Help A Report Out Founder to Be Honored by Info Pros

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) March 24, 2010 -- BATON ROUGE, La.--The Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) has announced that it will honor Peter Shankman, founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO; http://helpareporter.com/), with AIIP's Roger Summit Award for 2010. The award will be presented to Shankman at AIIP's 24th Annual Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 1.

The award, given by the Past Presidents of AIIP, is presented to "an individual who will inspire and challenge AIIP members, thus contributing to our continuing education and development." The award is named after Roger Summit, founder of Dialog (http://www.dialog.com/), the world's first online, multi-database information retrieval system to be used globally.

Shankman, the 11th person to be awarded this prestigious designation by AIIP, will speak at the annual conference. His talk is titled "It's Not Web 2.0. It's Not Web 3.0. It's Simply Life."

"Peter Shankman embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that befits the Roger Summit Award winner," said Ed Vawter, immediate past president of AIIP. "His Help A Reporter Out has been a tremendous success and shows his grasp of what the web can be used for. Mr. Shankman is a very deserving recipient of the Roger Summit Award."

An entrepreneur, author, speaker, and worldwide connector, Shankman is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about social media, public relations, marketing, advertising, creativity, and customer service.

Shankman's HARO serves thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering more than 100,000 sources around the world available to be quoted by the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,200 queries from worldwide media each week.

"As a former journalist, I instantly saw the value of HARO," says Andrea Carrero, AIIP member, AIIP director of marketing and web, and owner of Word Technologies Inc. (http://www.wordtex.com) and Black Ink Marketing (http://www.blackinkmarketing.net). "As a business owner, I see the value of HARO from the other point of view... I can connect either myself, my business and/or my knowledge to a journalist's request or create some good will with friends, colleagues and clients by pointing journalists, via HARO, to these people as credible sources."

In addition to HARO, Shankman is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc. (http://www.geekfactory.com/), a boutique marketing and PR strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog (http://www.shankman.com/), which he launched as a website in 1995, (www.shankman.com) both comments on and generates news and conversation.

Shankman is the author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them (Wiley and Sons 2006).

About AIIP:

The Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) is the premier industry
association for information professionals working independently. The organization’s
membership consists of ne