All Aboard!: a documentary

As much as I love – and am currently majoring in– public relations, I have a soft spot for the visual arts.

I’ve always dabbled in photography but nothing thrills me more than taking moving pictures with a professional grade camera.

It was a no-brainer for me to enroll in the TV Documentary course this term and I am incredibly excited to be finally filming my first real vérité-style doc.

And what better time to jump into it than during my spring break? For the next few days I’ll be filming a model railroad show at the Forks Market hosted by WinNTrack, a group of local railroad enthusiasts. These guys spend countless hours building elaborate and expensive displays with amazingly intricate detail so I’m curious to find out where this passion comes from and why it’s so important to them.

Many of these hobbyists come from a variety of backgrounds not associated with trains, like education, construction, sales, music, and the military, so it will be interesting to see how much they had to learn – everything from how tracks operate, to how to paint decals and design trees (which, I’m told, there are multiple ways of doing).

I had the opportunity to film the initial set-up yesterday evening and was surprised

how seriously these people take their craft, and how much effort goes in to making everything run smoothly. It was like Santa’s workshop with all the little elves running around hammering boards and tightening screws with the aid of flashlights and head lamps.

I also caught a glimpse of the miniature cars and fully operational mini railroad crossing – complete with tiny flashing lights – that will be going full force for the rest of the weekend. I’m a sucker for extreme close-ups and rack focusing so this subject suits me to a T.

I can’t wait to tell their story.

Good taste in PR: Ciao!'s Dine About Winnipeg

As every PR practitioner knows, when you plan an event strategicially one of the first things you do is a SWOT (or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.

And as every Winnipeg PR practitioner knows, when you plan an event from December-February, you must be prepared to deal with the weather problem.

The big -40 windchill, skin freezes in five minutes, car won’t start, streets are like skating rinks problem. It’s no wonder the restaurant industry is slow at this time of year.

When winter arrives in Manitoba, many people simply batten down the hatches and wait for the big thaw.

And that’s precisely why Ciao! magazine’s annual Dine About Winnipeg is such a smart – and very popular – event.

February in Winnipeg is still frighteningly cold, but its been two months already and the

batten-down-the-hatches folk are starting to get a little cabin fever.

They’re looking for something to get them out of the house (and preferrably into another warm building) and Ciao! sweetens the deal with something else Winnipeggers are known for – being.... ‘economical’.

For ten days in February, a number of local restaurants (26 this year) offer a three-course, set price menu for either $25 or $35. Many of these are in the mid to high range entrees, so you’re sure to get the best value for your money.

Yesterday I went to Fusion Grill and indulged in:

Hush Puppies with quinoa, cornmeal and John Russell honey garlic dip

Grilled bison petite tender with grainy mustard rub, Fort Garry beer-battered onion rings, Bothwell chedder potato gratin, smoked garlic aioli and demi-glace

Warm Granny Smith apple crumble with flax seed topping, Screech, cinnamon, caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream

At my house we do most of our own cooking from scratch, so when we do want to dine out, we don’t often know where the newest and tastiest restaurants are.

Dine About has remedied some of that. Although we didn’t visit a lot of restaurants during those ten days, getting a peek at the various menus has given us a good idea about which ones we’d like to visit in the future (ie. spring/summer).

It’s a great example of taking a significant weakness and turning it into a strength for the restaurant industry during one of their least profitable seasons. In other words, taking lemons and making lemonade.

Thanks Ciao! for your great taste, and great promotional PR.

Egypt’s ‘citizen journalists’: whose voice do you want to hear?

I don’t normally take an interest in international conflicts as much as I have in the one happening now in Egypt.

It piques my curiosity because a country which I had previously thought to be relatively stable is now erupting in chaos.

I’m also amazed at how organised the protestors are in getting their message out and how quickly they adapt to different mediums when the Internet and cell phone service is shut down.

When the Internet is up, however – look out! It seems to me this whole event is increasing awareness of how powerful social media is beyond the pointless status updates (something that, of course, us CreComms have studied and known all along).

CBC did a feature this past week on the role of social media in the Egyptian crisis which gives a good summary on the topic. What's really interesting is the host's comment right at the end of the feature: “It’s incredible – the technology has made almost everyone into citizen journalists.”

I’m not a journalism major, but I did my time learning the ways for a year, and I’ll admit a part of me cringed at the comment coming from none other than a professional journalist.

This is a subject we’ve broached many times in some of my classes – whether social media is weakening the quality of journalism and turning anyone with an opinion and an Internet connection into a ‘citizen journalist’.

I recently started following Nahla Ayed (CBC), Sonia Verma (G&M), and Nick Kristof (NYT) on Twitter – all of them professional journalists accredited by their respective media stations to provide reports from Egypt.

I suppose I chose to follow them because they were easily accessible (I found Sonia Verma’s account after reading about her detainment on the G&M site) – I wouldn’t know where to find an English-language Twitter feed from an everyday Egyptian (suggestions?).

But I also realise that in the unrelenting chatter that is today’s social media, I still rely on the ‘real’ journalists: those who know how to keep an ear to the ground and are trained to filter out the most important stories from the many that are out there (an arguable point, obviously). It is also these abilities that, among other things, are currently making journalists targets for the country’s pro-government supporters.

As the situation escalates in Egypt, whose voice do you want to hear reporting it?