Lessons learned from Euroblog.

Euroblog was already a week ago... time flies.

Here are a couple of lessons we've learned from live blogging the conference...

1. Always ensure the network is capable of supporting your live blogging efforts. In this case the Wifi connection was simply too bad and even with a cable the upload of images and podcast files was impossible. We used Coveritlive, a great platform especially created to cover conferences and events. Unfortunately we haven't been able to use all the nice features because of the connection issues.
2. Prepare in advance: create simple text files with backgrounders on the speakers, collect the URL's of blogs, resources that are related to the conference topic, save pictures of speakers for quick re-use etc...
3. Be prepared to manage feedback from an online audience; Coveritlive allows for people to comment on the live blogposts and although this is a great feature and worked well during Euroblog, I can imagine it can gets really crowded on bigger events when people start to give input. In the case of Euroblog I was glad with the really strong input from all across the globe (New Zealand) by Catherine Arrow.
4. Try to be with 2 conference bloggers and switch off form time to time... Especially during a 2/3 day conference you need time away from the screen to follow the conversations without having to "real time summarize" them... Although Pieter was there to help, day 2 was very tiring for me and being inside all day doesn't help...
5. Prepare an alternative location to collect presentations, pictures etc... from the event apart from the central blog where you live blog. PHilip Young set up a wiki from where he links all the content and hosts the presentations from the conference.

Want to see what you've missed ? Here are the links:

• Live blogged content from day 1
• Live blogged content from days 2&3
• The Euroblog Wiki
• The Flickr Photo Group

We had very good feedback from the organizers and it was really a pleasure for us at Blackline to support Euroblog with our tools and skills of the trade.

Looking forward to the next conference... I heard whispers of Sicily...

Conferences, Euroblog2008, Philip Young, public relations, RSS, transparency, wiki