One of the organizations Illuminate Public Relations is involved with is the Washington Technology Industry Association. We chair the Marketing Special Interest Group (SIG).

Last night’s Marketing SIG event featured Karen Howe, a seasoned business leader and marketing veteran with more than 20 years expereince working with multimedia and Internet technologies. Karen delivered a presentation entitled: The Art and Science of Using Emotive Marketing to Build Relationships.

A special thanks to Karen for her efforts and awesome presentation. If you’re interested in receiving Karen’s PowerPoint,  simply email steve@illuminatepr.com.

Late last year we blogged (Coming soon…) about a new service called Illuminate Consulting Services (ICS). Well, progress has been made, as we landed our first client earlier this month. So, we’re off to the races.

On the heels of that good news, we’ve begun marketing the service (outside of our Web site). This week, we mailed out more than 125 of the 5×7 ICS-branded notebooks (pictured) to companies ranging from start-up to publically-traded organizations that we believe can benefit from the stable of experienced, senior marketing communications professionals we can offer.

We hope those that receive a notebook will put them to good use and we’ll look forward to possibly serving your marketing/communication needs in 2009 and beyond.

In the meantime, if ICS or Illuminate Public Relations can be of service, feel free to reach out to us here.

It is no secret that our economy is in shambles. However, it is great to see how seriously and quickly the technology industry has taken our economic woes and planned for the road ahead.

After the economic crisis came to a head in October, I (this is Steve writing) hoped, being a company focused on the technology sector, that today’s technology leaders learned from the dot.com crash at the beginning of this decade.

Thus far, at least through our experience, they’ve done just that. While things aren’t the greatest, right now, we’re very encouraged by the technology companies we’ve encountered and how they are fairing in today’s business climate.

Thumbs up!

Happy New Year! A new year always brings with it the opportunity for a fresh start. In addition to embracing 2009 with cautious, but positive, optimism, we’re proud to unveil our new look, including logo and color scheme. We welcome you to check it out at Illuminatepr.com.

Again, Happy New Year and best wishes for success in 2009!

‘Tis the Season to celebrate and gather with family and good friends. That’s exactly what we (Illuminate Public Relations) did last week. We held our first holiday party at Seattle’s famed steakhouse restaurant El Gaucho.

My amazing wife Heather and Minou’s great friend Randi joined us. It was a wonderful evening of great conversation, incredible food and delicious wine. We’re already looking forward to next year’s event.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes in the New Year from both of us at Illuminate Public Relations!

Well, since we’ve added a new Web page to our site, the cat is sort of out of the bag — not that it is huge breaking news. However, we’ve launched a new service offering that we’ve tabbed Illuminate Consulting Services (ICS).

ICS matches companies with top-notch marketing and communications professionals to produce great results. We hope to work with companies to identify marketing and communication needs both for short and long term projects.

We have cultivated relationships with experienced, senior marketing and communications professionals who’ve worked across a wide array of high technology industries, including back-end technologies, consumer, Internet and wireless to name a few. We can scale to meet any company’s needs whether small, medium-sized or publically-traded.

Contact us anytime to learn more!

It’s election eve (this is Steve writing) and I have a simple message. VOTE tomorrow!!!

While we (the two of us that make up Illuminate Public Relations) are both pretty much in the middle when it comes to political views, we both voted differently and that’s great. I like to think we’re a great example of a great bipartisan partnership.

In any case, get and vote tomorrow. It is our right and duty as Americans.

A primary topic of every single conversation — it seems — nowadays is our struggling economy. Yes, the economy sucks! Ok we get it. Now, however, is time to be positive. Yes, positive!

I’m (this is Steve writing) making it a personal goal to be just that, positive, upbeat, enthusiastic — you get the point. A struggling economy weighs on all of us, but with every bad one, there’s a good one. During bad times, like now, we have to look forward — look forward to the good times, as they will come again. See, positive.

One recomendation I can make to everyone reading this to stay positive, is quit watching the 24-hour-a-day cable news channels. As a former TV producer, I’m well versed on the “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy.

Case-in-point, I work from home (not having an office and other needless overhead is part of Illuminate Public Relations value proposition) and regularly have CNN on in the morning. Over the past couple of weeks it is “Breaking News” if the stock market is down a-couple-hundred points, but when it’s up — even when the Dow Jones industrial average recorded its largest advance during a session on a point basis on October 13 (more than 900 points) — it’s glossed over as an FYI.

One day this week after becoming furious with the “Breaking News” alerts, I actually sent an email directly to a CNN anchor exclaiming that now more than ever, we (all of us) need the mainstream media to try and be positive. We get it — it is crazy out there — but let’s all make a point of thinking POSITIVE!

Running your own business brings with it many things. One of them is not vacation days! However, the last week in September I (this is Steve writing) vacationed on the beautiful island of Maui. Me and my wife celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

It was a fantastic time, but with your own company, work followed me on vacation. It, actually, worked out pretty well — meaning, there were no major issues. I worked early in the morning and in the early evening, and was on phone email during the day. It was manageable. In the meantime, I got plenty of sun, played enough golf and, most importantly, spent a wonderful eight days with my wife (Heather) in paradise.

Upon our return earlier this week, the best news I received was the fact that my wonderful business partner (Minou Nguyen) exclaimed on her MSN Messenger and Facebook about how happy she was to have me back.

Thanks for “holding down the fort” partner.