For Immediate Release

We recorded on Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I used a pirate name generator to give each of our panelists a pirate name. Today’s panel features Owner Media Group CEO Chris Brogan (Samson “Commodore Chops” Drinkwater, “The Drunkard of Ghost Lake!”), MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley (Mary “Jolly Brute” Quick, “The Plunderer of Crocodile Islet!”), and Scott Monty (Edwin “Soft Heart” Penwith, “The Jewel of Alligator Bight!”) of Scott Monty Strategies. Our topics included…

* Twitter — lots and lots of Twitter. The first broadcast of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Twitter, a deal with Cheddar to broadcast a live close-of-market video wrap-up, the introduction of Twitter apps for viewing live video on TV screens (no Roku app, sadly), the roll-out of new features (including ways to cram more into your 140 characters) and some features to make your customer service effort more prominent, and the Economist’s view that Twitter’s window for becoming a major player in social media has closed.

* The shift from big-name celebrity influencers to niche influencers, as characterized by the number of Muslim women sought by influencers to reach Generation M, young, affluent Muslim Millennials.

* YouTube’s accommodation of advertisers who don’t want their adds attached to videos their customers might find offensive and how it has alienated a lot of YouTube creators. We also discussed the launch of “Community,” which lets YouTube creators engage in real time with their subscribers.

* MarketingProfs published a story reporting on research about the kinds of subject lines journalists like to see in email pitches from PR people.

* Ikea has joined the small group of advertisers that touch on unpleasant topics (divorce, in this case).

* Organic reach may be dead on Facebook, but 97% of the top brands still rely on it.

* Instagram has introduced comment filtering.

* Instagram was also the most engaged-with social channel when it came to back-to-school. (And the brands that got the most engagement weren’t the ones that posted the most.)

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @chrisbrogan, @annhandley, and @scottmonty.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Chris Brogan is CEO of Owner Media Group. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and counting. His latest is Find Your Writing Voice. Chris has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Titleist, Scotts, Humana Health, Cisco, Sony USA, and many more. He has appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, interviewed Richard Branson for a cover story for Success magazine, and even presented to a Princess once. Forbes listed Chris as one of the “Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014,” plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Statsocial rated him the #3 power influencer online.

Ann Handley speaks and writes about how you can rethink the way your business markets. Cited in Forbes as the most influential woman in social media and recognized by ForbesWoman as one of the top 20 women bloggers, Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs,

Today’s panel features social media and communications consultant Richard Binhammer, Zoetica Media CEO Kami Huyse, and Little Bird co-founder and board chairman Marshall Kirkpatrick. Our topics included…

* The “Social Contract with Patients” published by Allergan’s CEO that outlined the company’s commitment to restrict price increases for its drugs; the post also referred to those who boost their drug prices “outliers” who threaten the ecosystem.

* eMarketer’s projection that Snapchat will earn almost $1 billion in ad revenue next year and how communicators should start taking advantage of the service

* Ford Motor Company’s move into businesses other than making cars for individuals to buy (because they’ve seen the writing on the wall for individual car ownership) and what it means for communicators when the vehicles people ride in become moving entertainment systems

* The state of influencer marketing

* Why the presidential candidates aren’t making use of some of the newer social media channels

* The sorry state of social media engagement (and whether Google rewards high social share counts)

* Dan York talks about the misunderstanding that has become a political issue over the U.S. “giving up control of the Internet” (it’s not)

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @rbinhammer, @KamiChat, and @marshallk.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Richard Binhammer is one of the first adopters of social media for business. In 2006, he became active in social media by engaging with bloggers who were using their new-found influence to impact brands and corporate reputations. From these beginnings of monitoring blogs through simple web searches, he became an early adopter of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest, leading to strategic adoption of social networks for business purposes. He currently consults on social media strategies, skills assessments/training programs and corporate communications efforts. From 2006-2012, he was a widely acclaimed corporate leader in experimenting, adopting, analyzing and deploying social media as a tool to help business be social and do better business. As director on Dell’s Social Media and Community team, he was also responsible for communications, social relations and training while continuing to be active in Dell’s social media outreach and overall adoption across the company. Before Dell, he worked with several communications consulting agencies in St. Louis and New York and worked in Canada as a political aide to senior cabinet ministers.

