Whenever there is a trip in the horizon to a city new to me, I make the bold statement that it “will never be the same again”.

It’s more of a philosophical thing than ego or arrogance. When you visit a new city it stops being an idea, a set of postcards and photos and turns to something real. Sometimes, you even fall in love.

Last week I got to fall in love with London, with its streets and the people I met along the way. I was there both on vacation and on a mission, to meet current and new friends. I did, and came back to Lisbon with that excitement of new ideas, plans and things to do. So let me tell you just a few highlights, bear with me and in the end you get to see the snapshots. Fair enough?

The current state of Public Relations

Meeting Stephen Waddington and sharing a few ideas on what the current state of Public Relations as a whole is, was one of the highlights. These were all issues that I overlooked because I felt they didn’t influence my day-to-day. But they do. PR is still using the same models of PR that derived from Grunig’s excellence model for public relations. In the meantime, we have all changed the way we communicate and although that model is still applicable it does not take full advantage of social media and as a result could deliver much more value to organizations.

I came back to Lisbon scribbling about new models of Public Relations that link back to the Lisbon Theory and the work I did with David Philips.

Lisbon Theory and what it means for communicators

Every now and then Philip Young and me find ourselves in the same city by mere chance. So over a quick coffee in Heddon Street we talked about the Lisbon Theory, debating whether it is a progression or a revolution for Public Relations.

Whichever the case, there is a need for more on the Lisbon Theory and the ways it can help PR move forward. There are a few posts on this blog about it, but I hope to re-write bits of them into a more concise and understandable article.

Barcelona, Melbourne and Stockholm

Neville Hobson as already shared a few thoughts on this.

There are a number of documents, principles and accords that promise to shape Public Relations and its practice.

Do they get read by practitioners or are they just for academic reference and to help build curricula for universities?

I honestly don’t know and doubt that in their current form these documents succeed in getting the message across.

The Portuguese are everywhere

Really, we are everywhere. In one of those lightning fast new models of organisation, Celso Pinto got 7 people to meet, 6 of which are portuguese. Not counting the others I met along the way and the 4 portuguese stores or pubs that you find in Stockwell.

And Celso is doing some amazing things with Simple Tax, a new way for people to fill in their taxes. If you live in the UK you should visit and take a closer look.

Strategy at #Engage2013

Just my luck, there was still some time to visit the Engage 2013 conference by Social bakers. I attended during the morning and got a few interesting take aways.

1. Social Bakers is moving in on Hootsuite

Hootsuite lets you manage a number of online presences and delegate tasks, from the first presentation by Jaz Rezab i felt that they are building that functionality into Socialbakers and adding analytics to it.

2. What is strategy after all?

Like many others, I loved Jeremy Waite’s presentation. And just our luck, the whole thing was recorded and made available on youtube and Jeremy shared the slides on the like cycle.

The definition of strategy and how it applies to communication as been quietly poking me since then. Jeremy’s take and the Ted Talk by Simon Sinek that he mentioned on twitter are quite valid approaches. They give you the tools to think and come up with plans that are consistent and that drive a company or brand in a clear direction.

But what if you need a hard definition of strategy and not just models of strategy to apply on your business? I hope to write more on that later this week.

Still there? Well there are bunch of uninteresting photos next. Feel free to jump them and just leave a comment, question or any idea you have.

London