This year Madrid will host for the first time the World Public Relations Forum, which will take place on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of September in the Spanish capital. The theme of this international conference will be Communication with conscience, and the participants will debate about the future of public relations and communications in what will be the largest international gathering of communication professionals.
This biennial assembly of public relations and communication professionals from around the world has become a reference in the global discussion about the sector, and a great opportunity to gather together proffesionals, academics, students and individuals related with the PR world. After the two first editions held in Italy in 2001 and 2005, the Forum has taken place in countries like Brasil, UK or Australia. This year, the event is hosted for the first time in its 14 years of history in a Spanish speaking country, a fact that prooves the increasing relevance of intercultural and multilanguage communications in the sector.
The conference will be organised by Dircom, the Spanish association uniting communication professionals and managers, in partnership with the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management. This year’s edition will focus around the questions that communications proffesionals need to deal with in the new economic and social environment, as well as in their new roles and responsibilities in the current context.
According to José Manuel Velasco, President of Dircom, “The borders between journalism and corporate communications are becoming blurred”. This presents new opportunities to renovate the profession, considerate the relationship between PR professionals and journalists, and stablish new ambitions and aspirations that meet the present need for transparency, ethic responsibility and collaboration.
The Programme has not yet been published, but the conferences will mainly focus on 4 key topics:
- Deconstructing communication: meaning that the process of communication needs to be humanised and must lay its intention on using communication to create a better world.
- Transforming communication: the profession needs to be remodeled, and the communication has to stand at the heart of strategy in any organisation and influence it on all its levels.
- Leading through communication: the future leaders must truly understand the power of communication and its responsibility. By using it wisely and ethically they can achieve a better leadership, and will be recognised as such.
- Taking action through communication with conscience: the current demands from society towards communications are: transparency, democratisation, co-creation and collaboration. The future looks towards a collaborative economy and social businesses, and communication should be in the front of this new way of understanding the world.
We will definitely follow closely all the news related with this event…
Will you attend the 8th World PR Forum? What do you think are the most important challenges for the profession?