Kami Huyse founded Zoetica Media. She writes an award-winning blog, Zoetica Talks, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Kami is a national leader in the use of social media for public relations. She speaks at social media events and conferences all over the country and her work in social media has earned her the SNCR’s 2008 Reputation Management award and IABC’s 2009 Gold Quill of Excellence Award. Kami was a 2010 fellow of the Society for New Communications Research where she pursued a study on how cause marketing in social communities can benefit companies. She is also the co-founder and organizer of the Social Media Breakfast Houston.

After a successful career blazing trails in new media as one of the top tech bloggers in the world (first hired writer at TechCrunch, co-editor of ReadWriteWeb), Marshall Kirkpatrick now leads the

Today’s panel features Jen McClure, who founded the Society for New Communication research; business blogging pioneer Lionel Menchaca; and PR agency president Sherrilynne Starkie. Our topics included…

* Whether the Epi-Pen crisis would ever have happened without social media and how companies now need to think about “business as usual”

* The value of some kinds of hashtags (or lack thereof)

* AT&T’s self-righteous post reacting to Google’s fiber decision

* Mattel’s Barbie is now a paid Instagram influencer

* How times have changed! Four out of five journalists rely on social engagement

* Kimberly-Clark’s hit YouTube series based on a 17th-century vampire novel

* A consortium of tech companies is exploring ethics for Artifical Intelligence, which is bound to be used by communicators sooner than you may think

* Dan York’s report look at two Facebook announcements: Messenger now lets you share video while you’re texting and Facebook says your site must be mobile-friendly or your ads will suffer

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @jenmcclure_JEM, @lionelgeek, and @sherrilynne.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Jen McClure is CEO of JEM Consulting & Advisory Services. Prior to founding JEM, Jen was Vice President of Digital & Social Media and the head of the Digital Center of Excellence at Thomson Reuters. In 2005, Ms. McClure founded the Society for New Communications Research, a nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank and was President of the Board of Directors from 2005-2016, when the organization merged with The Conference Board. She now chairs the Advisory Board of the new organization.

Lionel Menchaca serves as director of Corporate & Strategy for W2O Group. In this role, he helps clients of all sizes to develop content and engagement strategies so they can connect directly with customers. He’s worked extensively on social media training for organizations and on helping organizations build and launch employee advocacy programs. He also works with teams of developers to build tools companies need to manage an increasingly complex flow of content. Before W2O, Lionel worked at Dell for 18 years and was the founder and chief blogger of Direct2Dell, Dell’s main corporate blog. Over the last 7 years, Lionel authored hundreds of posts on behalf of Dell. He helped expand it into several continues to extend Dell’s global presence. Before the blog, Lionel was one of the main architects behind Dell’s blog monitoring process begun in April 2006. He was Dell’s first full time employee paid to handle social media efforts.

For more than 20 years, Sherrilynne Starkie has been providing communications consulting and services to blue-chip organizations in Britain, Canada and the United States. She focuses on helping clients leverage digital and social media to achieve organizational objectives.  As President at Thornley Fallis, Sherrilynne is responsible for the profitable operation of the communications business including client strategy overview, business development, HR, quality assurance, marketing and team development. She is a blogger, an occasional contributor and is very active on social media. Recently, she’s been a speaker at the IABC World Conference, SXSWi, WTC and the UA Canada National Conference.  She is an active volunteer with IABC Ottawa has volunteered with many ot...

Today’s panel features social media early adopter and veteran marketer C.C. Chapman, Business Wire’s Social and Evolving Media Director Serena Ehrlich, and marketing technology specialist and business strategist Lynette Young. We talked about…

* The Cincinnati Zoo, which has had enough of the critical Harambe memes so it shut down its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

* Apple’s efforts to introduce a Snapchat-like app, which Facebook has already done with its new iOS-only Lifestage app, all while a growing number of teens are abstaining from social media (but not smartphones).

* Pornhub and RedTube’s offer of $100,000 in free advertising. Who would want their brand associated with pornography? Probably more brands than you might think.

* The unexpected number of people who opted for live streams over NBC’s on-air Olympics coverage and what that means for brands.

* Facebook’s move to relinquish most human control over its Trending feature and the resulting degrading of the user experience.

