One of the characteristics of the contemporary communications landscape is how it’s constantly changing.

Predicting how advertising, marketing, public relations and the broad business communications spectrum will evolve and what it all may look like over the next decade requires vision and a clear line of sight on what you want to see.

That’s precisely what some university graduates have done, as illustrated in a report published today by the MediaSchool Group.

Titled “The Next Generation of Marcoms,” the report is the result of a survey of more than 2,000 students in the UK, France, Spain and Belgium aged between 20 and 25 studying advertising, marketing communications, design, PR and events.

Headline metrics:

• Over 80% think stand-alone social media and digital marketing agencies will disappear within ten years “as the channel becomes a discipline for all marketers.”
• 70% believe the marketing landscape will be ‘dominated’ by content marketing and ‘PR Thinking.
• Facebook is the overwhelming choice as the ‘most important’ social media tool a brand can use to communicate to this generation.
• This generation is critical of the marketing communications industry for enjoying ‘unfair subsidy’ via unpaid internships and ‘not doing enough’ on sustainability.
• 86% want to work for agencies that are as much about the creation of social good as about creating profit for brands.

There are laudable sentiments expressed in much of the opinions, characteristic of the youthful aspirations of those surveyed (remember: we, too, were 20-25 once).

Some of them might raise an eyebrow or two among more seasoned practitioners.

The disappearance of specialty digital/social agencies, for instance. While the practice of tactical social media use may well become another element of practicing the communication craft, as it were, I’d argue that they won’t disappear entirely. Some skills may make sense bringing in from outside, rather than developing them yourself, on an as-needed basis.

I’d say such virtual skills acquisition fits with evolving behaviours and practices in collaboration and virtual team-building where communities are formed that transcend or push through traditional organization demarcations and barriers.

Facebook as the most important social tool for communicating ten years from now? Doubtful when the whole social web and behaviours are evolving so rapidly. I wonder if Facebook will still be here in three-to-five years, never mind ten. Or still in its current form.

Here’s a selection of more metrics that caught my eye:

• Only 40% agreed with a recent statement by Sir Martin Sorrell that Twitter was not an advertising medium.
• 81% either agreed or strongly agreed that content marketing where brands become publishers and creators of their own content would be essential part of their job in 10 years.
• 68% disagreed or strongly disagreed that TV advertising would be ‘irrelevant’ in 10 years time.
• 70% said that in 10 years, advertising’s job would be mostly to ‘entertain’ and not to ‘sell.’
• 64% thought that in 10 years time the agency they worked for would pay them the same salary as a member of the opposite sex.
• 78% believed the marcoms industry enjoys an unfair subsidy provided by this generation – more than any generation before.
• 26% of students had worked unpaid for more than three months.
• 5% had worked unpaid for six months.
• 45% worked unpaid for 2 months.
• 70% thought that marcoms agencies were not doing enough to create a sustainable world.
• 86% said the agency they want to work for would have to be as much about the creation of social good as about creating profit for brands.
• 54% said Publicis was the Most Admired International Marcoms Group (Omnicom 11%, WPP 10%, IPG 2%).
• The most admired advertising agency was also Publicis 28%, then TBWA (15%) and Havas (12%)
• The most admired PR agency was Ogilvy PR (31%) followed by Edelman (15%) and Hill & Knowlton (13%).

Of particular note are the startling percentages relating to unpaid intern work, suggesting this still is a troubling issue that the communications business in Europe must address and quickly.

I can’t find a link to the published survey report anywhere online; maybe the MediaSchool Group will post that soon, and I’ll update this post if I see it. (I received the survey information on May 17 in an embargoed press release; I agreed to respect that embargo.)

• Bonus: Shel Holtz and I discuss the survey findings in this week’s For Immediate Release podcast episode 704, published today.

Quick News: Vines are shared four times more than online video, IABC’s CW magazine goes digital only, the state of social media advertising, first Quartz, then Defense One: Atlantic Media’s next venture with digital-only publications; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: BYOD focus on policies, behaviours and what matters to employees; Yahoo board approves deal to acquire Tumblr; think that social media crisis from seven years ago is ancient history? guess again; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments; social media and digital agencies will vanish within 10 years, say next generation of marketers; Dan York reports from Dublin with Bernie Goldbach, comparing Audioboo and SoundCloud; Google+ evolves; native advertising and the future of journalism;

Music from DJ YRS Jerzy Ft. Chox-Mak; and more.

