"Im blogging this..." - LIVE from Blogtalk 2.0 Day 2
The second day of the conference is just about to begin and since Im wearing my "Im blogging this" t-shirt, Jon kindly let me borrow his computer (lovely little MAC), so I could actually have my first go at live blogging a conference. In fact, the chair of the first session just told us not to overuse the net, because it kept crashing all the time yesterday.

And not surprising, I have NEVER seen so many portable computers at one conference (we are around 80+ people and at least 1/3 were actively doing something with their machines. All day yesterday the room was filled with the sound of quiet typing, slightly distracting, just like the sound of rain falling on a tin roof....at some point the constant tap-tap-tap starts getting on your nerves.

Here or there? But the sound of typing is the least of the distractions which comes with this new era of conferencing. It is really unsettling not knowing if people are with you or somewhere else: are they listening to your talk or are they blogging about the previous talk, or checking their email, or preparing their own paper, or reading other blogs to see if someone else have posted something on the previous post etc. It´s like teaching in a classroom where all the students are sitting behind a computer screen - you never know if you have their full concentration or not - and experience tells me that it is definitely not an optimal learning situation. I dont believe the conferencing context is much different. Let people blog, by all means, but let them do it OUTSIDE the lecture halls.

OK - now the founders of Moveable Type are speaking so Im logging off so I can listen!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:36