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PR Advanced: Be the Change

Rebecca Loya — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:56:02 +0000

On Saturday, February 26, I attended PRSSA’s PR Advanced Conference: Be the Change. Attended by students from 22 different US colleges, the conference featured some of the brightest minds from the top public relations agencies from around the country. The day kicked off with an inspiring keynote speech by Jon Iwata, IBM’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Iwata interested the crowd, coming from one of the most corporate and structured companies, by using innovative and refreshing tactics to market some of IBM’s products. He entertained the group with videos of Watson, the supercomputer that competed on Jeopardy and slightly scared us with proposed images of what he could’ve looked like.

The conference then split into several breakout sessions. I attended the Agency Panel: Opportunities in Worldwide which was moderated by BU Professor Jonathan Yohannan. There, representatives from Edelman, Ketchum and Gagen MacDonald (in addition to Yohannan who works for Cone), shared some of their life experiences and took questions both from the audience and from Twitter.

After a brief lunch complete with a visit and pep talk from Dean Elmore, we were treated to another amazing keynote speech by APCO CEO and Founder Margery Kraus. Kraus gave a gripping speech about launching her own company while maintaining the core values that she was raised with. With one of her grandchildren there to support her, it was amazing to hear about that level of accomplishment in so short a span of time.

To end the day, a career panel assembled with some young professionals and HR representatives from companies around the country. There they took questions from the audience and Twitter, ranging from what not to say in an interview, how to apply and how to attract the attention of recruiters. Inspired by their words, students were then ushered into a career fair stacked with the best global PR agencies, as well as representatives from PRSA and the Publicity Club of New England.

Samantha is a senior in COM, majoring in Public Relations.

EU antitrust probe of IBM

Dick Taffe — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:27:57 +0000

Euopean Union regulators launched two antitrust investigations against IBM, the world’s biggest provider of computer services, for allegedly abusing its dominant position on the mainframe computer market. IBM says it’s cooperating with the EU probe and that it suspects the complaint is being driven by its largest competitors, led by Microsoft. Law Professor Keith Hylton, an authority on antitrust law, notes that the allegations revolve around IBM trying to tie its operating system to its mainframes, and to tie its own service to its mainframes. IBM, he said, could defend itself saying it is protecting itself by limiting consumers from using inferior services or to bettter reap the returns from innovation.

“Both explanations have been viewed with suspicion as defenses in American law, and probably have even less chance of success under European law. Still, they are reasons that IBM’s ‘tying’ strategies may be pro-competitive and beneficial to consumers in the long term.”

Contact Keith Hylton, 617-353-8959, knhylton@bu.edu

IBM/Sun Microsystems merger talks collapse

Dick Taffe — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:36:55 +0000

School of Management Professor N. “Venkat” Venkatraman, chairman of the Information Systems Department, says the breakdown of the merger talks between IBM and Sun Microsystems is bad news for Sun.

“I am wondering if HP or Dell may get into the fray now that IBM seems to be walking away. Both could benefit from having Sun as part of its portfolio. Or will it be a case, like Yahoo, with the board appointing a new team to develop an alternate course of action?

“It is clear that Sun is too small to be a dominant force in the transformations under way. I thought that the IBM-Sun combination was a good one for both players and IBM’s premium was attractive to Sun. But clearly, there are hidden details and contractual conditions that have forced IBM to take a step back.

“The breakdown is more of a problem for Sun than for IBM now.”

Contact N. “Venkat” Venkatraman, 617-353-7117, venkat@bu.edu

IBM and Sun meet in the ‘cloud’

Dick Taffe — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:59:01 +0000

School of Management Professor N. “Venkat” Venkatraman, chairman of the Information Systems Department, says a would-be acquisition of Sun Microsystems by IBM could well serve IBM’s push to lead the effort to create for a “smarter” business infrastructure.

“IBM’s supposed move to acquire Sun Microsystems is seen in some quarters as a radical shift in IBM’s strategy away from its recent focus on software and services back to hardware. I see it less about going back to hardware but more in tune with IBM’s recent push to be a force shaping the new ‘smarter’ business infrastructure in tune with the Obama administration’s vision.

“It is also very consistent with IBM’s vision of ‘cloud computing’ with more and more services delivered from the cloud. Just as IBM’s acquisition of Lotus gave them a springboard into middleware in the 1990s, this acquisition will give them a dominant position in their fight against HP and Cisco in the short-term and Google, Salesforce.com and others in the longer-term as the IT architecture shifts to the cloud.”

Contact N. “Venkat” Venkatraman, 617-353-7117, venkat@bu.edu