Listen Now:

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 20, 2013: An 87-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #704 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 27…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

One of the benefits of being a member of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is the bi-monthly magazine, CW.

Every other month, the printed publication originally known as Communication World would come through your letterbox filled with useful and highly-readable content that offered knowledge, insight, interviews, case studies, how-to features and a host of articles addressing issues, trends and the actualities of modern communication management, internal and external, as practiced by people across the world.

In my two-plus decades of IABC membership, I regarded CW as among the top three most valuable member benefits, alongside professional development and member connectivity. I was an occasional contributor to the magazine for a number of years since the early 90s.

Some months ago, it emerged that IABC would cease publication of the printed CW and offer it only in digital form. On May 14, IABC announced the first edition of the new CW digital that will be published monthly, available on desktop, mobile and iOS devices with an Android version coming (and which is now available).

[...] “The great thing about going completely digital is that Communication World will be available to download anywhere — on your smartphone, computer or tablet. And all the content is shareable with a tap of your finger, even video,” said Natasha Nicholson, executive editor for Communication World. “Having CW available as an interactive app is going to create a much better, more interactive experience for the reader.”

One of the main reasons the magazine went completely digital was because some overseas members of IABC wouldn’t receive their copies for several weeks after mailing, making the content far less timely. Nicholson explains that by going digital, everyone will be able to receive each issue as soon as it becomes available.

There’s more to IABC’s news, too. For the next four months, IABC says that CW digital will be free of charge to anyone.

[…] the magazine will be available to anyone in the world for free for the next four months (until the end of September 2013), at which time the subscription will continue to be free to members while non-members will pay $119 per year or $12.99 per issue.

I think this is a great move by IABC although I can imagine the complete shutdown of the print publication won’t be easy for some members to warmly embrace.

Part of winning those hearts and minds to the new-format CW will be what the “CW digital experience” is like, one that ought to be utterly compelling so that you don’t really miss not having the paper magazine in your hands.

I would define “utterly compelling” as a combination of things like these:

1. Great content which, in IABC’s case, can literally go without saying.
2. Easy access and seamless retrieval of each edition, whether that’s downloading or reading on the website.
3. Mobile apps that not only aid the pleasurable content-consumption experience but also enable and encourage reader/author/publisher engagement.

Based on my experience with this first edition of CW digital, the content is unquestionably terrific! However, IABC has some major work to do with the other two items I’ve mentioned.

Some screenshots illustrate what I experienced.

Accessing CW digital from the link in IABC’s press release produced a visual mess in my default Chrome browser on a Windows 7 desktop computer.

I just couldn’t get that menu to reduce or minimize or whatever so that I could see the content itself. Maybe a glitch at the time I accessed the publication. But it did this every time I tried it.

The only success I got was using Internet Explorer. It’s not a browser I ever use unless I have to…

Not a good start.

I decided to download the publication from the download link at the top right of the screen display. Clicking it produced a little window telling me that a 4-meg PDF would download. Another click to begin, and the magazine arrived.

To be honest, the last thing I ever want to do is read a publication as a PDF file on a computer. It’s not an experience I associate with a good time. One option I have is to load it onto my Kindle ebook reader. What would be great, though, is if IABC made a version for Kindle available. Easy to do.

What strikes me most about these steps – apart from  the hurdle-jumping I had to do – is how the digital magazine looks just like content output from a print-publishing system. It’s what CW was like before.

Maybe that’s part of the plan but it seems to me that something huge is missing in the evolution to digital only: look at the example of what Atlantic Media has done with Quartz magazine.

I have Android mobile devices so I was very interested when the news came that the Android app was available. I thought I’d install it on my Android tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 LTE from EE, running Android version 4.1.2.

When I went to get the app from Google Play on the tablet, imagine my surprise and disappointment to see the message “Your device isn’t compatible with this version.”

I tried again, this time from a Samsung Galaxy SII smartphone also running Android 4.1.2.

