At a recent dinner party, the conversation at our table of eight, centered politely on the introductory question — “what do you do” — and went slowly around the table to each guest. When it was my turn and told that I am in public relations and marketing, my dinner partner to the left, a dentist, probed further as to what that really means and exactly what do I really do. By the time dessert came around, I had given him a detailed rundown of all the tools and strategies the we, PR professionals, employ to impact marketplace perceptions and changed behaviors. It didn’t make a dent. He was still at it when dessert came around and, in total defeat and exasperation, I made a lame excuse and left the table.

That scene is familiar enough to many of my colleagues, for it has repeated itself far more than not, over decades. It’s not that we cannot define our profession clearly enough, (although maybe, that too) but rather that a large swath of the public-at-large does not have a clue about what we do past that despised buzz word description — “spin doctors.” Still, we have to recognize that this has resonated with the public — and therefore stuck.

It is way overdue to “unstick it,” and the industry’s foremost association, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is leading this charge with its new campaign aptly named, Public Relations Defined. The effort is seeking to be inclusive and will solicit suggestions from the public along with public relations professionals, academics and students on its website: prdefinition.prsa.org, using a crowd-sourcing model.

The re-definition is timely enough considering that the last “official” definition of our industry was back in 1982, when PRSA defined it as “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” A bit gray, I think, but just consider, almost 30 years ago…

Clearly, individually and collectively, PR professionals have recognized the profound changes in the dynamics of communication in the 21st Century — worlds away from communication strategies employed in the 20th Century — and have re-defined it themselves, using new descriptors for new tactics, such as buzz marketing, social media, new media,digital marketing, earned media, etc.

Stuart Elliot said it best in his NY Times column, when commenting on PRSA’s new effort to re-define Public Relations, “the Internet and social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have transformed the relationship between the members of the public and those communicating with them. A process that for decades went one way — from the top down, usually as a monologue — now goes two ways, and is typically a conversation.”

PR professionals understand this, of course. In a world where consumers get engaged and enraged with corporate blunders (BP, prime example) sometimes even before their PR chiefs can unfurl their PR crisis plan, the rules of the game have changed, and therefore calls for a new definition.

And then again, it may not be about a definition at all.

Taken literally, PR is, and has always been, a service defined as relating to the public, whether for a corporation, an organization, an association, a charity or a government entity. The dynamic change is that now the public can relate back…

Hopefully, the outcome of the inclusive nature of the PRSA’s effort will produce a strong and resonant definition, one that will put an end to the misguided “spin” perception of PR.

Pianist Daniel Pollack, in rehearsal prior to concert

Not in the habit of turning our blog into something of a travelogue I, however, could not resist to comment on the country I am presently in — Kazakhstan, a country of both storied and anecdotal history.

Other than business news about oil, minerals and such, not much news about this country reaches outside Central Asian cultures, making our trip to this remote land — just a single mountain range away from Northern China and on the eastern side of the Himalayas, and with the steppes of Tibet just south of its borders — an exhaustive and fascinating adventure. This country even boasts the largest portion of the old historic (and romanticized by in movies) Silk Road, upon whose treacherous mountain paths fearless European traders bravely traveled, risking their lives to reap new riches from the Far East. Today’s Kazakhstan’s 15 million inhabitants, 60% Kazakhs, 30% Russians and 10% assorted ethnic cultures that include, in large part, Koreans, live side-by-side in a country the size of all of Western Europe or of the whole eastern half of the US.

But, even though little-known, that’s the stuff relegated to geography and history experts…

I, on the other hand, was fascinated by something else… Native Kazakhs, for the most part, don’t speak nor understand their native tongue, a Turkic-based language, Kazakh, but rather speak Russian, based on the Soviet rule of 70+ years. The Kazakh language is mostly relegated to the hinterlands since these regions were of little interest to the Soviets. For now, not much attempt is made to reinstate that language. On the other hand, the Russians attempt to learn Kazakh as a hedge for their future, based on their present minority status. And the Koreans here, have never spoken Korean, do not speak nor attempt to speak Kazakh, and view Russian as their native tongue.

Amid all this babble, the broadcast media reports in both languages, on different stations, of course, for different peoples, who are not seen as different at all in this country, but all as just Kazakhs.

Pollack trying out an old traditional instrument

I am here accompanying my concert pianist husband, Daniel Pollack, who was invited to perform the opening concert of a newly established American New Music Center in the former capital, Almaty, a city of 1.5 million. By the reaction of the public to an American pianist, I found yet another reason why that old “cliche” about music being a universal language holds true. It’s a language without words, but a language just the same. It’s a connectivity that embraces people on an emotional level, and through it, diffuses differences.

The Kazakhs held their own concert as part of the opening of the 5th Almaty International Piano Competition, (held every three years), which was a celebratory performance by proud-full youths performing on old instruments developed by their nomad ancestors, from the days of Gengis Khan and his vast Mongol Empire (that overran this vast area by 1300). These instruments have little to do with any traditional western instruments for their sounds replicate nature’s sounds, including — yes, galloping horses. The legend goes that the sounds of these instruments were meant to relate tales of the nomads’ everyday lives as they traveled the steppes of Central Asia. The energy of the youths’ ensemble of 50-60 performers, their relentless rhythmic force and drive, ended the concert in a roar.

The Kazakhs, who are as colorful as their history, are finding a way to retain the old, while adapting to the new. How great is that?

A great among the “Greatest Generation,” as Tom Brokaw coined the WW II generation, former CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Andy Rooney will be missed. His death, although expected at 92 and in poor health, has the sense that something important has passed, beyond the person. The WSJ capsuled it best saying, “Andy Rooney was America’s bemused uncle, spouting homespun wisdom weekly at the end of “60 Minutes,” a soupcon of topical relief after the news magazine’s harder-hitting segments.”

Often described as curmudgeonly, cantankerous, gruff, grouchy, irascible, he became, none-the less, a homespun philosopher that became America’s “everyman.” He touched a chord in America’s heart, across three-plus decades.

You could attribute this to the fact that Rooney entered television in its “heyday” when America was glued to the box, hungry for entertainment following the dark years of World War II. He started out as a writer for the likes of Arthur Godfrey, Victor Borge, Herb Shriner, Sam Levenson and Garry Moore – legends in TV history that sadly no longer resonant with today’s generation. Rooney’s early “everyman” essays made their debut in 1962, when then CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner, first narrated a series of his essays.

But that’s the stuff that biographies are made up of… There’s something deeper here…

With his death, there is a passing of a certain style, one that has the courage to speak his mind, spoof at life, laugh at the way things are, accept that it is OK to be Scrooge-like, and take joy in offering crabby, but realistic, perspectives with no regard as to how it “rings” with the public. Take these examples: Rooney once proposed National Wastebasket Day in honor of its inventor, spoke about the incomprehensibility of road maps, wash-and-wear shirts “that you can wash but not wear,” the uselessness of keys and locks, and of the outsize cereal boxes that contained very little cereal. He observed that “there are more beauty parlors than there are beauties” and that “if dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.”

This “stuff” is usually relegated to comedians who take pleasure in shock value entertainment. But Rooney was no entertainer. He was on “60 Minutes” for goodness sake, arguably the most respected TV news program of all time. He simply had a connection with viewers, giving them another perspective on mundane everyday things. And his public nodded as he spoke — and sensed that he spoke to them –individually.

Even though his last “essay” was as recent as October 2, his style will most likely not happen again. It can’t, in a divided America with too many varying heartbeats, beating to different drummers, who will no longer “nod” in unison.