New PR in Sunderland

Sunderland was the unlikely destination for Making the News: Blogging, Really Simple Syndication and The New PR (PDF). I read event reports from Neville Hobson and my old colleague Tom Murphy (who’s looking slicker, now that he’s moved to Microsoft). Here’s what Tom had to say:

But one of the most impressive aspects was the audience. There was only one no-show from all the pre-registered list (I’ve never seen that level of commitment at a conference before) and attendees came from all over the UK and as far away as Latvia and Belgium. There were a load of insightful questions throughout the day and the vast majority of the audience stayed to the very end of the day, which illustrated the interest in the subject matter.

I’ve always been critical of the PR business’s slow adoption and adaption to new technology but it would appear that blogging is an exception. From talking with other delegates and from my own discussions generally it appears that a growing number of practitioners have a clear understanding of the opportunities and are very interested in learning more.

In light of the number of invites I’ve received to attend or speak at ‘new PR’ type events, I’d have to agree.

That said, I found Neville’s note peculiar

Only two people I saw were using laptop PCs (well, three counting me) for their scribbling. Tom’s looked the coolest – a Toshiba tablet PC.

Does he mean that most people had Apple laptops, or that most people (as in 97%) didn’t use laptops at all?