Success this time. But the app offered me a confusing and unsatisfactory experience, starting with being given choices that suggest I need to subscribe or at least pay for the issue (it’s supposed to be free until September, remember?).

In summary, CW digital has great content. It’s a good move by IABC to migrate its flagship publication to a digital format, for the reasons they mention in their announcement (and others, too, I imagine, eg, cost savings).

Yet the poor execution of the platform isn’t a good start and, in my view, is a major impediment to gaining enthusiastic adoption of the new publication that now has no alternative form.

I look at it this way: IABC has three months to listen to feedback and get it right – to aim for that utterly compelling experience – before charging kicks in in September.

[Note: I was an active IABC member for 23 years until last November, so I'm currently a lapsed member. I have critical opinions about IABC and its current leadership. None of that has influenced anything I've written in this post about CW; I'm mentioning this fact purely for transparency.]

A dedicated server is a server that is exclusive to one user: it’s not shared with anyone else. So I enjoy the benefits of high performance, security, stability and control from a server that has only my content on it, and no one else uses it.

It’s like having my own high-end desktop computer but in the cloud.

Compared to shared hosting – many users on the same server, each with its own partitioned space and its own set of issues to deal with – I find this an ideal solution.

If you read either of WebHostingBuzz’ blogs, the US one or the UK one, you’ll see that this US/UK company is steadily developing its overall service offering especially this side of the Atlantic.

Last month, WHB announced a new range of dedicated servers located in its new Tier 4 datacentre in the UK (near Nottingham, to be a bit more precise).

I like WHB’s confidence in its UK network:

[…] Based in the Midlands, our network is under 2ms from London and Manchester. Redundant private 10Gbps fibre links connect us to all the key London and Manchester POPs. Extensive private peering and connectivity with all major broadband providers mean our network literally flies! Don’t just take our word for it, try it out yourself.

Traceroute to: 78.25.201.25
Download test file: http://37.61.233.42/100MB.bin

To mark the availability of its new UK setup, WHB currently has some great hosting deals for dedicated servers at different configurations and pricing options.

If you’re thinking about switching hosting services, I think WHB is well worth your time considering and checking out.

And here’s possibly a clincher especially if you run WordPress sites at your current host – WHB will handle your migration. They did that for me when I moved and I can tell you I had none of the migraines that would undoubtedly have happened if I’d had to do that myself!

WebHostingBuzz is a good partner. And I’ve got to know CEO Matt Russell over the past year and a half – that’s him in the picture at the top with me at The B2B Huddle event at Oracle UK earlier this month, at which Matt led a discussion session. I’ve had only a few needs to connect with their tech support team. Very responsive, very quickly. Great experiences.

They’re all worth getting to know.

Given my relationship with WHB, you might see this as a “sponsor post.” I see it far more as my post (I wrote it, not WHB) about a great partner. You can read the foundation to this and decide how you see it.

When something as big as content marketing comes along and transforms an entire discipline, it creates a lot of anxiety. Change is scary and it can sometimes feel like you’re hopelessly behind everyone else.

At The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, keynote speaker Doug Kessler shone a powerful spotlight on the future of B2B content marketing, offering compelling ideas and suggestions on what the future will look like – for content, and for content marketers.

With references to his frank messaging in Crap: Why the Biggest Single Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing – a viral sensation across the social web with nearly 230,000 views on Slideshare – Doug offered Huddlers credible calls to action on the practical issues that concern B2B marketers, and discussed in the questions-and-answers session that followed his keynote.

Listen Now:

You can listen while following along with Doug’s PowerPoint deck below (updated since the B2B Huddle with some additional content):

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (19.7Mb, 43:05)
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About the Speaker

Doug Kessler is co-founder and creative director of Velocity Partners, the London-based B2B content marketing agency.

Doug’s own content includes The B2B Marketing Manifesto (a rant), The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist (a workbook), and Crap: Why the Biggest Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

I don’t do many book reviews these days – our FIR Book Reviews Editor, Bob LeDrew, does an admirable and far better job – and I wanted to prepare well for this one. So I wrote up my notes as a narrative and that’s what made it into the podcast.

