Blogging away…at conferences

The conference circuit is so extensive these days there is no human way to attend more than a smattering of the events scheduled. One vicarious alternative is through the trailings attendees leave for the rest of us…I remember well how I relished the snapshots participants at the last AoIR conference in Vancouver shared. Another way, of course, is through the blogs some participants prepare of the events.

This last alternative, conference blogging, has become so prevalent that a growing number of suggestions and tips have appeared, and many of these have now been bundled into a small online brochure, Tips for Conference Bloggers, prepared by Bruno Giussani and Ethan Zuckerman. This little gem contains valuable advice for all of us who take notes during seminars and conferences with our laptops; for that reason alone it's worth reading.

For another reason directly related to this seminar is the two upcoming events some of us will be attending: CIVICWEB and Etmaal. Saso and I will be attending the first event, scheduled for 4-5 February in London; I'll be at the second, 7-8 February in Amsterdam. Maja Turnsek will also be 'representing' Ljubljana at the CIVICWEB event. I propose that Sasa and I – and Maja if she wishes – blog these events on our seminar 'outlets' in order to share the events with those 'back home' in Ljubljana.

Saso: are you game? Maja?

Below is the first block of text from Giussani's blog, called LunchoverIP, where the publication was released last October. Note the remarkable number of comments posted to the initial item.

 

Tips for conference bloggers

As I travel around attending conferences, more often than not I've found myself liveblogging part or all of them. Several times, I've done so in the very engaging and friendly company of Ethan Zuckerman, one of the most interesting and insightful global bloggers -- at TED2007 last March, where we took over the "Bloggers Avenue", we even started, jokingly, identifying ourselves as "twinbloggers".

So when two months ago Ethan posted some thoughts on how to blog a conference in detail, I responded adding a few of my own. An e-mail correspondence ensued, and we ended up putting together a small 6-pages document, "Tips for conference bloggers", that anyone can freely download and use (it's under a Creative Commons license). It's available in two versions, full-page and booklet format, within a layout created by our friends at Bread-and-Butter using pictures taken at conferences. Feel free to download it, redistribute it, re-post it. Or to add your comments at the bottom of this post: as you will notice, the document is labeled "version 1.0", so we may amend/augment it in the future, including your suggestions. We hope you find it useful.

"Tips for conference bloggers":
6 pages (PDF 485 KB)
3 pages booklet format  (PDF 370 KB)