Every good conference has its own meme. At the annual PRSA International Conference that meme is The Man in Red. The official themes of this year's conference are “imagine,” “create,” and “inspire” – all of which The Man in Red seems to be pulling off. During several snatches of conversation, I kept hearing about “the man in red.” There were rumors – “he's from Sweden” (he is, he told me later); and he only wears red turtlenecks (not true).
Kristofer Bjorkman is the founder of MyNewsDesk, a Stockholm-based company, and he has a background as a journalist. His company's colors are red, and so he dressed head to toe in red, including his shoes, for the PRSA conference. Of course, this gained him some notoriety in Orlando, where despite the humidity, it's a sea of suit combinations with many of us favoring black (guilty). Bjorkman called it his "creative touch." MyNewsDesk is a web-based tool that aims to “modernize” the way PR professionals interact with and manage relationships with reporters and other media influencers, he told me during lunch. Bjorkman is weighing a larger US presence.
There is plenty of other buzz coming out of the sessions, too. Chris Brogan, author, blogger, and president of Human Business Works, spoke around 8:30am, kicking off the day with a morning keynote (video to come), and later in the day, I sat in on an insightful presentation by the PR team of Disney Cruise Lines as they explained their four-year launch strategy for the Disney Dream ship, which was christened January 4, 2011. Gerard Corbett, the chair-elect for PRSA, also took the time to sit for a short video with me, which will be up later.