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)

(Originally posted on 1 October 2007)

And because we're not the only ones liveblogging, others have valuable advice, too, starting with the people who commented on this page and on Ethan's original post, and with the following:

Lee Odden at Online Marketing Blog
Josh Simons at Navel of Narcissus
Beth Kanter at BlogHer
Lisa Barone at BruceClay
Josh Hallett at Hyku
Dan Karleen at BlogHerald
Wesley Fryer at Speed of Creativity
Kevin Kelly at Cool Tools
Jeffrey Keefer at SilenceAndVoice

There are certainly many others: if you know of any, or have advice to share, please do so by adding a comment.

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Comments

[Anton Zuiker]

Wonderful, and thank you. I'll be sure to share this with the attendees of the annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (Jan 19, 2008, www.scienceblogging.com).

[Jason Womack]

I've been considering finding a way to combine "teen/high school-age" learning into the professional conference/learning world...and, I think this may just be the inspiration I need.

From 1977-1996, I was a student; from 1996-2000 I was a high school teacher; from 2000-2006 I was a corporate consultant; now, I am a managing partner for a leadership development organization...

Near and dear to my heart is this question:

How do we connect people who are learning, with the places real education is happening.

Now, I have another idea:

What if there was a "high school elective course" called:

Attending seminars.

Hmmm...things that make the world stop for just a moment!

[Samuel Driessen]

Thanks a lot for sharing. It's very insightful. I posted about it on my blog and have one question: You both write briefly on blogging about figures, pictures, etc on slides. Could you share more on this topic?

[BG]

Hello Samuel,
thanks for your post about the "Tips" (http://info-architecture.blogspot.com/2007/10/tips-for-conference-bloggers.html). Actually, there aren't many other ways to deal with pictures/slides than the ones you mention. Take pictures and upload them to Flickr or another photosharing site, or to the photogallery of your blog, or just insert some of them into the post. Yes, it's labour-intensive, pure multitasking. However, it's very unusual to need to capture many slides: often, all you need to do is capture one or two images that are really key to illustrate the speech or its main point, as I did here with a slide by E Oster:
http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/03/ted2007_thinkin.html
and here with an image of what was going on on stage the other day in Zurich:
http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/10/steve-ballmer-t.html
Moreover, we probably haven't stressed enough that posts can be revised/updated afterwards. It is increasingly common for speakers to release their slides after a speech, and for conference organizer to release the videos of the speeches -- and you can add a link to them when they become available.
But you're right: version 2.0 of the "Tips" will have to include more about pictures and slides, as well as about video and audio blogging.
Thanks, Bruno

[BG]

Hello Jason,
you may be into something. The "educational" aspect of conferences has not yet been well explored. With the spread of conference videos (like we do on TED.com) this may become easily doable in terms of sharing and disseminating the content; but the actual experience of attending and discussing could indeed become an elective course. Please keep me posted if you do pursue this.
Thanks, Bruno

[Luc Legay]

Fabulous ! And so generous. Hope to give you back some other tips and, at less, good feedback from our french group "Les Explorateurs du Web" (Web Explorers).
Tks

[Patrik]

concerning slides: slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/ - it's like a "youtube for slides") can be your friend once you get them and have the right to post them or they are there anyhow.

[Katti]

Wow this is neat. Just got the link to this manual from a friend and I think it might help me to improve the way I write about happenings. Currently we are working on berlinblase.tumblr.com, a little tumblelog on the Web 2.0 Expo in Germany.

[Nancy White]

Thanks for doing this Bruno and Ethan!

From my live blogging experience, here are a few other tips.

1) Sometimes the transcription style is useful. For example, when people are listening from a second (third, fourth) language to either the live event or a recording, having the transcript helps with meaning making later. So while summary posts are the most widely useful, transcription style still has its place.

2) If transcription style, beg forgiveness for typos!

3) Pass the laptop - last week Chris Corrigan, Teresa Posakony, Tenneson Woolf, Gabriel Shirley and I did some live blogging on Chris' blog, but we passed the laptop amongst us. There was a different sort of harvest and synthesis that happened that for me is worth more exploration. It also helps save your hands.

4) Good live blogging health - take a multi-B vitamin. Very good at preventing and lessening RSI.

5) If you are drinking liquids, use a cup with a top. You can imagine why!!

I appreciate too, that you used images. One thing that would be HUGELY useful is that the image of the bloggers include women and people of color. These are small things, but when people can see and imagine themselves in a role, there is a bit more motivation to step into it. (I very much appreciated that one of the speakers was a woman.)

I am not an artist, otherwise I would volunteer some images. My stick figure would not cut it!

Thanks again

Nancy

[BrunoG]

Thank you Nancy for your tips: we're collecting more and at some point we will do a version 2 of the document.

[Xavier]

A very promising tool for collaborative life conferencing blogging is RippleRap [1] that enables something that could be labeled as "social note taking".

It is a funny coincidence that the same day that I played with RippleRap [2] for the first time, Sacha Chua made me learn [3] about these conference blogging tips.

[1]http://www.ripplerap.com
[2]http://xdexavier.blogspot.com/2007/12/social-note-taking.html
[3]http://sachachua.com/wp/2007/12/14/tips-for-conference-bloggers/

[Jon Henshaw]

If you're concerned about speed and reliability, you should really consider using Amazon's S3 storage service – http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

We did a live blogging test back in January (2007) for Apple's WWDC conference. We had 20,000 simultaneous user for 2 hours straight, and we never experienced a hiccup. Not only that, it only cost us $10. Here's the live blogging archive: http://live.sitening.com/wwdc2007 and here's the write up that Amazon.com did about our experiment: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2007/06/live_blogging_e.html

[John Papilaya]

thanks 4 your tip

[Terry Finley]

Thank you for this great source. I shared it on my blog.

[noel hidalgo]

LOL! i love bread and butter! i can't believe that my ugly mug is on the cover... ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos/noneck/384665017/

[Dee]

Thanks so much for this!

[BrunoG]

Yes Noel, that's you on the cover. Looking forward hearing your story at LIFT next week. B-

[Karen Bryan]

I co-hosted a live blog last night and it was certainly a learning experience. Here ae my 7 tips based on reflection and feedback:
http://www.europealacarte.co.uk/blog/2008/04/04/seven-tips-for-successful-live-blogging/

[Ian]

This is a great idea, and thanks for producing the tips booklet. There is a lot of common-sense material on logistics which needed to be set down, and a lot of good advice on timeliness, accuracy, etc.

I would like to have more about style, though. Good bloggers, well good writers, carry you along because of the way they write. Do people have tips on how to do master this aspect?

[Jack Vinson]

Nice set of instructions. I particularly like the "be prepared" aspect - a page right out of the Boy Scouts.

One thing I've done, particularly with more complex topics or panels, is to use mind maps. It helps me draw connections across multiple threads, and it helps me make a visual map of what I want to write. Of course, this also suggests more post-processing than true "live blogging" permits.

[Eiko Kawamura]

Im a conference blogger for latin america and the caribean for ICT events. When i red this useful tips I feel more than surprised because it describes all the work I do in a simple, funny and easy language. Thank you!

Im going to promote this document in our space www.telecentre.org!

[Albert Nel (Bloggers Payback)]

This is an amazing find for me personally. I'm a third year student at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and this has proven to be invaluable information for an assignment I'm doing for Information Science.

The collaborative work of you and mister Zuckerman is something that really has not received nearly the amount of attention it should. Let me assure you that because of my lengthy research, it would seem that the two of you are pioneers when it comes to live blogging!