Sparkle Training at ACS headquarters in Washington, DC (April 27-29, 2012).

I attended the Sparkle training for Public Relations Chairs as Jack Driscoll but quickly became introduced as Jen's Dad since Jennifer had given such a wonderful training session on Social Media at Sparkle 2011. This was very a helpful training course particularly with the role playing and video preparation with the media. There were PR Chairs from 24 sections at the training course. We spent part of an afternoon with the ACS network. This web site has been completely reworked and is very impressive (http://www.acs.org/network ). We had 24 PR chairs at the Sparkle training and we are now connected up on the ACS Local Section Public Relations (LSPR) group. Now we have 24 new Chemistry Ambassadors (see photo). You can start your own group on the ACS network in Education, Events, to communicate with chairs in other regions. You first have to login with your ACS ID #, then you can access the ACS network and go from there. Bonnie Carpenter and Kathleen Schultz who are on the ACS board of directors gave presentations to our group. The media reps were Ron Seely, Wisconsin State Journal, (print), Mike Lawrence, Cone Communications (TV), and Paul Milton, Pauxtent Publishing, (Print) large media with 18 newspapers. The ACS Public Relations & Communications staff did a wonderful job keeping the program moving. Kathleen Schultz described a number of professional development courses that are available on line or at the ACS National Meetings. This was a very beneficial experience. Dr. Jack Driscoll NESACS, Public Relations Chair