* What brands can learn from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign’s social media “blitzkrieg” that accompanied her speech last week calling out the Trump campaign’s coziness with the “alt-right” movement.

* Instagram “insta-communities” and how marketers need to approach them.

* Dan York’s report covers the sad state of mics in mobile devices and the tech behind NBC’s live streaming of the Olympics.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @cc_chapman, @serena, and @LynetteRadio.

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

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

About today’s panel:

C.C. Chapman is a bestselling author and agile, performance-based marketer with over 15 years of experience in marketing and emerging technologies. C.C. is the author Content Rules (co-authored with Ann Handley) and Amazing Things Will Happen. C.C. has specialized skills in conference speaking, creative development, social media marketing, online direct response, working with large brands in helping them understand how to apply emerging technologies and social learnings to their marketing plans.

Over the last 20 years, Serena Ehrlich has worked to provide guidance on investor relations, public relations and overall consumer behavior relations trends. Ehrlich started her career in advertising where she developed an understanding of branding from a large-scale perspective, but she credits her 17 years in the newswire industry for placing her at the forefront of the technical, sociological and influential revolution changing the face of today’s customer communications. Before rejoining Business Wire in 2013, Ehrlich designed and implemented successful local, national and international social, mobile and traditional marketing campaigns for brands including Kraft, Kohls, Avon, Mattel and more. A ’91 graduate of Brandeis University with a B.A. in History, Ehrlich was named one of the 2013 Top 25 Women in Mobile to Watch by Mobile Marketer.

Lynette Young is co-founder and Director of Marketing ClaimWizard, a software-as-a-service workflow management system for the public adjuster industry. She is a marketing technology strategist and published author with focus on digital marketing and implementation services. With over 25 years in technology, 17 of those years in digital marketing, she is well positioned as a “full-stack marketer” giving her a distinct advantage in today’s fast-paced business and environment. Over her professional career,

Today’s panel features internal communications thought leader Rachel Miller, metrics queen Katie Paine (cousin of an Olympics bronze medalist), and PR veteran Jen Phillips. Our conversations covered…

* The crisis management (or lack thereof) from Ryan Lochte, Olympic gold medalist and gas station restroom vandal

* The less well-known crisis the St. Paul School in New Hampshire is experiencing following media coverage of a lawsuit the school filed demanding that an underage sexual assault victim disclose her name

* A survey revealing the internal communications challenges facing U.K. companies following the Brexit decision

* Whether PR agencies need to revisit their billing practices to focus on charging for winning rather than the hours they have put in for a client

* A study that reveals frontline employees believe they have a lot of ideas for improving the business but that few companies are listening

* A rule effective January 1 that will require public companies in the U.S. to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios

* Dan  York reports on the latest WordPress upgrade, changes Twitter has made to its notifications, and major websites (like Facebook) now seeing more than half their traffic come over IPv6.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @AllThingsIC, @QueenofMetrics, and @JenZings.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Rachel Miller is the founder of All Things IC consultancy, offering senior level counsel to help organizations and communicators achieve excellence. Her clients include Harrods, O2, Jamie Oliver Group, PRS for Music, Heathrow Express, London Ambulance Service and the Zoological Society of London. Rachel is a multiple award-winning professional and Fellow of both the Institute of Internal Communication and CIPR. Her thoughts have been featured in a number of best-selling PR books and she regularly shares her knowledge through her popular blog and All Things IC Masterclasses.

Katie Delahaye Paine, aka The Measurement Queen, has been a pioneer in the field of measurement for three decades. Her books, Measure What Matters (Wiley, March 2011) and Measuring Public Relationships (KDPaine & Partners, 2007) are considered must-reads for anyone tasked with measuring public relations and social media. Her latest book, written with Beth Kanter, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit:Using Data to Change the World, is the 2013 winner of the Terry McAdam Book Award. Her latest company, Paine Publishing is the first educational publishing firm entirely dedicated to making more Measurement Mavens. Its newsletter, The Measurement Advisor, is the industry’s most comprehensive source of information about best practices in communications measurement. In her consulting practices, she designs measurement dashboards for some of today’s most admired companies.

