I’ve been at NCLA for the past two days, and I’ve liveblogged most of what I’ve attended. I’ve gotten used to being one of the few with a laptop at conferences, but at this particular one, I was the only one with a computer at most of the sessions I attended. I had a hard time finding outlets, sitting on the floor during some presentations so I could be next to one. Luckily, there was wireless throughout the convention center.
Sometimes there are a lot of people blogging at conferences, and I assume we might be approaching conferences in similar ways. But for folks who wonder what that person sitting by an outlet spends their conferences doing, here’s my typical approach:
Materials: When I go to a conference I take a laptop and charger, a camera with charger and connecting cord for my computer, a pen, business cards, and my wallet. I try to take all this in a bag big enough for whatever I pick up along the way.
Locations: I always try to sit as close to an outlet as I can. If there’s no outlet, I mostly sit in the back. This isn’t because I’m multitasking–most of the time I’m not–but rather I don’t want to distract whoever would sit behind me with my typing and whatever’s happening on the computer screen.
Programs: I try to attend anything technology related. Typically I’m pretty familiar with content, but my goal is to pick up anything that has slipped through my various nets (RSS, twitter, listservs, etc). It’s also nice to talk to other attendees in these sessions because they’re typically people wanting to learn more about technology, and I like to evangelize whatever technology I’m currently finding most useful.
Blogging: Note-taking: When the presentation starts, I open a new post, put in the information from the program, and take bulleted notes. If a speaker mentions a website or a video or a picture or something, I’ll try to find it and put it in the post. If there’s something interesting going on visually, I’ll try to snap a picture, upload it to Flickr, and pull it into the post. As soon as the presentation is over I skim through the content to make sure the spelling is correct, and publish.
Blogging: Bulleted lists: I choose to blog by making bulleted lists of points I find relevant for each session. I choose to do it this way for a number of reasons. (1) One long conference posts looks intimidating. (2) I like breaking it up so that people only interested in one or two sessions can ignore the rest and focus what they’re interested in. (3) Bulleted lists make it easier to get more of the content, rather than worrying about prose. This way folks who really want to know the content can get more. (4) Bulleted lists make it easier to insert your thoughts in an obvious way–italics for example.
Twitter: I keep Twitter open in TwitBin so that I can see what friends are doing at the conference. I also “track” the conference name on Twitter, so that I can read the tweets related to the conference. Then, I add the conference folks to my Twitter friends.
Flickr: I take photos as I can and upload them when I get bandwidth. This time I just took my iPhone, so I didn’t take many photos, but I could upload them immediately from the phone.
RSS: I add technorati tags related to the conference to my reader and check in pretty regularly to see if folks are writing about programs I saw or wished I could see. I try to do this between sessions, so that I can respectfully pay attention to the presenter.
email: I try my best to check email and respond to conversations as quickly as I can if the message is time sensitive. Otherwise, I get to it when I come back to work. Again, I try to do this between sessions, so that I can respectfully pay attention to the presenter.
How do you do tech at conferences?