucks Idea. This BusinessWeek article explains more. 

So, it was great to hear what she had to offer academia re: what’s new in emerging digital media. You can, by the way, see her entire presentation panel by visiting the Edelman site for their joint summit with PRWeek.

In the video below, Alex shares what Starbucks is looking for in new hires. Also, she relates the difference between today’s practice and the digital landscape at the beginning of her career, a little over a decade ago.

Many thanks to Alex for agreeing to the interview. She was very nice and quite helplful. You can see all seven videos I made from the conference, with eleven different interviews, by checking out the Summit ’08 collection at PROpenMic.

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Rick Murray shares why Edelman Public Relations has taken a leadership role in helping academia better prepare students for the future of public relations.

This conference is an excellent model for others to follow. We need all the help we can get, folks. I appreciate Edelman’s leadership in this area. The Summit, along with their Bootcamps, shows that Edelman is clearly in the lead. I wish more of these types of opportunities were taking place now. We don’t want to have to catch up, do we?

Video from the Edelman/PRWeek New Media Academic Summit held on June 26-27, 2008.

Keith shares, what I believe to be, a great overview of why PR agencies should seek to work with academia and why experimenting with emerging digital media is so important for both students and educators.

This video is from June 26-27, 2008, in Chicago.

I brought my laptop with webcam, as well as my Flip camera and cell phone for Utterz. I’m going to try and use the Summit main page for more information.

OK, I admit this attempt at using CoverItLive was sad. ( Sorry. I found out, upon arrival at the event, that the Northwestern University Law School folks were not giving us access to their wifi. So, bummer.

I do have videos galore and will begin posting them tonight (Sunday, June 28).

It was a great conference and I thank Edelman and PRWeek for putting it on. Hope this has a long running life. We need more of these for edcuators. Edelman & PRWeek are, truly, leading the way in outreach to higher education.

Many thanks to all of the very kind people at UGA for hosting my students and many others from various colleges and universities around the southeast. UGA’s Kaye Sweetser (so this is mass communication?) and Karen Russell (Teaching PR) had their students in top form putting on this conference. Also, thanks to Phil Gomes, Erin Caldwell and the many Edelman PR pros that came all the way down to help us all.

I took seven Auburn students and I’m thinking they had a pretty good experience, too.

The UGA students did a wonderful job putting on the project. Didn’t see a glitch or hiccup in the whole day’s events. Congrats!

During the conference, class activities for students were discussed. Podcasting (both video & audio) was one such experiential activity. The video and audio below are examples I created yesterday.

First, the video was recorded with an inexpensive video camera from Flip Video and features UGA PR student Jenny Reid.

Second, there are two audio podcasts using Utterz. I like their easy-to-use podcasting service.

Utterz is a simple free process which allows you to call a number (1-712-432-6666) to make a recording. Your account recognizes your phone number and posts your recording to your account. You may also send videos and photos to your account by emailing them to go@utterz.com.

To see the three examples of podcasts (2 audio, 1 video), check out the rest of the post …

Here is a simple Utterz audio player. They offer different options to embed or link to the audio/video files. This is the interview with UGA student Jenny Reid. Visit Utterz.com to see/hear the audio with video attached. This audio is with UGA student Jenny Reid.

And, finally, this is the Utter with educators and a photo attached.