Nolan on the road: Looking into the magic crystal ball

In a session dubbed "Tomorrow's PR firm," Text 100 CEO Aedhmar Hynes and Porter Novelli CEO Helen Ostrowski discussed how factors, particularly technology, are radically changing the industry.Hynes demonstrated the principle firsthand when her video explaining the firm's new office in Second Life steadfastly refused to play both sound and audio at once (it finally worked after five or so attempts).

Despite that, Hynes asserted that "technology is enabling change, not driving it." Peer to peer influence is growing, trust in institutions is eroding, and PowerPoint is a terrible invention.

Ostrowski echoed these sentiments, touting "the rise of horizontal influence." She urged agency leaders to listen more, project risks far into the future, embrace global diversity, and make the hard choices about sacrificing decrepit parts of your agency in order to invest in new communications tools.

The session was moderated by journalist/consultant Paul Holmes, who has the odd habit of referring to every point about PR agencies using the word "we."

"We all have big parent companies," "we all tend to hire...," etc.

Holmes does not, in fact, have a parent company.