Thursday 3 April 2008

Conference blogging tips (from others)


If I attend a conference, I blog, so I am a conference blogger. This enables me to rethink what is said (content seeps into my mind immediately), ask questions if something seems to have a discrepancy, give speakers the chance to correct my possible mistakes (interpretation is a useful yet dangerous mindset) and of course it offers me the opportunity to have a conference report ready in less then 15 minutes ones I return to my professional base camp.

There are a few rules regarding blogging however and thanks to Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani it is really easy to swiftly go through a few guidelines that will make your life easier as you broadcast almost instantly from a conference.

Something I regularly need: a universal adapter to enable international access (sigh for all the moments I forgot this small piece of kit).

In a nutshell some of the things to start with:

  • make sure your batteries are charged, put yourself in the back row so you do not disturb anyone, prepare in advance by looking up speaker information, use cross platform software,
  • capture the essence of the speech,
  • add additional information that is relevant to the speech or that captures the moment (quirks or gestures or ... from the speaker),
  • quote only when you are sure about what is said,
  • be clear in your writing,
  • link whenever possible to relevant (audiovisual) information,
  • tag consistently, publish asap,
  • be transparent about your mistakes,
  • collaborate whenever possible,
  • make it stick.

If you are (or planning to be) a conference blogger look at there quick PDF book (only 6 pages or the booklet version only 3 pages).

If you have any pointers, feel free to add, I will be very happy to use any advice you can give.

Want to know more, look at Bruno Giussani’s blogpost.

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