Today’s panel features three former IABC chairs: Michael Ambjorn (2015-16), founder of UK-based Align Your Org; Dr. Barbara Gibson (2008-09), principal of Cultural Resolution and lecturer at the University of London; and Brad Whitworth (1989-90), senior marketing and communication manager for the global partner organization at Cisco Systems. Our discussion topics for the day:

* Snapchat is under fire — again — for what many feel is a racist filter. At the same time, a Medium post has raised new controversy over Snapchat’s beauty filter.

* A study designed to dig into the discontent among women employees of a consulting firm over work-life balance found all employees were unhappy about the situation — results the company’s leadership dismissed. Yet employees are quitting over the all-work-and-no-play mentality embraced by too many companies.

* The New York Times has introduced its own flavor of “text-message journalism’ with messages from a deputy sports editor who is at the Olympic Games in Rio. The Times isn’t the first news organization to let readers subscribe to get updates via Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. Is text-message brand journalism inevitable?

* How much text messaging is too much? One post from a massage therapy group recounts one therapist seeing another texting while giving a massage.

* Pokémon Go seems to have paved the way for faster public acceptance of augmented and virtual reality. What will companies do with it?

* In a LinkedIn post, Arik Hanson argues that social media is widening the chasm between front-line employees and executive leadership. Is he right? Do CEOs need to get social?

* In his technology report, Dan York follows up on Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat Stories and reports on the ad-blocking wars at Facebook and a new report on blockchain from the World Economic Forum.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @MichaelAmbjorn, @Barb_G, and @BradWhitworth.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Michael Ambjorn is Past Chair of the International Association of Business Communicators. He is also founder of Align Your Org where – with a participation-centric approach – he and his colleagues enable effective strategic planning, communication – and clarity of execution. He has held leadership roles at IBM, Motorola and the 260–year–old Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. A consummate connector, speaker, facilitator – and mentor – he is also active in a number of further networks.

Dr. Barbara Gibson brings to her work more than 25 years of experience in public relations, corporate communication, internal communication, public affairs, strategic planning, marketing, and advertising. She founded Cultural Resolution, a global business consultancy focused on helping companies that operate internationally achieve greater success when working across cultures. She also serves as Programme Director for the MA in Intercultural Communication for Business & Professions at Birbeck, University of London, and is president of SIETAR UK, the society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. As if that’s not enough, Barbara is the group chair for CIPR International, a volunteer role leading the organization — a sector group of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations — for professional communicators working internationally or who aspire to do so.

Brad Whitworth , ABC, CMP,

Today’s panel features “Writing Without Bullshit” author Josh Bernoff, social media traveler Steve Garfield, and SHIFT Communications Marketing Technology Vice President Christopher S. Penn. The stories covered in today’s show:

* A follow-up to last week’s report on Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts’ suspension after offensive remarks about gender equity in the ad business. Roberts has resigned.

* The U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee apparently don’t want any businesses to talk about the games unless they’re paying sponsors. Not even a tweet to cheer on a hometown athlete. And media companies can’t distribute GIFs or Vines.

* CNN anchor and commentator Fareed Zakaria referred to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “bullshit artist” on the air. Since Josh is with us, we explore just how true this statement is — and whether it matters.

* Instagram has launched a knock-off of Snapchat Stories, and they may have done a better job with it.

* Steve discusses the Mevo camera, which he has experimented with, and its potential uses by communicators.

* Dan York reports on Ello and Snapchat Stories.

* Pokemon Go continues to attract attention from the media, users, and businesses.

* Tom Foremski suggested back in 2009 that “every company is a media company.” Yet most companies aren’t keeping up with media companies. Many text-based media companies are now getting into television.

* Chris produced a screencast showing how anybody can promote voter registration using Facebook ads for $5 a day.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @jbernoff, @cspenn, and @stevegarfield.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Josh Bernoff is Chief Troublemaker at WOBS, LLC, blogging daily at Without Bullshit, describing the BS that surrounds us and how we can cut through it with clear, powerful writing. He is the author of “Writing Without Bullshit” from HarperBusiness, which will be released on September 13. Before striking out on his own, Josh spent 20 years at Forrester Research, ultimately as Senior Vice President for Idea Development, developing ideas and analyzing consumers, technology, media, social, and mobile. He c0-authored three books while at Forrester: “Groundswell,” “Empowered,” and “The Mobile Mind Shift.”

