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S2E16: Words with Impact; Communication Tips for Privacy Technologists with Melanie Ensign (Discernible)

The Shifting Privacy Left Podcast

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I'm delighted to welcome guest, Melanie Ensign, Founder and CEO of Discernible, where she helps organizations adopt effective communication strategies to improve risk-related outcomes. She's managed security & privacy communications for some of the world's most notable brands, including Facebook, Uber & AT&T.
Melanie counsels executives and technical teams to cut through internal politics, dysfunctional inertia & meaningless metrics. For the past 10 years, she's also led the press department & communication strategy for DEF CON. Also, Melanie is an accomplished scuba diver and brings lessons learned preventing, preparing for & navigating unexpected high-risk underwater incidents to her work in security & privacy. Today's discussion focuses on the importance of communication strategies and tactics for privacy engineering teams.

Topics Covered:

  • Melanie's career journey and how she leveraged her experience in shark science to help executives get over their initial fears of the unknown in security & privacy
  • How Melanie guides and supports technical teams at Discernible on effective communications
  • How to prevent 'Privacy Outrage'
  • The value of preventing privacy snafus rather than focusing only on crisis comms
  • How companies can use technical communication strategies & tactics to earn trust with the public
  • The problem with incentives - why most social media metrics have been bullshit for far too long
  • Why Melanie decided to leave big tech to start Discernible
  • Insight into the 7 Arthur W. Page Society Principles, a 'code of ethics' for communications professionals
  • What makes for a good PR story that the media would want to cover
  • Why press releases are mostly ineffective except for announcing funding raises
  • The importance of educating the community for which you're building
  • Melanie's advice to Elon Musk, who does not invest in a comms team
  • What OpenAI could have done differently, and whether their go-to-market strategy was effective
  • The importance of elevating Compliance teams to Business Advisors in the eyes of stakeholders

Resources Mentioned:

Guest Info:

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Chapters

1. S2E16: Words with Impact; Communication Tips for Privacy Technologists with Melanie Ensign (Discernible) (00:00:00)

2. Introducing Melanie Ensign, CEO of Discernible (00:01:15)

3. Melanie describes her journey from studying shark science and marine biology to a focusing on corporate communications and then specializing her career in privacy and security communications (00:02:39)

4. Melanie explains how she leveraged her experience working in shark science to help executives get over their initial fear of the unknown in the realm of security (00:07:41)

5. How Melanie guides and supports technical teams like privacy & security engineers for effective communications (00:11:31)

6. How to prevent 'Privacy Outrage' (00:14:05)

7. The importance of preventing privacy snafus rather than over-focusing on crisis comms (00:16:36)

8. Authenticity - how companies can use technical communication strategies & tactics to earn trust with the public (00:19:49)

9. The problem with incentives - why most social media metrics have been bullshit & remained that way for so long (00:23:29)

10. Why Melanie decided to leave big tech to start Discernible (00:26:38)

11. Melanie outlines the 7 Arthur W. Page Society Principles, a sort of 'code of ethics' for communications professionals, (00:31:15)

12. The do's & don'ts when communicating for public relations purposes? (00:35:07)

13. Why press releases are mostly ineffective except for announcing funding raises (00:39:30)

14. The importance of educating the community you're building for (00:42:45)

15. Melanie's advice to Elon Musk, who devalues the importance of a comms team (00:46:28)

16. Debra & Melanie discuss ChatGPT, what OpenAI could have done differently, and whether their go-to-market strategy was effective (00:47:40)

17. The importance of elevating Compliance teams to Business Advisors in the eyes of stakeholders in order to demonstrate business value (00:51:39)

18. Melanie shares helpful resources for effective communications (00:55:21)

63 episodes

#Tech #Entrepreneur #Business #News #Tech News #Privacy #Security #Engineering #Innovation #Ethics #Design #Debra J. Farber (Shifting Privacy Left Media #Development #DevOps #Data Science #Privacy Engineer #Architecture