Documenting Presentations- Blog and Twitter Style

Going to a conference with hundfreds of concurrent session, can get easily overwhelming.

• Who said what, when and where?
• What was that link to the presenter’s handouts?
• What about the video clip that was so effectively used in the presentation?

While at conferences I have gotten used to directly typing presentation notes into a blog post. Being able to embed videos, links and images, that the presenter mentions or that are relevant to the presentation is becoming second nature. I know, I know that taking notes can simply  be accomplished by the traditional paper and pencil method too, but there is something to be said about having the already hyperlinked and embedded notes ready and published before you leave the conference room.

My brain craves for a way to immediately tag, categorize, archive, link and embed the information that I am receiving. When I return from a conference, I do not want to search through crumbled up paper of scribbled notes. I want to be able to hit CTRL- F (Comand F) and do a simple search, or look at images or videos that will trigger what a presentation was about.

During last week’s TCEA conference, I was suprised to see very few attendees actually taking notes…Even fewer brought their laptops with them… I saw several with their cellphones texting (don’t know if about the presentation or personal).

While sitting in Gail Lovely‘s session, which I blogged about here, I also tasted the potential of documenting a presentation via Twitter. Twitter gives you a way to  document (in chronological order):

• links
• quotes
• “notes to self”
• make connections with other “Tweeterers” who are tweeting the session
• create a connection for other “Tweeterers”, who are not present physically

Yogitechchick and KGustin seemed to have been physically in the confernce room at Gail’s presentation.  I took screenshots of the following tweets.

• Does it give you an idea about the presentation?
• Does it do a better job than a paper and pencil method?
• Is it an alternative to taking notes and blogging entire posts about a session?

Here are my tweets:

Here are replies to these tweets from my followers:

Here are tweets from Yogitechchick about Gail’s presentation:

So, what do you think. Can you envision yourself Twittering a presentation and/or following one, if you are not present physically?