Sunday, July 10, 2005

Conference Blogs

Over the weekend, I ran a blogging workshop at a conference.

A week or so before running the workshop I set them up with a conference blog, and before doing so I took a look webwise to see how popular the idea of Blogging a Conference was. Without too much difficulty I came up with a good range of links.

This was the first time I had taken responsibility for setting up a ‘collective blog’ and I think I should share some ideas here.

furthermore...

If I were to do this again, I would insist that I run the workshop at the beginning of the conference not at the end. Also, it would be useful, after setting up the blog, to email all the delegates in the weeks before the conference to give people a chance to post up their pre-conference thoughts. In fact, one could even propose setting up a blog very early on the process of forming the conferecne schedule, so that the organisers, could get feedback on the suggested speakers and venue. The workshop at the Lakeside Conference Centre went well and we were grateful for the network of laptops setup with fast internet connections. Many conferences that I have attended in the US. have, as standard, computers available, so that delegates can get online at any time. This would also be an essential requirement where a conference blog has been set up. This would enable a constant flow of feedback throughout the actual conference. The setup and features of the blog need to be really simple. Many people (unless this is a technorati conference) are likely to be new to this, so including such things as 'trackbacks' and file upload, may be too much for most delegates. In the case of the ARLIS Conference Blog, I have only just added the ability to upload pictures, because it seemed to me to be too much for beginners to deal with in their first experience of 'Conference Blogging'. I am happy to take enquiries on workshops and Conference Blogs!