Regular contributor and member of the Sellafield Ltd media team, Karl Connor reports from the international conference on Public Information Materials Exchange (PIME) 2008 in Prague, Czech Republic.
I had been planning that at some point over the weekend of February 9th I'd finally get the chance to write an article along similar lines to the one I did last month on the Air Cadets. But that all changed on the Friday morning when my manager asked me what I was up to over the weekend "Nothing much," I said -- "Fancy a trip to Prague" was his answer. I'd agreed and was on my way, he hastily forwarded me an email with the programme of the PIME conference and arrangements were made to get me some flights and a room.
I felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension. I don't really feel I qualify as an expert in nuclear communications after less then three months and I'd never even heard of PIME before that morning. But this was a fantastic opportunity not only to meet some of the best communicators in the world but to learn what they do and see what I can take back and use to improve the service we currently provide at Sellafield.
In the not too distant past the idea of a Sellafield worker travelling to Eastern Europe to discuss best practice with delegates from Russia, Czech Republic and Pakistan would have seemed unthinkable, but here I am, in Prague, talking with some of the best and most informed communicators in industry.
Having come from a journalistic background, my immediately suspicious mind would have dismissed this conference as one long jolly - an idea which could not be further from the truth. There is so little money in regional newspapers that, in my past incarnation at The News, we didn't bother meeting our colleagues in Cumbria to share ideas, let alone those around the rest of the world.
As I write this the conference is only half-way through, but already I have learned a great deal that will be of use upon my return to England, and I've met some wonderful people from all over the world. Thankfully for a relative novice like myself none of the information has been too technical, and has focused more on communicating then on nuclear power.
Probably the most interesting to those outside the industry would be a talk we had from David Ropeik, a former US TV reporter, who now works as a consultant on risk communications, on how the human brain is against communications, because the part of it that feels fear can emit signals to the rest of the body before the part that considers information rationally has had chance to make up its mind. Today in a workshop he is going to show us how, in some cases, good communicators have been able to overcome that.
Yesterday afternoon's session was on how social networking can be a great way to get your message across, and I'm pleased to say that at Sellafield we already use blogs as a means of communicating. In fact, I've been blogging from the conference, and anyone who wants to know more can log onto www.sellafieldsites.com and follow the link to the blogs section.
Last night was a gala dinner, and our hosts entertained us with some rather odd yet still somehow entertaining 80's "electro-boogie" and then their Eurovision representative, whose name escapes me but is basically the local equivalent to Girls Aloud. They certainly had the Czech delegates’ attention.
I'll sign off now, as it's breakfast time, and I'm never one to be late for that.