Holtz Communications + Technology

Why drag yourself out to a bar when you can sit all by yourself at your desk blogging with a Scotch in hand?

Robert Scoble has predicted the death of big conferences. Now, I like Robert and agree with most of what he says, but I have to take issue with this one. In his post, he points out that he told 15…

Shift Communications, home to social media advocate Todd Defren, was named agency of record for Novell, largely on the strength of Shift’s well-documented social media chops.

Social media like blogs can help make decision-making processes that were once conducted behind closed doors more visible to audiences like industry analysts. It was those analysts who questioned Novell’s direction, leading to CEO Jack Messman’s…

My first corporate job—in the mid-1970s working in employee communications for ARCO—was a revelation. After working in newspapers for a couple years with their limited resources, seeing the tools available to a Fortune 20 company was enough to make you drool. For example, ARCO had a complete video studio. Later, the studio was abandoned as it became easier to outsource video work. But…

Here I am on vacation. Beach tomorrow, Disneyland Wednesday, and so on, but the news just keeps on breaking. I just received a notice from Carma Spence-Pothitt of Vocus that the PR software company has acquired PRWeb, the third news release distribution service after PR Newswire and BusinessWire. Here’s the news release. Here’s the rationale for Vocus to grab up PRWeb:

Vocus customers…

ZDNet has released a couple videos that reinforce the idea that Second Life is something businesses—and business communicators—need to understand and, perhaps, embrace. The first looks at a convention center built in SL by new-media whiz-kid Eric Rice, which includes the ability to project video and audio into a meeting space. Rice is planning on renting the facility to organizations interested in…

I had only been working for my new employer as manager of employee communications for a day or two when I was summoned to the president’s office. “We have adopted a new business philosophy and we need it communicated to employees,” he said. The new philosophy, adopted by the executive committee a week or so earlier, was a commitment to SVE—Shareholder Value Enhancement.

As…