Sunday, April 5, 2009

Back in Boston - Final Touches to the Website

After working for three days, IABD Press has finished its task. We are uploading the final photos of videos. Please feel free to contact us for any issues related with IABD Press through this blog or via e-mail: iabdpress@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

After the second day

Today, IABD Press Team members made their presentations. We didn't only make presentations but we also covered the other sessions. If you have missed anything, please check out the IABD TV section.IABD is -surely- a family.

I made my first academic presentation today and with the help of the participants in the session, right now I have new ideas to further carry on my research. All thanks to IABD convention.I am looking forward to the discussion on Saturday morning!Hope to see you in the session!

If you see a person with a press badge, please approach him or her and talk with us so that we can also put YOU on our website!

Friday, April 3, 2009

IABD Paper Submission Goes Online!

Just announced at the Track Chairs Luncheon this afternoon...

Starting from 2010, all paper submissions for the IABD Conference will be done online through a specially created portal to aggregate the papers, instead of the current practice whereby participants would send the papers to their respective Track Chairs. The revamped submission process is designed to make the process more efficient.

Each time a paper is submitted through the IABD portal, an email will be directed to the respective Track Chair. The sender will also receive a notice of receipt. The Track Chair will then access the password-secured portal to retrieve the paper for processing.

According to IABD President Dr Ahmad Tootoonchi, this process is meant to streamline the paper submission process and make it a more fuss-free process - both for the participants and the Track Chairs.

The Student Panel @ IABD

Just finished presenting my paper on the 7th July London Bombings and the communication lessons learned from that incident at the student panel this afternoon. I presented a list of six lessons that I felt highlighted some of the major touchstones of the modern day crisis communication in the Web 2.0 enabled age.

That's me going through my paces during the student panel...

That concludes to some extent a journey that began last summer during my crisis communication class taught by Dr Gregory Payne (read about his work in the IABD Press team profile site) when I did a paper researching on how the British Government handled the crisis.

But really left an impression on me today was how all the student papers seemed to zero in on the issue of information management as the central thread across all our different papers, as if this is a pulse of the current economy and environment.

Megan McGuire presenting on China's economy and its government system.

First up was Megan McGuire from Texas Christian University who presented a paper researching how China's economic system operates alongside its authoritarian system, and how the rise of new telecommunications systems and new media are posing a robust challenge to the Chinese government's strategic management style.

Pascal Emanuel of the University of Dayton then took over the baton and talked about the importance of understanding cultural differences and knowing who your audience is when handling conflicts and negotiations. Parts of Pascal's studies mirrored certain elements of Geert Hofstede research on Cultural Dimensions, and what I found most interesting was his point about how management needs to be more aware about issues such as anthropology and assimilation when trying to resolve workplace conflicts.

Moving from the humanistic side of the equation, Douglas Clemmons of Morgan State University came up to speak about the importance of quality information in the strategic financial management matrix. His thesis, essentially, is that many organizations today are not effectively utilizing the tacit knowledge and information that resides within the individual departments because of a 'silo' mentality, and there is an urgent need for managers to consider how IT can be utilized to better channel and integrate these information to serve the organizational bottomline.

The last student to present was Brandi Heavner from Frosrtburg State University, and she talked about how retail organizations are making use of MIS (Management Information System) technologies to better organize and optimize their inventory of stock. The strategic use of such retail information MIS is fast becoming a key cost-management component of businesses today, and the next big system that will take the market by storm is the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology because of its potential to aggregate several loose MIS capabilities into a one-stop solution for businesses.

Dr Martha giving a brief recap of the discussion at the end of the panel.

Well, kudos to everyone who presented today! And special thanks also goes to Dr Martha Mattare from Frostburg State University for being ever so encouraging and supportive of us throughout the journey.

Fellow academics, buddies and colleagues... how d'ya like the ABCs?

Are you a student? If you are, why not consider putting your paper up for presentation at next year's IABD Conference, which will be held at Las Vegas.

For the very first time, the IABD will be presenting awards for the best student papers at the undergraduate and graduate levels, so THAT should be a great incentive. But more than that, think about the great opportunity to network, make friends and have fun! Somehow, I just get the sense that apart from all the intellectual rigors, that's what this family is all about!

See you next year!

President Ahmad Tootoonchi

We were lucky enough to get a few thoughts on this year's conference from president Ahmad Tootoonchi!



A new day arrives


A new day's dawning at St Louis!

And it's the start of a brand new and exciting program for the IABD today!

And apart from just covering this event as the press team, we've got our hands and feet immersed in the proceedings too...

Rob is gonna present his thoughts about the LA Program;

Nada is going to recap her views on public diplomacy through art;

Efe is going to share his experiences on diplomacy through the international scholastic exchanges; and

I'll be sharing my thoughts on the lessons learned in communication strategies from the 7th July London bombings...

It's going to be intense, but we're all looking forward to the knowledge mash-up (in today's lingua franca).

More updates to come!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

What a day!

I will be giving another spoiler about our presentation on Saturday... But here is what I have written in my paper about NCA Press:

"With a larger team, it will be possible to increase the quality, to decrease the pressure on the team members and to reach a wider coverage."

The NCA Press Team was composed of 13 members, with the sole aim of covering the convention. Here we are in St. Louis, as a team of 5, and apart from the IABD Press, we are making 12 presentations!

I had the opportunity to sit through "Entrepreneurship - Characteristics, Narratives, Anti-Trust Laws" session this afternoon. The quality of the presentations was incredible (Please check the IABD TV section for interviews). However, what fascinated me was the fact that session participants knew each other on a first-name basis. They were frank to each other - in other words, they were really playing the role of the Devil's Advocate -. I believe, this aspect of IABD, presents its participants an invaluable opportunity to develop their researches and themselves...

It is going to be a long long day tomorrow!