One of the things I’m thinking about is what makes a successful conference blog. There have been some clearly unsuccessful conference blogs in the past six months–but also some terrifically successful ones.

Some of the qualities of a successful conference blog experience IMHO would include the following:
–Real time coverage of the sessions, done in a coherent fashion
–Links to slide presos, articles, relevant data
–Post-session commentary and reflection, ideally by session participants, as well as by blogosphere observers reading the posts and sharing their responses
–A variety of voices–more than one poster, ensuring multiple points of view
–Audio feeds of sessions
–Webcast archives if possible
–Phone or moblogging–visuals matter too–seeing people and slides of the screens can both be useful.
–Comments and trespass for individual posts, of course-
–A conference RSS feed AND an aggregated feed of blogging attendees and related posters
–Blogroll with XML buttons and the URL of an exportable OPML file
–Great, opinionated posters, of course
–A parallel set of FOAF social networking memberships for conference attendees so they have a common platform on which to exchange information and form groups and connections pre and post conference.
–Some linkages between the social network and the blogs (only some of the attendees will have blogs, build FOAF profiles, or both)

One of the conference blogs I thought particularly well done was Marketing Wonk’s coverage for AdTech.
One that had great promise, but ultimate did not work as well for me was the Poynter Institute’s Narrative Journal, log f a blog for the 2003 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Differences: AdTech’s blog felt more like real-time coverage and active conversation; Poynter’s beautifully done blog felt more like a series of set magazine pieces than anything else.

This question has more than proforma relevance for me because I am blogging The American Press Institute’s Mediamorphosis conference in March. There will be at least 10 bloggers attending, including a few folks who will help cover the sessions, but that’s not enough–we’d like this blog to be a useful tool for participants, and a gateway into the room for interested folks who will not be attending.

If you have suggestions, good conference blogs to point to, etc, please share here.

One of the conference blogs I thought particularly well done was Marketing Wonk’s coverage for AdTech.
One that had great promise, but ultimate did not work as well for me was the Poynter Institute’s Narrative Jopural, log f a blog for the 2003 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Differences: AdTech’s blog felt more like real-time coverage and active conversation; Poynter’s beautifully done blog felt more like a series of set magazine pieces than anything else.

This question has more than proforma relevance for me because I am blogging The American Press Institute’s Mediamorphosis conference in March. There will be at least 10 bloggers attending, including a few folks who will help cover the sessions.

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I had lunch today with a Silicon Valley social network/search engine/newsreader aggregator/blogging tools CEO. He talked about the idea that his business will be next-generation web and publishing tools. “No one in the blogging world–except for the people at SocialText, knows anything about publishing systems like Vignette,” he told me (no, he wasn’t from SocialText).

What struck me is that so many of the entrepreneurs in these spaces want to see their core product plus web services–and they all want to do business with either publishers or enterprise companies.

It’s search plus web services, news aggregator plus web services, social networks plus…you get the drill. Most of the people I talk with are not focusing on thinking about collaborating with one another–though they all agree that competition helps to build a market–they’re more focused on how they can expand their core product’s membership, distribution, and product extensions to turn their enterprises into revenue-positive, member rich growing businesses.

A great vision–but amazingly similar across the board–I bet many of the publishers being approached are getting that halo, or echo effect–but then, it is great to sit on the other side of the table and see all the new companies shake their products out, giving the big guns with money the ability to watch and wait.

Another theme I have heard from several people is concern over what happens to these emerging markets if one of the big technology companies–Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, for example–decide to come in and build these products themselves. Acquisition or tsunami? Most people admit they are unsure.

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