Before leaving for maternity leave last year, I was invited to be part of the CIPR’s social media panel along with:

• Daljit Bhurji ACIPR – Managing Director, Diffusion (@Daljit_Bhurji)
• Mark Borkowski – Managing Director, Borkowski (@MarkBorkowski)
• Rob Brown FCIPR – Managing Director, Staniforth (@robbrown)
• Stuart Bruce MCIPR – Managing Director, Wolfstar (@stuartbruce)
• Dominic Burch – Head of Corporate Communications, ASDA (@dom_asdaPR)
• Simon Collister – Head of Non-Profit and Public Sector, We Are Social (@simoncollister)
• Gemma Griffiths – Client Director, Racepoint (@GemGriff)
• Katy Howell – Managing Director, Immediate Future (@katyhowell)
• Marshall Manson – Director of Digital Strategy, Edelman (@marshallmanson)
• Danny Rogers – Editor, PR Week (@dannyrogers2001)
• Julio Romo MCIPR – PR and Communications Consultant, twofourseven (@twofourseven)
• Philip Sheldrake – Partner, Influence Crowd LLP (@sheldrake)
• Stephen Waddington MCIPR – Managing Director, Speed Communications (@wadds)
• Robin Wilson – Director Digital PR & Social Media, McCann Erickson (@robin1966)

The panel aims to work across the CIPR to identify new opportunities, including social media measurement, publishing best practice social media guidelines, informal workshops to engage CIPR members with experts, and a series of interviews with some of the world’s leading social media thinkers and practitioners. Lots has happened in 2010 and lots more is planned for 2011.

I attended my first meeting last week and some things to look out for in the short term are:

CIPRtv – the monthly TV channel from the CIPR covering topics such as Big Society, digital democracy and providing a chance to see some of the industry’s leaders in the spotlight.

Social media guidelines for practitioners, currently on the wiki and due to be released in updated form early April.

The CIPR’s April conference on Social Media – information coming soon here

We’re currently formalising our plan and outputs for the coming 12 months and I’ll publish it here as well as on the wiki when it is ready. In the meantime, keep up to date by following the CIPR’s twitter feed and wiki or dropping any of us a line.