Communicators grapple with stubborn problems at Ragan conference

At the Corporate Communicators Conference, attendees talked social media—but they also revealed that communication 1.0 still gives them fits

It’s not that social media wasn’t on the agenda at Ragan’s 17th annual Corporate Communicators Conference in Chicago last week. And it’s not as if Web 2.0 wasn’t on the minds of the 400 attendees.

Communicators are still dealing with familiar problems, many of which, happily, can be solved with time-tested solutions.

The conference opened with a decidedly low-tech keynote by Boston Globe career columnist and blogger Penelope Trunk. She stood on the stage, without a stitch of PowerPoint, and gave advice on a subject as old as the Industrial Revolution: How to get ahead.

Lots of other subjects were equally old-school.

• How to get on senior management’s agenda. This writer appeared on a panel on the oldest subject in the profession, “How to get communications on your senior management’s agenda.”