Today marked the first day of the CPRS 2009 National Conference, On The Edge. It was also my first day volunteering for the event as a MC assistant, to Joanna Wyatt and Shafiq Jamal. Among the volunteers were Erin Raimondo (live blogger), Alicia Bernbaum (speaker host), Michael Gelboff (live blogger), Ashley Letts (live blogger), Alyssa Smith (live blogger), Kelly Laver (speaker host), and Stephanie Leung (live blogger slavemas-err I mean coordinator), and a lot of others to help run the event.
I arrived at the Westin Bayshore hotel far too early, at 7:30am. I later checked the email on my blackberry from Susan Kirk, volunteer coordinator, and she had mentioned that we didn’t need to be there until 8am. Oops. It was nice to be there early though, I got to build some rapport with the guys from Frishkorn AV, who were extremely helpful with setting the direction of the stage and thus helping me, Alicia and Kelly direct where things happened on stage.
The first keynote speaker was on at 11:45, and had a series of introductors. Tewanee Joseph took centre stage at the first keynote event of the conference, talking about how the involvement of the Four Host First Nations committee with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics was changing the face of Aboriginal communications and also breaking stereotypes on how we view first nations people. Listening to him speak was quite amazing, to say the least, and since I didn’t have my camera with me, I was unable to take good pictures… so I relied on my blackberry camera and ubertwitter (which, by the way – everyone should use instead of twitterberry) and pulled off some pictures:
Dennis Joseph at CPRS 2009 National Conference
Torchbearers at the Tewanee Joseph Luncheon
Tewanee Joseph & Dennis Joseph accepting gifts
Later on, Alicia scored a couple tickets to the PR Capades event held at the Richmond Speed Skating Oval, which worked out nicely for us because we both live in Richmond. This time, I remembered to bring my camera… but neglected to change the batteries. Oops. Either way, I still managed to get some photos of the stunning venue:
Richmond Speed Skating Oval
Richmond Speed Skating Oval
There was live entertainment – 8 year old Bhangra dancers and a lion dance, accompanied by speeches from Richmond Mayor Malcom Brodie, CPRS Vancouver Chapter President Shawn Hall, and the VP of Communications from VANOC (whose name I unfortunately did not catch). The food was prepared by students at Templeton Secondary school, which has an amazing culinary program. I ended up at a table with Alicia, Stephanie, Alyssa, Kelly, and a new person, David Childs of Living Blueprint Creative, a business and marketing agency located in Vancouver… and also a gold sponsor for the CPRS national conference. I also had the chance to meet Judy Gombita and Catherine Arrow from Twitter! Catherine was unable to make the Tuesday events, so she gave me tickets to see the Maple Leaf Crisis keynote as well as David Suzuki’s luncheon, both of which were events I really wanted to attend.
Richmond Mayor Malcom Brodie
CPRS Vancouver Chapter President Shawn Hall
Tomorrow is another jam packed day for me, with me live blogging the following workshops and keynotes:
- Brian Solis: PR 2.0 and Social Media
- Darren Barefoot & Julie Szabo: Campaign Killers & Online Faux Pas
- Della Smith & Ruth Atherly: Social Media Across Technologies and Timelines
- Susan Kirk: The Real Value of an APR (I’m not 100% sure it’s Susan Kirk presenting)
If you would like to follow along with us live bloggers (there’ll be more than one!), these are all the speeches & workshops. Feel free to follow along and tweet along with us!!
Off to bed now – this starving college girl’s been fed lots of delicious food and has a lot of work ahead of her!
