World Public Relations Forum 2018 (WPRF) that was held in Oslo, Norway, April 20-24, became a very big platform that united speakers and participants from all over the world.
The Managing Director of Norway Communication Association (NCA), Therese Manus, and some of the speakers and participants shared their experiences during an interview with Candy Hernandez, correspondent of ASEAN Public Relations Network (APRN) and London School of Public Relations – Jakarta. In her interview; Therese Manus shared her experience in organizing such a large-scale international conference:
“It has been an amazing experience holding this conference. It is not every day that we gather the whole world in Oslo, Norway. And we have delegates from 44 countries. Now we need to think global when making a programme and the speakers have to be interesting for everyone.”
World PR Forum 2018 at Oslo Norway during breakaway sessions with speakers and delegates
Therese Manus explained that it was a very time-consuming process to manage and organize the conference that took years of preparation. For sure, there were challenges, and one of them was the selection of speakers.
As a result, every participant was very happy to present their research and knowledge.
“The biggest platform for PR professionals who come together to talk about things that are important to them, things that really matter to the profession. This is a great idea of collaboration and thoughts. This is a great platform not only to discuss but to learn from it as well,” said Sarab Kochar (University of Florida, California) about WPRF 2018 in Oslo.
Sarab presented her research in Research and Practice Colloquium: Intelligence. The work is based on the human intelligence and artificial intelligence and what is between that. She pointed out that Public Relations in Communication is our intelligence, but it is not a part of people’s IQ or an obtained ability perspective.
She thinks that machines, Internet, and other technologies are disrupting the understanding of the term “intelligence”. Everything is changing, and the business process is changing as well, so, Sarab says that this changing situation in the world “is not a disruption, but it is an innovation and the way to innovate solutions to the world’s problems. It is quite a positive way of how we innovate the world along with the others.”
So, “It is very important to get connected to the professionals, to get connected to the academy, get to know best practices and especially to share the knowledge” added Marcelo Behar (Brazil).
During the conference, Marcelo presented the “Business Communication in Brazil: how to transform challenges into opportunities”. He discussed the current situation of Brazilian political and socio-economic landscape. Marcelo Behar briefly looked at how the communication scene is moving now and ways of communicating values, purpose, principles through the example of Natura cosmetics and its consumers.
Among the participants were not only those who have already visited WPRF for many years but there were newcomers as well.
Lilian Nganda (Nairobi, Kenya), Communication Manager West, East, Central Africa & Indian Ocean Islands, was very happy to participate in the WPRF 2018 to fulfil her curiosity and gain experience as a participant, and to gain new knowledge from the world.
World PR Forum 2018 at Oslo Norway during breakaway sessions with speakers and delegates
“Totally, totally amazing experience. It is quite interesting and enlightening in terms of the content that was shared. And it is quite interesting to look at the issues we are going through as practitioners!” Lilian Nganda concluded.
World PR Forum 2018 at Oslo Norway during breakaway sessions with speakers and delegates
