i’ve waxed and waned over the years on activity of blogging from conference session, but have found it refreshing to do 3 so far from the NMC Regional Conference at Tulane. At times, it helps to reinforce listening, but the act of trying to notate, look up URLs in other tabs, is tiring, especially for a poor typist like this dog.
And I have seen colleague recently go to twitter to jot notes from sessions- sometimes doing 10 in a row. I’m not judging that, but stuff in twitter has little or no shelf life. I find it useful when folks conference tweet with a relevant URL, that is useful, but OMHO, typing quote by quote just clogs by tweetbox.
But having a decent set of notes in a blog post has a better recor for later use, at least to me. I cannot say I will do it consistently, but when the mood strikes.
I pretty much slouched off this second day of the conference. I had to slide out during one to take care of some web site issues, and the second slot I had a better excuse, I was presenting.
We had a great lunch speaker, Suzan Jenkins, from The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at Loyola University:
the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance located on the campus of Loyola University in New Orleans provides ongoing school and community jazz education programs to help strengthen the school system, provide employment for New Orleans musicians, attract displaced musicians living in other areas of the country back to their hometown, and unite the city’s jazz, arts, and cultural communities. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance program is the world’s most intensive graduate-level college jazz education program attracting top young jazz musicians from around the globe. During the announcement, the inaugural New Orleans class, performed alongside jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and New Orleans native, Terence Blanchard who serves as the program’s artistic director.
Recently, Herbie Hancock, chairman of the Institute, made this comment about the Insitute’s mission, “New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz ““ and jazz is what made this city the place we know and love. With our “New Orleans Initiative” and a strong partnership with Loyola University, the City of New Orleans, and the New Orleans University Consortium, we’re working to keep jazz alive and vibrant in its home by bringing the next generation of great jazz musicians here to learn and by introducing jazz and its history to young people throughout the city. We know that when jazz flourishes, New Orleans will flourish too.”
The gem I remember is Suzan talking about the richness of stories of the musicians in the community here, her passion for capturing and sharing their stories, and using new web 2.0 tools to extend this reach. I am ever so curious about her reference of Ironing Board Sam, a musician who played a keyboard mounted on an ironing board, standing in an aquarium.
What a story! What a conference
Hope you are feeling better?
The aspects of twittering at conferences that I love is the sense of being there. Reading the twits from the New Zealanders getting excited when Ewan McIntosh was getting ready to present at Ulearn was fantastic. Hearing all the fun stuff they got up to was excellent. Then Judy O’Connell asking us if we had any questions for Leigh Blackall when he presented at a conference she attended was priceless – because I manage to ask him a question remotely that directly related to what he was talking about – he was blown away. Also great when people are sitting in other rooms at the conference hearing about what is happening in the session they are in.
But I agree, quote by quote into twitter may be too much. What I like to do is if someone says something that makes me stop and ponder my thoughts then I think asking the twitter network their thoughts during the presentation is a good use – provided you keep their responses :).
Personally live blogging just is not for me. I prefer to write the notes in Google Documents or Pages and then reflect on it later. If it looks like it is going to be a really long post then I have been putting it onto my wiki – which works for me because really it is about my own personal learning going back over the material helps me retain the knowledge better and then others can choose if they do/don’t want to check it out.
Hi Sue,
I was not being down on sending tweets from conferences. I agree it is useful to have little blits where people are or just to share a profound statement. What I am less enamored are of the atream of say 10 in a row from a session, which to me teeters on the edge of “that should have been blogged”.
And your method works extremely well as your conference session notes are incredibly valuable.
The point may be that everyone find a different way (including”none”) to share back from conferences. There are no one size fit all approaches.
Yes I knew you were not down on sending tweets 🙂 and I think you raise a very important point that everyone should have their own method for a conference because ultimately it is about their own personal learning.