PR Studies

CIPR: my tenth anniversary

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year (making it the second oldest public relations professional body in the world, after the Public Relations Society of America.)

I've been a member for the last 10 of these 60 years. Here are some personal highlights and disappointments:

Highlights

• Giving an oversubscribed talk in Oxford on Online Public Relations at the height of the dot com bubble in early 2000.
• Past academic conferences in Bouremouth (2003) and Lincoln (2005).
• Best president: Jon Aarons, for his provocative stance on the PRCA and for the lunch at Gordon Ramsay's Petrus.
• The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regional group, which holds a full calendar of events. The next is on 'PR and the digital frontier' on 1 May.
• Taking the CIPR-supported student magazine Behind the Spin online in March 2008.

Disappointments

• There was a time when ten years' continuous membership would have gained me an automatic Fellowship (FCIPR). No longer. In our professionalising age, I'm now required to sign up for CPD.
• The Education and Skills sectoral group may work for its core constituency of HE and FE communications managers, but there's nothing in it for me (or for other public relations educators, trainers and academics).
• I registed as an Approved Professional Trainer in 2002, but have only been able to lead one training session because I soon after took a full-time job as a university lecturer.

Comments

CIPR: my tenth anniversary

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year (making it the second oldest public relations professional body in the world, after the Public Relations Society of America.)

I've been a member for the last 10 of these 60 years. Here are some personal highlights and disappointments:

Highlights

• Giving an oversubscribed talk in Oxford on Online Public Relations at the height of the dot com bubble in early 2000.
• Past academic conferences in Bouremouth (2003) and Lincoln (2005).
• Best president: Jon Aarons, for his provocative stance on the PRCA and for the lunch at Gordon Ramsay's Petrus.
• The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regional group, which holds a full calendar of events. The next is on 'PR and the digital frontier' on 1 May.
• Taking the CIPR-supported student magazine Behind the Spin online in March 2008.

Disappointments

• There was a time when ten years' continuous membership would have gained me an automatic Fellowship (FCIPR). No longer. In our professionalising age, I'm now required to sign up for CPD.
• The Education and Skills sectoral group may work for its core constituency of HE and FE communications managers, but there's nothing in it for me (or for other public relations educators, trainers and academics).
• I registed as an Approved Professional Trainer in 2002, but have only been able to lead one training session because I soon after took a full-time job as a university lecturer.