A few of us got back this afternoon from attending a three day Public Relations in the New Media World conference in Little Rock that Rockfish was a sponsor of.  I’ve got to give props to the Southwest District Conference for putting together a great event!  This event excelled where the South by Southwest Conference disappointed: great keynote speeches and well prepared/presented break-out sessions.

A number of highlights for me personally:

Wednesday evening Steve and I had dinner at Cajun’s Wharf with Wayne Woods and David Martin from CJRW.  CJRW is the largest agency based in Arkansas with upwards of $80 million a year in annual gross billings.  Wayne’s the type of guy you could have dinner with every night of the week and never get bored for lack of good stories and fun.  We really enjoyed getting to know these men better and learning more about their great agency.

Thursday morning we had breakfast with Richard Edelman (President & CEO of Edelman), and then were later joined by Mac McLarty (former White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton).  We’ve had the privilege of working together with Edelman on a number of Wal-Mart projects and now for some of their other clients.  What an honor to get to spend time with two men that have had the tremendous business and personal success they have enjoyed!

Thursday over lunch Richard delivered his keynote speech.  It just so happened that his presentation included two project examples we launched together for Wal-Mart (checkoutblog.com and walmartfacts.com).  Nothing like a little free PR from the best there is!  I wish his speech was recorded so we could have put it on Geno.

Finally, we got the chance to meet and visit with a lot of people that attended the event and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed making some new friends.  There are a lot of great people representing the companies in the PRSA!