Jammin 2010

ABOUT THE SESSION

Are you a leader or a manager? Do you do the right things or do things right? Do you have your eyes on the horizon or the bottom line? Do you encourage your organization to dance to music yet to be heard? Do you have a vision? The ways and means to enroll others in that vision? What is your unique client benefit, your brand promise, the single-minded expression of the most compelling and distinctive - but credible - thing you can do for clients in order to achieve growth? Do you know the trends that impact your customers and brand? Are you building technology and media around commonality? Are you being innovative and strategic with Web 2.0 tools? Creating community?

Oh, and by the way, while you are answering those questions, pondering new possibilities unconstrained from the past, and being transformative, could you also reply to a bunch of emails, return some phone calls, send some tweets, blog for a bit, friend some new people on Facebook and expand your LinkedIn network? It's always been hard to know how much time to devote to working on your business and how much to devote working in it. Determining the right ratio is even more challenging today. And not only do you have to try and figure out what your story is, but there are also a bewildering numbers of channels and means to tell it.

That's a lot of questions.  And coming to this single Jammin' session won't give you the answers to all of them. But you will hear some interesting insights from - and possibly create a valuable conversation with - a person who has a unique vantage point on all this as both a member of the "dead tree media" and a strategic communications consultant.Because if you can't clearly communicate who you are, and what you do, and what's at stake to your employees, your board, your clients/customers, the media, vendors, service providers, and so on, you'll be stuck in that quagmire of the status quo at best.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

David Gee is currently the Executive Editor at Minnesota Business magazine and is also the principal at a strategic communications consulting practice called G-Force Communications (www.geeforcecomm.com). Prior to that, he was a TV reporter and news anchor at Hubbard Broadcasting, WCCO-TV and Fox 9. He was also the Consumer PR Account Manager at Colle & McVoy, worked in account services at a large PR agency in Los Angeles, and was the Director of Communications for the U.S. Pro Ski Tour and Terry Bradshaw's NASCAR team. David has done PR work in a wide range of businesses and industries including software, corporate travel, meetings & events, health/nutrition, exercise, automotive, telecom, and pharmaceuticals working with brands such as Audi, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Pfizer, Rolex, Post, Nestle's, General Foods, Pepsi and Seagram's.