I had the opportunity to be on a panel about social media put on by the Public Relations Society of America’s Boston Chapter last evening and it was a good opportunity to assess the current state of PR thinking about the topic. John Cass moderated. The sold-out session drew about 80 people, many of them owners or employees of small agencies. The questions indicated that people are past the tire-kicking stage and are beginning to ask substantive questions about how to participate in the blogosphere in particular. I was also surprised at some of the questions that weren’t asked, but more on that later. My take-aways:

There’s a lot of focus on tools – Many questions related to how bloggers can maximize traffic and visibility. Todd Van Hoosear, who’s practice leader for social media at Topaz Partners, gave an informative talk on how tagging can raise search engine visibility while I sang the praises of del.icio.us as a means to monitor conversation about companies and products. Attendees seemed somewhat taken aback by the amount of technical knowledge that’s needed to generate traffic, but I think the reality is that tagging and RSS are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them.

People are worried about managing client expectations – Several questions related to whether businesses should be blogging/podcasting at all and how to set realistic expectations for those that want to engage in these activities. It sounds like there’s a bit of a gold rush going on right now, with businesses diving into social media without really understanding what they expect to get out of it. This is typical of any hot new trend and I think PR organizations play an important part in helping their clients to understand how – and whether – to blog.

There’s a lot of interest in a new approach to press release – Todd Defren from Shift Communications was on the panel, talking about a new kind of press release his company developed last year. Three cheers for this new approach to media relations, which providies journalists with extensive background and multimedia commentary to use in their stories. The standard press release wore out its welcome long ago. The emerging class of social media press release offers much richer information and potentially positions the authors as valuable content sources. Todd said the template for the Shift Communications press release has been downloaded more than 50,000 times and I can see why.

I was also interested by the questions that weren’t asked:

The role of social media in mainstream media – one of the most important reasons for businesses to participate in social media, I believe, is to improve their visibility with mainstream reporters and editors. The mainstream media is relying on social media sources more and more for story ideas and background information. Mainstream media is also an important source of links and traffic to blogs and podcasts. In light of this fact, I found it curious that there were no questions about this developing relationship.

Questions of voice, topic and content – While there were a lot of questions about how to drive traffic to blogs, there was almost none about what blogs should say and how they should say it. It could be that I’m simply behind the times and PR organizations have already figured this out, but I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion, you need to get straight what you want to talk about before you start talking. Judging from the questions I heard last night, though, this doesn’t seem to be a big issue with PR practitioners.

How to become a destination – There was some discussion of this, but not as much as I had expected. Social media presents a great opportunity for businesses to become content providers and destination sites for communities of customers. While there was some interest in this angle, there was relatively said about it. Perhaps it’s still too early.

I devote a chapter of my book to the role of public relations in social media. Judging by the discussion last night, it’s clear that there is broad awareness in the PR community that this is a big deal and that practitioners need to develop strategies. That’s a good thing.

I’ll be keynoting the journalism track at the New Communications Forum in Las Vegas March 7-9. The topic is a favorite of mine: How Web 2.0 is revolutionizing mainstream media. I’ll look at the profound impact of blogs on newsgathering and in particular how “blog swarms” can turn one person’s experience into a global news phenomenon almost overnight.

There’s lot of other good stuff to check out, too: 28 interactive sessions in four conference tracks focusing on corporate communications, PR, marketing and advertising, new media and journalism. It’s also just a good thing to support the Society for New Communications Research, a non-profit that’s doing important primary research in new media.

Go to the conference website to register and use discount code 612SHN to catch a $200 break on the registration fee.

InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock, who’s hands-down the best IT reporter in the industry press, has an outstanding cover package on open source this week. He writes about something that open-source aficianados don’t like to discuss: the fact that the majority of open-source projects go nowhere, whether because of lack of user interest, developer distraction or competition from more successful alternatives.

This is a big issue for IT organizations, of course. Bet a big project on the wrong horse and you can end up wasting a ton of time and money. There are winners and losers in the commercial software world, of course, but that business has the benefit of an active media and analyst community that keeps tabs on the players. There is no such monitor in open source, although Babcock notes some fledgling projects such as FLOSSmole that are trying to provide that service. Basically, everyone’s on his or her own and you take your best guess at whether the software you’re adopting will be around in five years.

The piece opens with a great anecdote about an open-source project that foundered because of a legal dispute involving the company that was trying to commercialize it. Babcock goes on to relay a lot of solid advice on how to avoid mistakes. This is an innovative take on an important market issue that I haven’t seen covered before.

Sally Falkow has an enlightening post on the nature of social media traffic. A lot of people come quickly and then leave. There’s no commitment or stickiness. She cites Scott Karp comparing Digg traffic to a “pack of wild dogs.”

I’ve always been a big believer in digital democracy, but companies like Diebold make me wonder if we’re really grown up enough to handle it.

Princeton professor and info security legend Edward Felton has been a thorn in Diebold’s side. Last fall, he and two graduate students demonstrated how they could easily introduce vote-altering viruses into Diebold’s electronic voting machine. Diebold responded by adding a hinged, locked door over the memory card reader. Diebold was so proud of the solution that it boasted about it on its website.

In a wonderful post from last week, Felton’s graduate assistant, Alex Haldeman, describes how he was able to deduce from photos on Diebold’s site the type of key and ridge configuration needed to unlock the door. He made three keys to look like the ones in the Diebold photograph and, amazingly, two of them worked. So Diebold’s clever solution was undone by its own promotion. All Diebold machines use the same lock, by the way. It’s one used in hotel mini-bars and apparently pretty easy to pick.