People > Technology

With new networks and applications emerging on a near daily basis, I think its really important that we take a step back from the excitement of all the new technology and focus on what has truly defined the social and public relations industry.

Taking a page from Deirdre Breakenridge and Brian Solis’ book “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations,” we need to recognize that technology is not the foundation of our industry. People are and always will be the foundation.

We are the one’s who maximize a device, network, or application’s abilities.  We are the ones who dictate the nature of sites such as Twitter or Facebook. These technologies are simply offered to us.  Subsequently, it is up to a collective social community to determine the success and use of that given product.

The technologies that we use today and that we will use tomorrow are going to change. That is inevitable.  However, our core concepts of being social and public will not change. Our nature of understanding technological introductions and our adaptation of new ways to use our voice is not going to go away.

As we move forward towards better devices, platforms, and networks we all have to remember that it is the people who determine the successes and advancements of these exciting developments.  These tools may allow us to do more, but that is because we understand their resources and capabilities.

Technology may make things easier, but we need to remember that we cannot leave behind being public and social.  That is why we have evolved more in the past 10 years than the previous century of public relations.  We may not be Tweeting or Writing on each other’s Walls 10 years from now, but we will always find new ways to communicate, innovate, and become a voice.

This article was contributed by Harrison Kratz. Harrison is the Community Manager at MBA@UNC, a new initiative which allows students to receive their MBA online from the University of North Carolina from anywhere around the world. He also sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, Tweet Drive.