PR News: Vendor Procurement Musings

The Blackberry buzzed the other day, and I found a message from PR News asking to chat about vendor sourcing and relationships. A few of my thoughts made it into this story (although I'm not sure how Gartner got in there... maybe I had a relapse to my tech days).

One point of clarification... as a former agency new biz director myself, I'm a crusader against RFPs when they're not formed and managed intelligently by the client. I can share the war stories -- as many of you can -- about bungled RFPs, cattle calls, winning the business only to find there's no real budget available, etc. But that's a topic for another post!

Where have you been?

Anywhere but on this blog, quite frankly! It's been a whirlwind spring, with the pot only further stirred with the announcement of a new chairman and a new CEO at Bausch + Lomb (which has kept me busy with professional pursuits).

As of next week, though, I can claim to have visited Palm Springs for the 2010 PRSA Western District Conference. It's a quick trip -- an afternoon in B+L's Surgical headquarters in Orange County, a morning in the desert speaking with colleagues, and then back home.

For those visiting the blog to pick up my slides after the conference, you can download the PDF from here.