What journos want - 25 Aug 2008

I'm always impressed by great customer service, pathetically so, sometimes it seems, probably because we're not a very service-oriented culture at the best of times and customer service often tends to be a privilege, not a given! And I can say that with some authority, having travelled overseas a fair bit and experienced some of the best customer service in the world. So when a client actually proactively tries to address a media complaint by finding out what it is that we actually need to make our lives easier as journalists reporting from the multitude of events we attend on a monthly basis, I'm seriously impressed. Kudos go to Glynis Hyslop, CEO of The Forum, who has actually called us in to workshop our needs as daily, online, media and bloggers to find out how to maximise our reporting requirements at her current venue, as well as the phenomenal new conferencing venue under construction at Turbine Hall in Newtown. She is the first event venue to actually try to understand the needs of the new media professional of the future who has to report live from events - instantaneously these days. On another subject altogether, I caught up with ‘disgraced former columnist' and uber-ego, David Bullard, last week (he's ‘TM-d' the former to put on his business cards, he quipped), who intends taking Avusa all the way to the Labour Court to air as much dirty laundry in public as possible. A scorned columnist is an angry columnist indeed!