Steve Garfield is a Social Media Traveler, and an advisor and investor in startups, and people. Garfield is a part owner of Lord Hobo Brewing Company and enjoys blogging about tech, beer, wine, food and travel. He is also a speaker at conferences and local colleges. He currently runs Boston Media Makers. Steve taught New Media Tools for Journalism at Boston University from 2008-2009 and continues to guest lecture at BU, Emerson, Northeastern, Simmons and other colleges to show students how to leverage video production tools, blogging and social media to help them get seen and get hired. His first book, “Get Seen: Online Video Secrets, came out in January 2010 from Wiley Publishing, is about how easy it is to get started in web video. Steve was co-creator of the first vloggercon and a co-organizer of the first PodCamp held in Boston.

Today’s panel features Stealthmode Partners’ Francine Hardaway, Stone Temple Consulting’s Doug Haslam, and Alabama Power’s Ike Pigott. We talked about the following topics:

* A report from pwc (Price Waterhouse Coopers) identified eight technologies that are about to have a massive global impact across all business sectors. We looked at the communications implications for each of the eight, which include Artifical Intelligence, Augmented Reality, drones, the Internet of Things, robots, Virtual Reality, 3D printing, and blockchain.

* Saatchi & Saatchi’s chairman has been suspended after he uttered a statement worth of Donald Trump (whom we just can seem to avoid mentioning these days).

* The Brexit vote has put the UK media in a precarious position in terms of its reputation, particularly among young voters who voted overwhelmingly against the exit.

* It’s getting harder and harder for corporations to hide behind their brands, leading to new “brand networks” that encompass more differentiated and tailored relationships between corporate and product brands.

* The publisher of Crain Communications thinks marketers should emulate Donald Trump’s marketing by injecting controversy into their messages so people will debate it.

* Melissas Agnes thinks there’s no such thing as a social media crisis. Is she right?

* The University of Missouri also looked at crisis in a recent study, determining that unorganized and semi-organized groups form views of a crisis by seeing each other’s tweets.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @hardaway, @dough and @IkePigott.

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

Note: We are more than likely giving up on Delicious, which has become unreliable under its new ownership. We’ll try Contentle for a while to see how it goes, but  may switch to Pinboard.

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

About today’s panel:

Francine Hardaway  PhD is the co-founder of Stealthmode Partners, an accelerator for early stage entrepreneurs. A three-time entrepreneur herself, she has been a PR professional since 1980. Her last PR company, Hardaway Marketing Services, was acquired by Intel in 1996, and after a year inside Intel, she emerged to advise, coach, and fund startups in the internet space in partnership with Ed Nusbaum. Dr. Hardaway has written for Huffington Post, Fast Company and Medium, and is a contributing writer to the Phoenix Business Journal, where she has won two journalism awards for best column. She has also taught “Business and Future of Journalism” and “Digital Media Entrepreneurship” classes as ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism.

Doug Haslam’s  career has spanned a variety of disciplines within the communications field: radio technology, editorial production, public relations, marketing, social media and digital. Doug began with public radio, producing news and thoughtful sports programs, moving into technology public relations, and currently to social media and content strategy for brands of all sizes and industries. Doug’s love of media has come full circle, as his most recent positions have seen him taking full advantage of his content creation skills, managing social media and brand publishing programs for a wide variety of clients.

After more than 16 years in television news, Emmy-winner Ike Pigott left to feed his passion for crisis communication. While building his consultancy, he started working with the American Red Cross – first as a local communicator in Alabama, and finally as the Director of Communications and Gove...

Today’s panel features digital strategist and technologist Chris Abraham, Zeno Group EVP Frank Eliason, and Cision SVP Heidi Sullivan. Today’s discussion topics:

* Is the PR community going about influencer marketing all wrong? Is it earned or paid media?

* Medium could be the (or a) future of online publishing.

* Can we please stop treating Millennials like they’re an alien race?

* No matter how many times lists of transgressions are published, PR practitioners continue to piss off journalists.

* Dan York reports on Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo!, WordPress’s imminent update, and the woes of news publishers on Facebook.

