Blogging at Conferences

Just a quick note to self, more than anything else. Whilst at the Gartner ITExpo2008 Symposium in Barcelona I was using Windows Live Writer to blog, and this worked very well. I was able to take notes in sessions in real-time where there was no wireless and as it was being saved on my laptop, as long as I had electric power – no problem. What I made the mistake of doing was publishing the blogs as soon as I had wireless connectivity – almost as if I was frightened I’d lose the pearls I’d written.

What I had forgotten to do, was “engage brain”. Therefore, I’ve found myself editing like mad this weekend, adding links and reconstituting the larger posts into smaller more subject-focussed ones. Therefore my twitterfriends (because I forgot to switch-off twitterfeed) have been bombarded by blogging that is more akin to bragging, or blagging even. My apologies to them.

The lesson to myself is that blogging is like any piece of document production. Consider the audience and what they might want to read. Have a structure for the post(s) that meets the requirement of the audience. Don’t publish until it’s finished. My excitement at being able to do it, overcame the good sense of knowing when an what to do.