Delightful connections

One of the greatest things about writing a blog is that it makes so many unexpected and delightful connections with people from all over the world.

My most delightful connection yet happened a few weeks ago, when Ross Monaghan, a lecturer at the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deekin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, connected with me through this blog. Ross is co-editor of an innovative podcast/blog called TheMediaPod, which describes itself as an "experimental and collaborative page written by public relations and journalism students and teaching staff at Deakin University."

The connection with Ross turned into a correspondence, which has now turned into a dream come true for me. Ross just let me know he has included my handbook, Writing and editing the Internal Publication, on the prescribed book list for his second semester unit, PR Writing & Tactics. There will be about 300 students in the unit.

When I wrote the book, I had a vague hope that it would some day be used as a teaching tool for communication students. Thanks, Ross, for the huge honour.

On a lighter note, here's another unexpected and delightful connection. Kommunicat, a blog based in Poland, recently featured a post in which the author, Kamil Borowiak, summarized (in Polish) a recent blog post from For Your Approval.

I was, of course, interested in how my words had been interpreted, so I ran Kamil's blog post through a free online translation site, with interesting results. Here's an excerpt from the translation:

"Here word is key community. Correction of mood caused is important challenge for communication in today's times pitiless reduction of cost, bureaucracy, deep change of brand value and very often bad management. They trust from one part of firm employee (staff) not up to the end."

Got a nice ring to it, don't it? Thanks, Kamil, for making the connection.

 

Comments

[Kamil Borowiak]

Ron,

thank you very much for writing about our blog. We don’t have an English version of it but as you’ve shown you can use online translation site with interesting results. Of course the text in Polish is definitely less surrealistic.

For those interested in how employee communication is doing in Poland: Journal of Employee Communication Management will publish an article about it in one of the nearest issues. David Murray has titled this essay “Is employee communication dead? Not in Poland, it isn’t.” The title speaks for itself – employee communication is growing here.

I hope we will make some more connections between Komunikat (which means ‘message’ in Polish) and For Your Approval in the future. If you approve it, of course.

[Ron Shewchuk]

Great to hear from you, Kamil, and happy to see that employee communication is alive and well in Poland.

And I wholeheartedly approve of continuing the dialogue!

(David, how about a short excerpt from your JECM article to help us understand the situation?)

By the way, Polish writer Tadeusz Konwicki is one of my favorite authors. A Dreambook for Our Time is one of the best novels I've ever read, and I also love The Polish Complex and A Minor Apocalypse. I studied Eastern European literature in university and love the darkly funny, existentialist work of authors like Konwicki.

[David Murray]

In the article Kamil mentions, which is written by Polish employee communication consultant Roman Rostek, we see the fascinating development of employee communication in that country. Basically, since the mid-1990s, internal communicators have accomplished what it took the U.S. about 70 years to do. Look for it in the May/June issue ....

David