* Micro-level marketing is a big deal. So why aren’t PR people doing it yet?

* Chatbots could become a source for native advertising.

* Startups are using the blockchain to protect copyright and guard against plagiarism.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @chrisabraham, @frankeliason, and @hksully.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Frank Eliason’s experience and goals are centered around creating the right experience for Customers, and utilizing a variety of channels to reach them. In current and former roles, he has worked to use new technologies to better understand and assist organizations in improving processes and tools to ensure first contact resolution and improved Customer Satisfaction. Currently Frank is  working within digital media to better measure, understand and assist Customers. Doing so, he and his employer, Zeno Group (an Edelman company) are defining the next generation of Customer Service, Marketing and PR. Frank says, “We are transforming organizations to have a deeper understanding of Customer and Employees and helping them find the best ways to engage these key constituents.”

Heidi Sullivan is Senior VP, Product and also currently Interim Managing Director, Canada for Cision. As SVP, Product, she drives the company’s overall content licensing strategy and is responsible for all influencer and distribution products and services, including the popular PRWeb platform and Cision’s leading influencer database. As Interim MD, she is responsible for the overall business results and sales activities in Canada. Sullivan has been named as The Hub’s “Individual Influencer of the Year” for 2014, one of PR’s most influential professionals in the PRWeek Global Power Book in 2015, and one of PRWeek’s 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in 2012. Prior to this role, she was the Senior VP, Digital Content, leading the company’s digital and broadcast content teams and the global research team for Cision’s media database. Before that, she was Vice President of Global Media Research and managed the enhancement and maintenance of Cision’s media database of more than one million media outlets,

Today’s panel features Surefire Social CMO Shashi Bellamkonda, digital public affairs strategist Mark Blevis of Full Duplex LLC, and Lady Soleil, Inc. founder Geoff Livingston. Our topics this week:

* A laundry list of news items about Pokémon Go with a direct bearing on communications, including safety issues that weren’t well communicated, privacy concerns leading to a Congressional inquiry, how some venues where game-play is inappropriate  handled the situation, and the lift the game is giving Augmented Reality

* Digital fencing isn’t sitting well with back-to-school shoppers, but there are ways to do it right

* Data guru Avinash Kaushik went on an anti-data rant. The panel discusses.

* Live streaming video and social media played a major role in putting down the coup in Turkey

* Dan York also discusses the coup from his hotel in Germany

* Email newsletters are hot. Could metrics problems derail the trend?

* There’s a new social network in town, and it’s build on the blockchain

* Mobile is redefining public affairs (especially during the summer)

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @shashib, @markblevis, and @geoffliving.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Shashi Bellamkonda is the Chief Marketing Officer of Surefire Social  Shashi is also an Adjunct faculty member of Georgetown University teaching Marketing Analytics and Digital, Social Media and Mobile and keynote speaker on Digital Marketing and Small Business. Shashi Bellamkonda was honored by the Washington Business Journal’s 2012 Washington Minority Business Leader award. he was previously featured in Washingtonian’s Top 100 Tech Titans list in the Community and Thought leadership category and the Washington Business Journal called him the Social Listener. He has co-authored chapters in two books also been featured in 16 Books on marketing and social media.

Mark Blevis is a digital public affairs strategist with Full Duplex. He specializes in online reputation management, crisis communication and advocacy. In addition to client work, Mark researches the role of the participatory web in public affairs, politics and digital influence. Mark co-authored TOUCH: Five Factors to Growing and Leading a Human Organization (Dundurn, October 2014), with Tod Maffin. The book provides leaders of all types of organizations with proven guidance on how to put humanity — the critical ingredient of commerce and advocacy — into their technological interactions.

 As a marketer, Geoff Livingston has advised more than 10 members of the Fortune 500, including AT&T, Cox, eBay, Ford, General Dynamics, Google, PayPal, Pepsi Co., Procter and Gamble, SAIC, Verizon and Yum! Brands. He has also advised nonprofits, including United Way of America, Live Earth, The Case Foundation, Razoo, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Philanthropy 2.0 Project. Geoff started and sold social media boutique Livingston Communications (2009). He was won awards from the Society of New Communications Research, the American Marketing Association, the International Association of Business Communicators, and an Axiom Award.