As I have that narrative – in essence, the transcript of the podcast – I’m publishing it here as an additional review: the words on a screen that will show up in search results whereas audio yet cannot.

Think of it as bonus content, Philip!

Attenzi review notes

Hello, I’m Neville Hobson, co-host of the For Immediate Release podcast series, with a review of Attenzi – A Social Business Story, the new book by Philip Sheldrake published on May the 15th, 2013.

Attenzi is a business book with a huge difference – it’s not a business book, it’s a novel.

It tells a compelling and credible story of one man’s journey that, unbeknownst to him at the start, would help him and his leadership team “redefine the way we all think about our business and its place in the market and its place in the world.”

With Attenzi, Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic character in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services.

Philip gives us a believable hero in Eli, a man who many readers will easily identify with in his desire to understand the shifting sands of contemporary consumer behaviours, the needs to respond to those changes in ways very different to old management and leadership preconceptions; and his endeavours to knit together a team of people that will be the driving force to enable Attenzi to make the jump to that next level.

As the tale unfolds, we see Eli and his colleagues consider aspects of organizational design, business performance management, marketing, public relations, branding, complexity, and the imminent empowerment of the individuals that make up all organizations.

The story also begins to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that, Philip says, has dominated management thinking for the past two decades.

It’s good writing, good story development, credible characters all. It’s a highly probable storyline of individuals trying to understand the changes in their business world, and in their business itself, figuring out what it all means for them and their business, and working out what to do, who will do it, and when.

The kinds of things that business leaders face all the time in the real world.

Philip has done well in presenting business themes and topics that anyone really could grasp without getting lost or losing interest.

As Eli notes early on in the story, ‘social business’  is the kind of buzz word or buzz phrase you hear about at conferences yet have little belief that even those who bandy the words around have much real idea of what they mean to businesses.

I think Attenzi will make you really think about social business, probably in a way you might not have if you’ve thought about those two words before.

The thinking will be about the very things Eli Appel tells his story about – behaviours, engagement, influence, new ideas, organization culture, change, risks, rewards, and so on. It’s not about the tools and channels of social media.

That’s where I think Philip’s story works well. Yes it’s about social business. But unlike every  other business book on this topic, it’s not a business book – it’s story-telling, it’s a novel, a work of fiction.

In sum, it’s a surprisingly good read on a topic that doesn’t sound like it would be. Social business? That dry old thing?

I think you’ll enjoy Attenzi. It’s not just a good read, a passive activity, though. You could engage with the primary characters, each of which you can find on Twitter. You could add to the content, build on it, with chapters of your own that you can connect via the hashtag #attenzi.

After all, Eli concludes his tale with: “I’m finishing this first part of the new Attenzi story.” In the concluding words of Adam Pisoni, Microsoft Yammer co-founder and CTO, who wrote the foreword, addressing you the reader: “Perhaps you’ll even write the sequel?”

Philip has written this book to give away under a Creative Commons license. The more people who read it, the possibility increases that they’ll talk about it, hopefully favourably, attracting more interest and readers. Word of mouth in action.

You can download a copy of Attenzi free of charge in a variety of digital formats: HTML, PDF, ePub, Kindle, and iBooks. There’s also a version on Scribd.

All available right now from www.attenzi.com.

If you have comments or questions about this FIR Book Review, or suggestions for future reviews, please share them in the online FIR community on Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; and connect with us on Twitter: @FIRpodcast.

You can find more information about the For Immediate Release podcasts, including the weekly business show The Hobson and Holtz Report, at www.forimmediaterelease.biz.

Thanks for listening.

Philip’s set up the foundation for a community surrounding the book, and its broader concepts, on Google+. Well worth being part of that in developing, influencing and extending the conversation.

Related post:

• FIR Book Review: Attenzi – A Social Business Story, by Philip Sheldrake

Attenzi – A Social Business Story

With Attenzi, author Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic hero in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services.

The book tells a compelling and credible story of one man’s journey that, unbeknownst to him at the start, would help him and his leadership team “redefine the way we all think about our business and its place in the market and its place in the world.”

FIR co-host Neville Hobson reviews the Kindle edition of Attenzi and considers the power a work of fiction – a novel – can have in empowering the Eli Appels of our world with the clarity of vision and perspective to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that has dominated management thinking for the past two decades.

