Slimfast plan for communicators

Just returned from a few excellent sessions. 'Avoiding costly mistakes in Asia's key markets' drew out some worthy nuggets of information for all organisations wanting to stay in business into the next decade - that is, to pay attention to and make plans to expand and research within the BRIC countries and Asian territories.

When asked if the relationship is changing between the Asia territories and Western HQs - in terms of a shift in autonomy - Darren Burns of Weber Shandwick in Shanghai, China said that there's now more resources being supplied to these areas in order to support the communications function.

In the '(Breaking through the) NOISE' session, looking at comms overload, Mark Schumann, managing principal of Towers Perrin warned that we should put our companies on occasional 'technology diets' to help us reassess and not lose sight of other effective comms strategies - face-to-face communication, most notably.

And Donna Itzoe of Verizon's Digital Workplace delved into social media uses in organisations. One new technology she mentioned that I'd not heard of before was Radio SASS - short attention span system, whereby a software has been developed to edit from music any tedious guitar solos, chorus repeats and so on, to leave a crisp 2 minute song in its place! The appeal? A potentially high purchase price for the technology to radio stations.