Pop the champagne (excuse my Frenchness)! I am celebrating my one-year anniversary as a content editor for the Public Relations Oxford group!
This time last year, everyone was preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). I attended this event at the Jericho Tavern (Public Relations Oxford’s local) to support my PRIME Research colleagues (Nadin Vernon and Diego Bironzo) who were panelists. I remember that CIPR’s Jon Gerlis and Piers Schreiber were there too.
At the end of it, I expressed my interest to Dan Selinger and Emma Duke to help them develop the #OXPR brand online. Four events and 21 blog posts later, here I am! What a journey it’s been!
Creating content for the group has been exciting: we launched various content series and spoke to dozens of prominent PR figures from Oxfordshire.
I was particularly inspired by the series on female leadership that Emma started. Victoria Pearson’s post on the honest appreciation of women’s strengths really appealed to me, and Nadin Vernon’s comments on mentorship made me want to be coached by a woman.
Another very popular series was the profile agency one, where CubanEight, Tamarindo, BOTTLE and Blue Communications shared fantastic insights about their creative work.
The ‘day in the life’ series also received great interest, with communicators from Oxford University’s Department of Population Health and Computer Science sharing their work routine. BOTTLE also played the day-in-the-life game with some cool colorful designs.
I’ve realised that the Public Relations Oxford community is very active in the discussion of industry matters: Anne Whitehouse wondered if AI could actually help in the battle against fake news, Nicky Smith made a case for work experiences, Dan Selinger investigated how Oxford’s PR scene could attract graduates and Ben Harwoodadvocated for better evaluation of social media activities. I also remember Colin Cather’s particularly creative blog explaining how to capture emotion on camera with a bunch of (poo) emojis. Even I contributed to some debates about the future challenges of PR, Brexit, influencer marketing, open data, amongst others.
Taking the lead on web and social presences was a great way to meet new people. This work has been even more rewarding as more and more people come along to the events.
Oxford has such a vibrant PR community. Fourtold’s Kathryn Bowditch was definitely right: London is not the only way when it comes to attracting talents.
This article originally appeared on publicrelationsoxford.co.uk.
Jennifer Sanchis 