Last week I was a reporter. Or, more accurately, I had to think like a reporter. I was working during the press days of the Geneva motor show- arguably the most important motor show in Europe as it's an annual event, unlike the Paris and Frankfurt shows that are every two years.

In addition to the usual media activities of press conferences, interviews, press kits and online resources we launched a dual-language twitter channel (@opelblog) and a posterous blog. The focus of the blog is a behind the scenes look at events and activities. Instead of repurposing press material I was part of team creating content. Writing text. Taking pictures. Making videos. And it made me think about the changing role of communicators.

We were thinking like reporters. What is going to make an interesting story? Will this appeal to our audience? And we were thinking like editors. Making sure we were scheduling our posts and not having long gaps of silence. We had to think about the headlines of our posts which would be tweeted in 140 characters. As communicators we assumed the role of reporter, film maker, photographer, editor and publisher. Gone were the multi-approval steps. The responsibility was in our hands. Create, publish- and hope you don't make any mistakes.

On the publication side we were multi-tasking. We were switching between Tweetdeck, our YouTube and flickr pages. We were checking our media sites. We were responding to comments, uploading videos, images, writing posts and knowing the second you hit publish it's out there. Too late to change your mind. While all this is going on you're thinking about the next “story”. Just an example: with a Kodak ZI6 point-and-shoot video camera I did a short interview with Gherardo Corsini who drove the Opel Ampera on its first long distance test drive from Rüsselsheim in Germany to Geneva. 

Just a few days before two colleagues of mine accompanied him on the 550 km drive, live blogging the event on opel.posterous.com. As communicators this is how our role is changing. Not that we abandon the traditional roles we have- counselor, advisor, strategic planner, writer, project manager and so on. We have additional roles- and maybe ones we are having to learn. Some will take to it more easily than others. I think it's an exciting change.