For Immediate Release #23: It's the community, stupid

Today’s panel includes CreatingIs cofounder and former Cisco executive Ayelet Baron; digital and visual content marketing, social media, and online reputation speaker and consultant Krishna De (who also hosts the newest FIR podcast, Talking Social Business); and Peter Himler, founder and CEO of Flatiron, LLC. Our topics included…

* A watchdog report about how much money the U.S. government spent on PR since 2007, and whether that’s cause for outrage or an inadequate amount to cover the government’s communication needs

* A report demonstrating almost all employees would rather hear bad news than no news leads to a conversation about LinkedIn’s CEO being candid and transparent with employees in the wake of a 40% tumble in its share price

* Theranos — the blood testing company we discussed in episode 22 — has posted a job listing for a storyteller

* Dan York reports on Mobile World Congress, which is just kicking off in Barcelona, as well as Facebook’s new Virtual Reality play

* Periscope has been the platform for one athlete’s current woes and two Dutch creatives innovative pitch for business

* A former McDonald’s Europe executive suggests brands will give way to “community marketing”

* Instagram and Pinterest are directly affecting sales at traditional mall-based fashion retailers

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @ayeletb, @KrishnaDe, and @PeterHimler.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About this week’s panel

Ayelet Baron is Co-Creator of CreatingIs LLC. Ayelet is passionate about ushering a new path for business as a force of good by helping 21st century leaders imagine what’s possible. She has been building community her entire life and believes trust, relationships and community are the new currencies for today’s human-to-human purpose and experience driven era. Author of Our Journey to Business Common Sense. She spent 15 years at Cisco Systems, most recently as Vice President  of Strategy, Innovation and Transformation for Cisco Systems Canada. Ayelet recently was honored with Watermark’s Women Who Make the Mark Award. She was an innovator in residence at Roche, working on the product development innovation leadership team designing and implementing a connected network strategy.

Krishna De is a digital strategy and social media communications speaker, commentator, educator and mentor. She manages the Certificate in Social Media Communication for the PR Institute of Ireland. Before establishing her own business, Krishna was on the board of a FTSE 100 company in Asia, North America, Western and Eastern Europe. She now works with clients from around the world. Krishna is particularly interested in visual storytelling using short form video and mobile live streaming, and how to develop visual content from quote images to GIFs, and from photographs to online video with just your smartphone. She has a website and a show, Live Stream Insiders, and just last week launched a new podcast here on the FIR Podcast Network, Talking Social Business.

Peter Himler formed Flatiron Communications LLC in 2005 after leading the media relations teams at Edelman, and WPP’s Burson-Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe and Hill and Knowlton. He left the big agency world to help emerging and established companies and organizations better capitalize on the latest communications technologies and digital/social media strategies. In addition to running Flatiron, Peter has written since 2011 for Forbes.com on the intersection of media,