As Eli says, “I hope it helps you develop your organization’s relevance, competitiveness and profitability. I hope it helps you forge your career and helps you bring your colleagues with you.”

Listen Now:

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• Download the MP3 file (2.2Mb, 4:47)
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• Subscribe to the FIR Reviews RSS feed
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Attenzi – A Social Business Story by Philip Sheldrake.

Publisher: Philip Sheldrake
Digital formats (content equivalent to about 100 print pages)
Published: May 15, 2013
Price: Free under Creative Commons license.

Attenzi is available in HTML, PDF, ePub, Kindle, and iBooks formats at www.attenzi.com.

About the Author

Philip Sheldrake is managing partner at Euler Partners, a London-based consulting firm.

He is a widely regarded consultant, author and speaker. He is a Chartered Engineer, a main board director of Intellect, the UK trade association for the technology industry, a board director of 6UK, a government backed non-profit promoting adoption of the new Internet protocol, and a founding partner of Meanwhile. He built and sold an award-winning public relations consultancy.

Philip wrote The Business of Influence in 2011 and was interviewed on FIR at the book’s launch.

Connect with Philip on Twitter: @sheldrake.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future reviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Book Review podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

With social media so prolific, are B2B companies taking advantage of all that exists? That question formed a foundation for the keynote presentation by Allan Schoenberg, Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group, at The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters in Reading.

During a break at the event after the presentation, FIR co-host Neville Hobson spoke with Allan to capture his thoughts on topics from his keynote including what makes CME employees feel comfortable and confident with social media, and further insights into CME’s employee use of social media.

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.1Mb, 9:02)
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The presentation deck Allan used in his keynote presentation:

• See also: FIR Interview with Allan Schoenberg on February 13, 2013.

About our Conversation Partner

Allan Schoenberg is Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group (@CMEGroup), the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace.

Based in London, he manages international corporate communications for the company, which includes media relations, social media, reputation management and exchange partner relationships.

Prior to working at CME Group, Allan was with Accenture, Edelman and Fleishman Hillard. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University in Economics and his master’s degree in Communications Management from Syracuse University.

Allan is a regular contributor of content to the blog B2B Voices. You can follow Allan on Twitter: @allanschoenberg.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

If something makes you laugh, particularly because you can identify in some way with the situation portrayed, you’re more likely to remember what made you laugh; and, from a brand marketing perspective, you’re more likely to talk about it, share your comments online and tell your friends.

If it’s a video, you have a good chance of establishing some of the essential conditions in and from which that intangible known as ‘viral’ develops.

Thoughts I pondered as I viewed two new videos from software maker Adobe in its on-going ‘Metrics not Myths’ digital marketing campaign in support of its Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions launched last October.

The campaign seeks to portray Adobe’s product – an integrated set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, and web experience management solutions – as valuable tools for marketers via a humorous approach in debunking common misconceptions that marketers are disconnected from business results.

1. The fortune teller

2. On the analyst’s couch

What do you think – funny or not? Likely to work for Adobe? Take this quick instant poll and then view the results for a totally unscientific snapshot view on what people think. If you prefer to add your own response rather than choose a pre-selection, please do:

[This post is part of an experiment in brand story-telling.]

Related post:

• Humour in Adobe’s Cloud

Quick News: Calgary Zoo publishes annual report to Instagram, Salesforce acquires bookmarking startup Clipboard, Associated Press updates its social media guidelines, Facebook’s newsfeed will get even more annoying with video ads… or will it?; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: American Airlines’ influencer promotion with Klout (and is it misleading?); Dan York reports on GaggleAmp, SoundCloud, and more; McDonald’s tweets illustrate the risks of marketing in real time; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments and roundup from the FIR Community on Google+; addressing the dark side of reputation management; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on suggestive marketing tactics in Japan and China from Fleishman Hillard’s Authenticity Gap study; the big picture in the Fleishman-Hillard data reveals the authenticity gap;

Music from Novi Novak; and more.

Listen Now:

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• Get the show at iTunes
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device from the Amazon App Store

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 13, 2013: A 92-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #703 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 20…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)