One of the things I’m thinking about is what makes a successful conference blog. There have been some clearly unsuccessful conference blogs in the past six months–but also some terrifically successful ones.
Some of the qualities of a successful conference blog experience IMHO would include the following:
–Real time coverage of the sessions, done in a coherent fashion
–Links to slide presos, articles, relevant data
–Post-session commentary and reflection, ideally by session participants, as well as by blogosphere observers reading the posts and sharing their responses
–A variety of voices–more than one poster, ensuring multiple points of view
–Audio feeds of sessions
–Webcast archives if possible
–Phone or moblogging–visuals matter too–seeing people and slides of the screens can both be useful.
–Comments and trespass for individual posts, of course-
–A conference RSS feed AND an aggregated feed of blogging attendees and related posters
–Blogroll with XML buttons and the URL of an exportable OPML file
–Great, opinionated posters, of course
–A parallel set of FOAF social networking memberships for conference attendees so they have a common platform on which to exchange information and form groups and connections pre and post conference.
–Some linkages between the social network and the blogs (only some of the attendees will have blogs, build FOAF profiles, or both)
One of the conference blogs I thought particularly well done was Marketing Wonk’s coverage for AdTech.
One that had great promise, but ultimate did not work as well for me was the Poynter Institute’s Narrative Journal, log f a blog for the 2003 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Differences: AdTech’s blog felt more like real-time coverage and active conversation; Poynter’s beautifully done blog felt more like a series of set magazine pieces than anything else.
This question has more than proforma relevance for me because I am blogging The American Press Institute’s Mediamorphosis conference in March. There will be at least 10 bloggers attending, including a few folks who will help cover the sessions, but that’s not enough–we’d like this blog to be a useful tool for participants, and a gateway into the room for interested folks who will not be attending.
If you have suggestions, good conference blogs to point to, etc, please share here.