2000-2001 Board Nominees Announced

Communication World, Feb, 2000

Congratulations to the following nominees to the IABC executive board! The slate will be presented to the executive board for approval at the February 2000 meeting in London, U.K., officially elected by the board in June, and ratified by the delegates at the IABC annual general meeting in Vancouver, B.C., in June.

John Clemons, ABC, APR, director, employee communication, Ameritech, Chicago, will succeed Charles Pizzo as chairman.

Brane Gruban, ABC, president, Pristop Communications, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ayelet Baron, IT project manager, Cisco Systems, San Jose, Calif., U.S.A.

Paul F. Mlodzik, ABC, VP, marketing and communication, The Co-operators General Insurance Company, Guelph, Ont., Canada

Stephanie M. Griffiths, senior partner, Material Assistance Communication, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Paul M. Sanchez, executive vice president, Stoorza, Ziegaus & Merzger, San Diego, California, U.S.A.

IABC Research Foundation 2000-01 Board Nominees Announced

Congratulations to the proposed slate of nominees for the IABC Research Foundation board of trustees:

Chairman, John Gerstner, ABC, manager electronic communication, John Deere & Co., Moline, Ill., U.S.A.

Vice Chairman, Tamara Gillis, ABC, assistant professor, communication, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pa., U.S.A.

Trustee for two-year term, Gloria Stackpole Walker, ABC, consultant, Middlesex, U.K.

John Gerstner, ABC, will succeed David Kistle, ABC, as chairman. This slate will be proposed to the IABC Research Foundation board and ratified by the executive board at its meeting in February.

Attend IABC Seminars and Workshops

It's not too late (or too early) to make plans to attend upcoming professional development events:

Next Wave eCommunication, March 9-10, Washington, D.C.

This conference, the first of its kind, is for senior-level business communicators to develop results-driven online programs. It has five focused tracks:

* Knowledge management

* Human capital

* Marketing

* Public and investor relations

* Internal communication

Keynote speakers are James Taylor, Ph.D., a futurist, author, lecturer and consultant, and Robert H. Buckman, chairman of the board and CEO of Bulab Holdings, Inc.

And for spring, the popular Writing for the Wired Workshops, led by Shel Holtz, ABC:

April 6 - Chicago

April 12 - San Francisco

May l - New York

May 9 - Toronto

May 30- London

June 1 - Brussels

A QUESTION OF ETHICS

Think you know your way around ethical issues? Try your hand at the following question -- then turn to page 46 to see how your response compares with that of the IABC ethics committee. We'll be posting queries such as this in future issues of Communication World to bring more awareness to questions of ethics that often pose dilemmas in the work place.

Situation: For the past year, in addition to your corporate communication position, you have contributed a column on communication practices to a regional business publication. You have received a letter from an IABC colleague who read a recent column. The letter states that you have included in your column material first published by another author in a professional journal. A copy of the original article is enclosed. You remember reading the original article, but did not consider it actively while writing your column. You decide to:

A. Send a letter thanking your colleague for the article, but explaining that you did not consider it actively while writing your column.

B. Publish in your next column an attribution of the material, sending a copy of the column and attribution to your colleague and the original author.

C. Ask the business magazine to publish your colleague's letter as a "letter to the editor," with no comment.

D. Do nothing since you did not consider actively the original material in writing your column.

Answer: B. The IABC Code of Ethics states, "Professional communicators give credit for unique expressions borrowed from others and identify the sources and purposes of all information disseminated to the public." You should publish in your next column an attribution of the material. Sending a copy of column and attribution to your colleague and the original author is not necessary, but is an honorable action.

If you'd like to pose questions of your own, please do so. You can forward them to us via e-mail (ggordon@iabc.com) or go online (iabc.com) and post them in CWOnline's Ask the Experts section, where Don Bruun, ABC, is one of the Experts. He is chairman of the IABC ethics committee and is available to answer your questions.