BlogHer catchup: Notes on notes
I'm at the San Jose airport, and I have a couple of hours before my post-BlogHer flight back home to Denver. I've been lucky enough to commandeer a rare airport electrical outlet, so I'm going to try to catch up on my BlogHer blogging and updating the converence coverage wiki I created yesterday. (Feel free to add to that if you were at BlogHer in person or virtually and wrote some coverage, or have found coverage like that which isn't already on the wiki.)
I took copious notes and photos yesterday, but didn't post to this blog after the morning session because the wireless network was operating at a crawl when I could get on it at all. I did manage a brief posting to Contentious (my other weblog) with a link to support a comment I made in the Next Level Naked session.
Speaking of notes...
Today Robert Scoble mentioned in his post What I learned from Blogher:
"Why don’t I take notes anymore at conferences? Cause of people like Christine Heron. Wonderful reports. Technorati is brimming over with great reports from Blogher. Interesting how our conference attendance behavior has changed. Now the first question I hear isn’t 'how do you get on wifi?' but is rather 'what’s the conference tag?'”
So true, so true. Actually, I find the conference blogging phenomenon fascinating. It's altered my notetaking habits too. I can see how people who have exceptional notetaking/reporting/journalism/blogging skills could probably make a living as professional event bloggers. I noticed that I tend to take notes differently at an event if I'm confident that it's going to be well blogged by competent people.
Also on the notetaking theme... at last night's poolside reception I was sitting at a table with bloggers Lisa Williams, Maryam Scoble, and Jen Zug. Jen mentioned that the little notebook she carries around everywhere is an important part of her blogging technique. She writes down thoughts when and where they occur to her, and so always has fodder for when she has time to blog. I think this is great, because Most of us tend to blog when we can, and inspriation often doesn't coincide with available schedule gaps.
Well, then of course Lisa whipped out her pocket notebook (in a nifty cover that holds a pen. She does the same thing. And I pulled out my simple little Moleskine reporter's plain-page notebook.
The key tips for keeping a good blogging notebook we discussed were:
- Size matters: It has to be small enough to fit easily into a compartment of your purse, or your pocket, so that it's not a struggle to yank it out in an instant.
- Stiff cover: this can either be the notebook's binding, or a snazzy cover like Lisa uses to carry a simple spiral notebook. This not only protects the pages, but keeps you from searching for a usable writing surface.
- Make it a habit. Get used to pulling out the notebook every time you think of something you want to remember. Pretty soon you won't have to think about it, and you'll start to feel naked (not in a good way) when you don't have your notebook handy. I think of this as "Harriet the Spy Syndrome."
- Capture choice phrases. Jen said that often she'll be on the go, doing something, and a perfect sentence, metaphor, or point will occur to her. She'll scribble down the wording, not just the concept. Same for good quotes -- capture the phrasing.
- Carry multiple pens. Your notebook won't do you a bit of good if your pen dies. Since I fly from mile-high Colorado to many sea-level destinations, I'm forever killing ballpoint pens. They can't handle the pressure change. I'm going to switch to exclusively carrying felt tips.
Lisa, Jen, Maryam -- did I forget anything important?
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