we should celebrate those who don't shout about it

Shouldn't we celebrate with an award those who do great things but don't shout about it? One comms person thinks so. 

by Clare Parker

Awards, conferences, speaking events. My twitter timeline is full of people attending, winning and sharing their expertise and commentaries. And sometimes, I hate to say it, it’s the same people…

Which got me thinking: what’s everyone else doing? How about a bit of recognition for those who don’t get recognised? For instance, a Comms2Point0 “Getting Stuff Done and Doesn’t Shout About It But Deserves Recognition” award. Wouldn’t this be the perfect unaward award?

To all those communications folk (with apologies to Simple Minds):

Here’s to you, who just gets stuck in

Here’s to the volunteers who don’t advertise their volunteering

Here’s to you without the travel budget for conferences

(Here’s to you who stays in the office when everyone else is at the conference)

Here’s to all the primary and secondary carers who can’t go to evening, overnight or weekend networking

Here’s to the people who stay off social media out of hours (and those who properly switch off at weekends, too)

Here’s to the people who find the hoops too complicated to get backing to talk about what they do

Here’s to you who can only spare the odd hour here and there, not half or full days

Here’s to the nominees who are never nominated because people don’t know how to do it or there’s not a suitable category

Here’s to people away from the cities (not just London) who would take all day to get there and pay a small mortgage in fares so don’t go

Here’s to you who never quite have the opportunity…

Clare Parker is head of communications at Forest Research.