I don’t think that blogging a conference works all that well (but am open ot seeing examples that prove me wrong). The National Council on Public History has a vibrant conference and has done this the last two years. Last year I was one of the official conference bloggers and I don’t believe I posted a single thing! I was going from one great session to another, exchanging business cards in the hallways, making plans for dinner or drinks with new friends–who had time to blog? Only a few of the 6-8 anointed bloggers posted anything.

After the conference I suggested that the NCPH create a Public Historians blog to which any member could post (with some rules and moderators), creating a huge virtual community of practice (thank you very much). They said they’d get back to me on the idea. *goes to check email*

Tweeting is much more appropriate to conferences-but don’t overdo it. At THATCamp PNW official conference tweeters sat in every session and tweeted every thought, opinion, and throat-clearing of the attendees. Too much chaff, too little wheat, as we say here in the Palouse region.

Thanks for putting up a great post. This is my first visit to your blog and I’ll have to start listening to your podcast.

I’ve been to two conferences that made excellent use of live blogging and Twitter. Over the summer, I attended the Public Knowledge Project conference in Vancouver. The conference had its own blog (http://blogs.ubc.ca/pkp2009/) as well as a Twitter hashtag. Conference organizers had designated participants blogging throughout the conference and the Twitter hashtag, as you mentioned above, was used to expand the conversation among participants. Just as you found, conference participants posted photos, links, and their own thoughts to Twitter throughout the conference.

The second conference I went to that made excellent use of live blogging and Twitter was the NiCHE Digital Infrastructure API Workshop (http://niche-canada.org/digital-infrastructure/apiworkshop). Again, many of the participants live blogged the workshop activities and the workshop had a Twitter hashtag. The conference organizers posted a widget to the website so visitors could track all the Twitter posts with the conference hashtag. Again, this allowed participants to post comments, links, and additional media. Some of the presenters even used Twitter during their presentations to send links to the audience as they spoke. At one point, a presenter had Tweetdeck displayed on his desktop and you could see the live conversation on Twitter. Twitter also allowed people to participate from outside the conference. There were several people who couldn’t make it to the API Workshop, but their comments and arguments were added to the workshop remotely. Finally, there was a Google Wave set up as well.

I think the use of digital technologies like Twitter and blogs can add a lot to a conference experience. As it stands though, it seems to be more commonly employed at conferences with a tech focus. I would, however, like to see these activities used more widely at the American Historical Association and Canadian Historical Association meetings.

As a final thought, I would recommend reading an excellent post by Adam Crymble on how to digitally archive a conference (http://adamcrymble.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-archive-conference.html).