Have you noticed how fast broadband is getting? There is still a long way to go and we are all impatient for it to speed up to true 8Mb or 16Mb speeds. But the race is on to build infrastructure that will deliver those speeds and burst way beyond them. But are you ready for what that will bring? It is not so many years since we all scrambled to switch from print to pdf when dial-up connections were replaced by broadband. Are you going to let that happen again?

Once we can deliver large files quickly, people will want to hear and see folk talk to them. This is the television age. Websites that don’t have their messages delivered by video will be old hat. Intranets will need video. Online press rooms will need video. Annual reports will need video. But can you deliver video?

If you and the managers in your employing organisation are uncomfortable in front of a camera, your awkward demeanour will drown out any message you want to convey. And this will become doubly embarassing if you are “selling” any of that material. For example, you may want staff to get instructional video on how to sell your new product line. Or you may want to give restricted briefings for a select band of journalists. Or you may want to disseminate financial information to key analysts.

Do you even understand Digital Rights Management or how to achieve it? In other words, could you prevent unauthorised copying of video content from your website?

You can always get your IT people to do all this. But, enthusiastic as they are for the technology, they can be astonishingly naive when it comes to human psychology and communication. Not all of them, of course, but a significant chunk of that particular population.

Just as you have to understand design to brief designers, so you have to understand video to be able to brief technicians.

Media training is about to explode into a whole new realm. We are working hard to bring PR professionals the tools needed to be ready for this explosion. This is not a time to hover on the edge of the pool, waiting to see what others do. This is the time to take the plunge.