Yesterday, I received the digital tablet that I won in a drawing at the recent IABC World Conference in San Diego. No, not an Apple iPad…a Blackberry Playbook.

My expectation that this would finally replace my long-dead and missed Palm T/X was soon shattered. Turns out that the Playbook doesn’t offer a contact/calendar feature that I thought would be standard on these tablets.

No, to get those, I would need to use the Blackberry Bridge software to add the contacts and calendar items from my Blackberry smartphone.

Trouble was, I didn’t have a Blackberry smartphone. Neither does 99.9% of the world’s population. This seemed like either a real oversight by Blackberry, or a misconceived plan to attract tons of new business on the strength of the Playbook’s appeal.

In my case, it kind of worked. Rather than hand my new Playbook over to my teenaged daughter, I looked into my AT&T contract, and saw that, for an $18 fee and 2-year recommitment, I could get a refurbished Blackberry Pearl smartphone.

So I did that this morning, and expect the “new” Blackberry Pearl to arrive sometime next week.

I hope that Blackberry hasn’t gone out of business by then, based on the bad news that I read later.

This is another reason why Apple continues to dominate. Its competitors keep shooting themselves in the foot, while Apple methodically churns out nice products that people buy in droves. Unless those people get stuck with the leftovers, like me.

Anyone who has ever worked in an organization knows about the “grapevine”—the informal rumor-mill where fact and speculation mix together to breed various strains of truth, half-truths and outright misconceptions.

Strategic, open communications can reduce the grapevine’s activity and influence. This is even more apparent, and important, as companies and their stakeholders (including employees) engage more in the range of communication channels powered by social media tools and platforms such as blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Companies today are looking to join in the conversations occurring within and outside of the company walls. Those conversations can change and move rapidly, which makes it more difficult for company “spokespersons” (either formally designated or ad hoc) to be a trusted participant if they haven’t spent time engaging with others.

Some of the bigger challenges occur in times of change, when information may be less available or less readily shared, and the unknown can seem more apparent and more ominous. Does that describe the situation at Hewlett-Packard, following the sudden resignation on Friday of Mark Hurd, HP’s chairman, chief executive officer and president? (Read more in my previous post.)

A few HP executives have been quoted in articles appearing online. For example, in the U.K., a Guardian newspaper’s online article quoted HP’s general counsel Michael Holston as stating that Hurd engaged in a “systematic pattern” of submitting falsified financial reports to hide a “close personal relationship” with a former HP contractor.

The official HP blog, Data Central, on Saturday offered scant information other than a retread of the corporate statement published on Friday. It stated that “Comments are closed for this post and will not be published.”

Let’s hope that the communications internally at HP were much more transparent. After all, Hurd was not universally loved within HP for his tough business decisions that led to thousands of job cuts over the years. How will HP’s communications staff manage this time of change?

That was exactly the topic of a session led by HP communicators Robin Andrews and Desiree Sylvester in 2005. It was titled, “Keeping employees focused and engaged in times of change,” and it was delivered on the day before Hurd accepted the IABC EXCEL Award at the IABC International Conference in Washington, D.C.

Much of what Robin and Desiree shared in that presentation could hold true today, such as the “communication challenges”:

• Balance focus on delivering day-to-day business vs. change
• Manage leaks in the media
• Everything said internally was expected to be shared externally—very difficult to give employees additional or advance information

Check out the presentation and then let’s see what surfaces from HP’s employees. Will they feel like their feelings and opinions have been heard?

Another more minor observation. I had noticed that on Friday, the day of the Hurd resignation announcement, the HP site was not completely updated. Although the press release was posted under HP’s News Releases section, the company leader page still indicated that Hurd was in charge.

From the HP website on 8-6-2010, the day Hurd's resignation was announced.

On Saturday, the site was updated to indicate that Cathie Lesjak
was named interim chief executive officer and would remain chief financial officer.

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)

My first unofficial IABC 2009 World Conference event took place on Friday over buffalo wings, onion rings and drinks at the Fourth Street Bar & Grill at the Marriott. There, Mike Zimet and I thanked IABC IT staffer Isaac Chapman for the yeoman’s support he provided for the launch of SR LINK.

On Saturday morning, I joined a group of about a dozen IABC volunteers and three IABC staff members for a community service project. The beach cleaning went very well, although I couldn’t believe how many nails, screws and pieces of broken glass I scooped out of the sand around two firepits on the beach. People burn pallets and furniture there, and the nails and screws fall into the surrounding sand. You really don’t notice it when you would look at the beach (which is lovely).

Then we got back to the Marriott in time to freshen up a bit before embarking on a two-hour walking tour of San Francisco. I chose the Union Square / Chinatown tour, and was so impressed by the knowledge and enthusiasm shown by the two SF Chapter leaders, Molly Walker and Janet Bailey. One treat was to walk by the new IABC headquarters. I’m looking forward to sneaking over there for a quick visit sometime during the next couple of days.

The conference officially kicks off tomorrow, and I’ll do my best to capture some of the hightlights from the sessions I attend.

If you didn’t come this year, I’m telling you that you will be sorry!

Just weeks before the IABC 2009 World Conference, I received an email regarding cancellation of a pre-conference community project for which I was registered. That community project was to partner with the Fillmore/Western Addition Mobilization of Adolescent Growth In our Communities (Mo’ MAGIC), a collaborative of more than 50 programs and organizations helping under-served youth in San Francisco.

I was looking forward to spending the Saturday morning before the World Conference reading to kids. The event summary stated that “Studies also show that being read to or reading to others can help decrease summer learning loss.” What a great program, I thought. It fit well into my desire to serve the community using the skills and experience I’ve gained as a communicator.

Evidently, I was one of a very limited group of people, because the project was canceled due to low registrations. I’d better make it clear that I agree with IABC conference organizers who have to be prudent when planning these projects. My disappointment is with the situation, not the decision to cancel the event.

Was it budget cutbacks that prevent conference attendees from coming a day sooner? I hope that was the case, rather than a lack of interest in reading to kids.

Anyway, I’ll donate to the book drive in support of Mo’MAGIC, and have signed up to participate in the beach cleanup that day instead. Maybe I’ll pick up a few discarded bottled water containers. While that will be good karma in light of my struggle to stop using bottled water, I’m wondering if any kids in the San Francisco area are feeling discarded themselves. I hope not.