Blogging Conferences

[Andrew Mutch]

As I've read through various library-related blogs, occasionally, a blogger
will report on their experiences at this regional conference or that
national conference. I especially enjoy reading the comments on the various
speakers and sessions. Like most people, I only have the time and money to
attend, at most, a couple of conferences a year. So these from-the-field
reports are helpful. Sometimes they point me to a speaker to consider
inviting to a future presentation. Or they highlight a topic that I wouldn't
have otherwise heard about. While many conference presentations do end up
online in one format or another, most of these presentations don't capture
the details that can come across in a report from someone in attendance at a
session. While I don't expect a blogged version of a presentation to fully
capture the experience, it does help add another layer of detail to what you
can read online.

With that in mind, I'm exploring how to facilitate this kind of reporting
from our state's annual library association conference which is coming up at
the end of the month. What I had in mind is using our technology unit's web
site as a jumping off point for links to blog entries on the various
sessions. During the conference itself, it probably would be easiest just to
create links directly to the blogs for anyone who plans on reporting from
the conference. Afterwards, we could pull out the links to the specific
sessions and add those to a listing of the conference program so you could
read the posts specifically related to a session.

Among the questions I have include:

* Has anyone at the state or regional/national level tried to organize or
formalize this process? If so, how did you do that and how well did it work?

* If you are a blogger, would you be open to the idea of having a formal
link either during or after the conference to your blog to capture your
impressions about a session, speaker or topic?

* If you are a blogger, what do you need at a conference site to facilitate
your blogging at a session or after?

* Are there currently any sites that provide links to the various library
conference presentations? If not, is that a resource that people would be
interested in seeing? Myself personally, I would love to be able to quickly
review presentations from conferences like ALA, PLA, LITA, CIL, Internet
Librarian, etc. If blog comments could be added to such a resource, I think
it would be even better.

Thanks!!

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI, USA