Click this link to listen to a 14-minute interview of Claire Leheny on the final day of the Sept. 22-24 Strategic Communication Management Summit 2009 in Chicago.

I interviewed Claire, who is Melcrum’s Director, North America, to discuss:

• Findings from a recent Melcrum global survey of communication professionals
• How the current economic market is impacting internal communications, and
• Changes within Melcrum, including the reason behind Melcrum’s recent relocation of its headquarters from Chicago to Washington, D.C.

My “day job” and some volunteer work have kept me pretty busy lately.

I was able to record an interview with Bob Freer, Infoble VP business development, and Julie Baron, Principal at Communication Works, an Arlington Heights, IL, communications strategist.

Why would a company pay Infoble (http://infoble.com) to create and/or manage the distribution and tracking of podcasts? Because Infoble can overcome many of the barriers facing corporate podcasts, including bandwidth, information security, measurement of ROI, searchable archived content and more.

Earlier this week, I joined two other members of IABC’s Social Responsibility Committee in an interview for the IABC Cafe2Go podcast. Shel Holtz, ABC, led us through a discussion regarding a new website, SR LINK, that is a resource for people interested in communicating about social responsibility.

In this 15-minute interview, Carrie Mamantov, Michaela Hayes and I discuss the goals for the site, the effort that went into launching it and how it is being received to-date.

Click this link to hear an 8-minute “Quick & Dirty podcast” that I recorded on June 8, 2009 at the IABC 2009 World Conference at the Marriott in San Francisco.

This podcast was recorded following a presentation by Lynn Patterson, director of corporate responsibility at RBC Financial Group, Ontario, Canada. Lynn’s presentation, “The Suite Spot: Transforming your corporate responsibility report into a communication suite,” included ideas for moving away from a focus on corporate responsibility reports so that communicators instead can provide a “suite” of communications tailored to key audiences across appropriate media.

Our discussion covered the reasons to move in the direction of CS communications suites, examples of how it is done at RBC, and the possibly surprising thought that CSR departments may one day disappear–but the work won’t.

The IABC World Conference has featured some terrific SR-related presentations. Come back to read and hear more as the conference continues.

(cross-posted on the SR LINK web site)

Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management Summit 2008 in Chicago was exceptional. I’ve already posted a podcast interview of communication expert Roger D’Aprix that was recorded on the first day of the summit, and I’ll be summarizing some of the information I gathered during the three-day event in Chicago.

The summit was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, about one block from my high school. That gave me additional photo opportunities and ideas for blog posts.

I particularly want to compliment the Melcrum staff, led by Vicky Burch, Annie Waite and Rick Spratley. They went above the call to be welcoming, helpful and instrumental in encouraging networking among the participants and speakers.

More to come, as I get to it.