Craig Verley

Does the world really need another Public Relations/Communications blog? That is one of the questions I found myself asking myself not long after I officially “retired” from working in public education doing public relations, communications, and marketing. When I left my school district after 25 years, I promised myself a much-needed break from work for a while. I needed it. The break was never meant to be permanent, and I do plan to jump back into some sort of work (perhaps more on that later). A couple of months after leaving the school district, the idea of blogging came to mind, but I quickly dismissed it for a variety of reasons; among them the huge volume of blogs already out there, plus a major case of imposter syndrome. Since it kept niggling on my mind, I started to write a couple of short items as possible blog posts and shared them with a couple of my Texas School Public Relations (TSPRA) friends. Their responses, along with the fact that the thought of blogging kept coming back into my mind, I have decided to just do it.

My approach? In a couple of posts I have started to play with, it looks like most of what I may do at first will be more along the lines of stream of consciousness and somewhat informal sharing of lessons learned, tips, thoughts, and ideas from my quarter century in school communications and a dozen years in the broadcast news industry. I want the posts to be fairly short, quick reads that might make someone stop and think about something from a slightly different angle, provide guidance, or perhaps just confirm what someone was already thinking and doing. If some of it leads to helpful discussions in the comments, that will be a welcome bonus. Some items will likely include knowledge gleaned through many of my Texas School Public Relations Association (TSPRA) counterparts who have served as mentors and great sources of knowledge and inspiration during my quarter century in the School PR biz. One of the great things I have always loved about my TSPRA family (as I have called them for many years), is the tremendous sharing of knowledge and ideas that is always going on. This blog seems to be an offshoot of that.

So welcome to my blog! Hopefully, someone will find something useful during this journey that they can use, or perhaps will be the spark for some discussion leading to some sort of work breakthrough. If not, I will just be another voice in the PR/Communications void; and I am okay with that.