Ethan Zuckerman is a Conference Bloggin' Ninja and he has just shared some of his "secrets". I first saw him in action at the 2nd AlJazeera Forum where he was pushing out blog posts as fast as our live broadcast was beaming over air. While there were a couple of people blogging the conference, Ethan sealed his Ninja status by live blogging the panel he was speaking on. Yes, he was up on stage with his MacBook pounding out this post. Now I'll admit to occassionally taking my laptop into especially boring and longwinded meeting (not any meeting you've invited me to of course...) to catch up on my RSS feeds but blogging while talking on a panel with Chris Dickie and Amy Goodman?
Of course, he was back the next year blogging again. Mind you, he slacked off a bit the second time round but then who can blame him - we're great company out here in Qatar!
Liveblogging isn't easy - the first time I tried it was at our Forum where I banged out a post on the session New Media: Blogging and Beyond which I had organised. I also gave it a go at the Future of Web Apps in London but the shoddy WiFi caused me to stop halfway. This left me with a folder on my desktop full of rough notes on each session which read like more of a transcript than anything else.
Which brings me to what differentiates a Conference Bloggin' Ninja from other livebloggers - the ability to weave a cohesive narrative into the post while also providing a bit of context and commentary into the mix. All within a couple of minutes...
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[...] post while attending a
[...] post while attending a confernece. Ethan Zuckerman, on the other hand, writes several each day. And as Mohamed Nanabhay points out, he even liveblogs his own panels. Both Gilad Lotan and Preetam Rai are trying out aideRSS as a way [...]
I just read the article and
I just read the article and was in awe. Wow, Thats sharper than a razor and faster than ninja star!!
I think that live blogging
I think that live blogging takes more prep than we realize. It about thinking about what you could possibly write before you actually do. That way you have the ability to frame the story with context.
As an example I was tasked to be a glorified secretary for about 3 days. 1st day i wrote out notes and typed them at night with context. This seemed inefficient and I tried typing it out on the second day. Besides being extremely irritating to attendees of the meeting, i found i was writing stuff like "Hayley said shake the tree" (lol) it had no contextual meaning and was just a tape recording.
i then tried a little preparation jotting down some key body pointers like who is there, where they from, what was to be discussed. And like clock work the meeting fell into place, I had more time to concentrate on what was being said and less on the actual words. it also allows for easier reading afterwards as it has a game-plan. o and touch typing rocks (feels like all that teasing for doing a traditional girls typing course finally paid off)
Keenan Albert
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