This weekend, BYU was lucky enough to host a regional conference. We invited PRSSA chapters from BYU-I, Boise State, UVU and lots of other places to attend. We had over 130 people there and it was great to meet other young public relations professionals and learn about their chapters.
My favorite part of the conference was definitely the crisis challenge we had on Thursday night. We were divided into eleven teams and given a crisis: our renewable energy company had released some groundbreaking discoveries, but a couple other research institutions had issued statements saying that our research was inaccurate or faulty. We had just twenty minutes to release a statement to the press. Our next assignment was to talk to upper management, because they were starting to freak out about the dropping stock prices. Then, a former VP held a press conference, basically blaming management for the whole problem and saying that we had demanded that the scientists release the research and that we had known it was faulty the whole time. We had to issue another statement apologizing the public and explaining the situation.
Judges evaluated each of our statements, and my team ended up in the final two! We read our statement to the "press," answered questions and were judged again. We didn't end up winning, but the other team did a great job and totally deserved it :).
The crisis challenge was a great learning experience. It was such a rush writing the statements and making sure we handled the situation while maintaining our honesty and transparency. It was one of those times where I could just tell that I picked the right career path. It just clicks, you know?
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