June 9th was the last day of the Canadian Public Relations Society 2009 National Conference. For those of you just catching up, this conference was held at the Westin Bayshore, minutes away from Stanley Park.

After doing a full day of live blogging and MC assisting, I was drop dead tired but also exhilarated by the experience. While Tuesday was the last day of the conference, and I wasn’t actually scheduled to live blog, I brought along my laptop just for the heck of it. I ended up live blogging David Suzuki’s Lunch Keynote and also got to attend the Maple Leaf Plenary in the morning.

As I had extra tickets to both events as well as the gala dinner, given to me by the wonderful Catherine Arrow from New Zealand, I could’ve simply attended the event to listen and not “work”. Since I also knew that I’d probably be scribbling down notes from the plenary and keynote anyway, I decided to live blog the events and give the tickets to another volunteer instead. However, since no volunteers wanted the Maple Leaf plenary ticket, I ended up giving the ticket to Karen Cook instead.

Now, for a bit of explanation – I honestly had no idea who Karen Cook was until five minutes before I met her. All I knew was that she worked at Hoggan & Associates (one of Vancouver’s top PR firms), so when I googled her and found out that she was Executive Vice President of Hoggan & Associates, my jaw hit the floor. I had just given the Executive Vice President of Hoggan & Associates a ticket to a plenary that she actually wanted to attend!

Maple Leaf Plenary

This was the first event of the day. Terry Flynn, David Scholz, and Jeanette Jones, Vice President of Communications, Maple Leaf Foods Inc. were all personally involved with Maple Leaf Foods through their respective roles in academic research, marketing and communications. They combined forces to bring us a comprehensive overview of how Maple Leaf, and particularly CEO Michael McCain, showed courage and leadership in a time of extreme corporate crisis.

Throughout the plenary, all I could think about was what James Hoggan had said only a week earlier. The message was loud and clear throughout the entire plenary: Do what’s right, and dare to be transparent.

You can read the liveblog here.

David Suzuki Luncheon Keynote

While I wasn’t actually scheduled to be live blogging this, live blogger coordinator Stephanie Leung added me to the producers list at the last minute, saying that the more, the merrier! Though I had a ticket, given to me by the lovely Catherine Arrow, they actually oversold the event and were asking volunteers who had tickets to leave their seats. There wasn’t any animosity from the volunteers who were asked to leave, we all understood how much the event cost to put on, and what the ticket prices were, but I felt a little bad that my brothers in arms couldn’t attend this wonderful keynote by David Suzuki.

He was introduced by a familiar face: Jim Hoggan! It only makes sense – Jim is a director for the David Suzuki Foundation, and since Hoggan & Associates has a focus on environmental sustainability, who better to introduce David Suzuki than the CEO and President of Hoggan & Associates?

David’s speech was wonderful, witty and engaging. He had people laughing and having a good time. He spoke about the prevalent messaging in our society that economic strength, above all, is the crucial foundation for both environmental protection and our well being. Some highlights from the keynote:

• David holds 24 honourary degrees and has written 27 books
• Chefs are touting sardines & anchovies as the next big thing – why? Because that’s all there’s left!!
• 70% of American economy depends on servicing consumption.
• We have an economy that’s built on servicing our wants in life.
• David once saw a book in a bookstore about spontaneous combustion, and made the observation that no one ever spontaneously combusts with another person in the same room.
• He referred to himself as a shit disturber

It doesn’t end there. David talks about human evolution as a whole, how the economy has turned into this big scary “thing” that replaces dragons and mythic creatures, and how it’s up to us to communicate a message to future generations on just how important the environment is.

You can read the liveblog here.

Awards Dinner

After about a 2 hour break, Erin, Mike and myelf set ourselves up in the Stanley Park Ballroom for our final event: The Awards Dinner. I wasn’t able to take pictures of the event, as my camera’s batteries died (you’d think I would’ve learned my lesson by now!), so I’ll just have to leave you with the live blog.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. Volunteering at the CPRS 2009 National Conference was the second best decision I’ve made all year. I was able to meet so many amazing PR professionals who were more than happy to take a minute and talk to me about their workshops, or keynotes, and I came away with a few new friends.