The sixth sense of communication

Hertz is the most prominent political economist of our time and will speak about globalisation, the erosion of democracy and the international debt situation. These, ultimately, will impact on the way in which communication professionals adapt messages being transmitted to a public suspicious of authority, business and industry.

“Globalisation, democracy and debt are amongst the primary subjects that will influence the practice of communication in the years to come,” says Mixael de Kock, PRISA President. “The objective of this conference is to look towards disciplines and research outside of public relations to be able to predict how new thinking elsewhere will impact on our practice of communication in future.”

“Information from the five traditional senses – touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight – all combine with our inner knowledge to give rise to consciousness. Likewise, information from outside of our profession is required to be integrated with our existing knowledge of the science of communication to ensure that we become sensitive to our environment and everything therein. “

Delegates booking will also have an optional one-day pre-conference programme as well as a half-day post-conference programme on 17 and 20 June respectively.

New thinking

On the pre-conference day, topics will range from new thinking on how the brain works to the nature of intelligence and consciousness. Neuro-linguistics, neuro-semantics and neuro-hermeneutics together with papers on emotional, social, ethical and spiritual intelligence will be discussed on this day.

Following this, the PRISA two-day conference will be devoted to more industry-orientated subjects such as the formulation of ethics, predicting trends and how we arrive at future scenarios. Noreena Hertz's presentation will form part of the first day. Then, on day two, among others, Services Seta chief executive, Ivor Blumenthal, will discuss professionalisation of the industry. In the afternoon there will be various workshops. In this section, the top awardees of the recent PRISA PRISM Awards will showcase their winning entries.

De Kock concluded: “The more outside knowledge we bring into our profession, the more of an ‘instinctual sixth sense' we will be able to develop; emerging from such multi-disciplinary interaction will be an increased ability to communicate clearly and succinctly into a new world with new challenges such as global warming and climatic change.”