As a member of one of the world’s leading public relations agency networks, this weekend Fineman PR is hosting the Spring 2012 Americas Meeting, and we are determined to make it one to remember for the 30 partners from around the globe (including Finland, the UK, Germany, Australia, Singapore and Canada) who are attending.   As an agency that works with wineries in Sonoma and elsewhere in Northern California, we are pulling out the stops to showcase the wine country and provide our guests with great wine and food, beautiful environs, a world renowned hotel and spa (Sonoma Mission Inn), the Sonoma International Film Festival and, maybe best of all, professionally, terrific speakers for our meeting theme, “Reputation Management in the Digital World.”

After a Thursday night reception, Friday morning we’ll kick off our day of serious discussions with – what else? – a winery tour and tasting at beautiful Hanzell Vineyards in the Mayacamas Mountains just above our hotel. It only gets better.  Jay Walsh, Head of Communications for Wikimedia/Wikipedia, based in the Bay Area, will present us with a discussion of the free knowledge movement.

Owen Tripp, founder of rapidly growing Reputation.com will have interesting insights, too, on navigating the increasingly important, Internet reputation domain where “search” has become all-encompassing for learning about individuals and organizations.  What do you do when all that you are finding are negative posts – Owen has some answers.

On Saturday, wine country social media marketer Paul Mabray will discuss the strategies, tools and technologies of engaging with and selling to today’s social consumer. In between, we’ll be hearing from each other about lessons learned on subjects that we deal with on a daily basis.

Some of our members are legends in this business.  More often than not, our IPREX partners stimulate some of the most provocative discussions of our Conferences, from social media to crisis communications and marketing products with powerful third party endorsements.

I am proud to be a member of IPREX and, even after 25+ years of public relations consulting, I learn something new and valuable at each meeting.