Back from the land of the long white cloud

I have been in Wellington, New Zealand, this week, running masterclass workshops for the wonderful people at the IABC Wellington Chapter. We had a lovely time there, even finding space in the hectic schedule to eat at one of my favourite restaurants, Arbitrageur, and do some browsing (and a little buying!) of the glorious NZ fashion design.

The one thing I find interesting the more I travel is that communicators all around the world have very similar issues and challenges.

Wellington, being the capital of NZ, is home to most government departments and agencies and we had quite a few government communicators in the masterclasses.

Although I have worked in government, it’s been a while, and most recently I’ve been working in the private sector with companies that are reasonably advanced from a technology perspective in terms of intranet, social media, etc. I’ve been facing the challenges many of us have in terms of adopting these channels – not just because we ‘should’ but for sound strategic reasons that enhance the overall communication effort.

From what I heard in NZ, the challenge is slightly different in government circles. Many of the communicators I met were frustrated at how slowly government is adapting to new technologies. And although some channels might just be perfect they are finding it next to impossible to convince their department or agency to give it a try.

In Australia, there’s been a great deal of media coverage about the upcoming Federal election and how both parties seem to have discovered social media pretty much overnight. Check out this interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald about the issues around fake sites and You Tube ‘viral videos’ – reading this, I started to perhaps understand government’s reluctance.

On another note, it's all systems go for Black Belt in Australia. The first course will be run in November – I’ll post again shortly with all the details.

Cheers,
Melissa 

Comments

[Liam]

I'm really jealous of you! I went to NZ last Christmas and fell in love with the place!

It's funny what you say about the public sector though - in the UK, some Government Departments are at the forefront of communication thinking. No one's perfect but some of the old assumptions that used to exist about staid public sector management just are not true.

I was talking to someone the other day who is a senior manager in a public sector organisation and she said that she had a real challenge explaining corporate strategy to her people - just because they did an incredibly diverse range of things.

In private business the goal is pretty clear - make more money. But how do you cope where there a million performance objectives and identifying a client is pretty impossible!

Liam

[Geoff T]

Glad to hear that everyone is having a good experience in NZ! Says GT, currently (I think) the only NZr to have completed the Black Belt Course. I have, of course, now returned to the UK after 9 months back in NZ. If anyone wants to catch up, let me know!

[Lisa Weekes]

Hi Geoff! Greetings from me, another kiwi (and ex government agency employee from Wellington) who did the Black Belt last year.