The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Best wishes for the New Year!

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Been kind of quiet as we’ve been visiting relatives in Texas for the holidays — got the week between Xmas and New Year’s off and have been relaxing, big time. Spent the first few days at my Dad’s ranch in E. Texas. Some of the highlights:

  • Barely missing the first white Christmas in years. My brother’s family in Sugar Land got dusted by about 2 inches on Christmas Eve — quite a rarity in this part of the country.
  • Experiencing first hand that old Charlie Brown saying “Happiness is a warm puppy.” My dad’s dog had 8 pups, and some of the most pleasurable moments were spent with 3+ puppies in my lap, piled on top of each other, snoring away in sweet puppy style. (Hopefully we’ll have puppy pictures to come.)
  • Bacon and eggs for breakfast every day. Must go on health kick upon my return.

    That’s all for now. Hope everyone out there is getting some time to relax. Happy New Year to all!

    • Closing the Blog/Journalism Gap

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    The gap between blogs and journalism are closing fast. Bacon’s, which provides info on journalists and publications for PR pros, is developing a blog monitoring service to launch next year.

    "The news cycle for a story sometimes originates from a blog and can on occasion find its way into the mainstream media," says Ruth McFarland, Senior Vice President and Publisher for Bacon’s.

    "With today’s information overload from often irrelevant or dubious sources, our aim is to help our clients by filtering the communications clutter. Bacon’s will therefore focus on blogs run by reputable, credible professionals. Initially, these will be blogs of active journalists, but as our in-house researchers scrutinize and approve additional news-related blogs, we will add to the scope of our coverage," says McFarland.

    Next, bring on the blog e-mail "press" lists. Aargh.

    Long Vacation

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    Just got a vacation reply message (though I don’t even recall sending an e-mail to this person):

    “I will be out of the office starting 01/22/2004 and will not return until 01/03/2005.

    I will be out of the office starting 1/22/04 and will return 1/3/05. I will
    be checking e-mail periodically throughout the winter holiday.”

    That’s something like an 11 month vacation! Nice gig if you can get it 😉

    Outings Report

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    I’m late reporting this, but I had a great time both at Google’s press party (loved the ice sculpture and meeting folks I’ve talked with on the phone for years) and at the Bay Area Interactive Group (BIG) get-together last week. It was quite a night, I must say. At the risk of sounding naive, I’ll say I was really surprised at how long it took to get to the Googleplex (and back). It’s shocking to me just how large this area called “the Bay Area” is. (Silicon Valley is the same thing as the South Bay, isn’t it?) It’s a little intimidating, but also exciting as there are plenty of different areas to explore. (It’ll keep me busy for years!)

    BIG was really lovely. The City Club in downtown SF is beautiful, and before I’d even gotten out of the elevator I’d met two guys I ended up chatting with for quite a while. The whole room seemed abuzz with optimism. I ran into one old acquaintence, Doug Weaver of Upstream Group, who was visiting from Vermont.

    I’m looking forward to future events and apologize to all the people I’d meant to look out for but didn’t touch base with. (By the time I showed up, around 8:30 or 9, the name tags were gone and I suspect quite a few people had already left.)