Real-time blogging was my yesterday experiment. I set-up to cover in real-time the live online conference "State of the E-conferencing Industry:
Today's Issues and Tomorrow's Solution" organized and presented/moderated by Stephanie Downs of ConferZone. The challenge I had posed to myself was: how do I blog a one hour long real-time event, while it goes on, in a way that makes my blog a complement to what is happening in the event and not a replacement for it? (I invited people to join the conference and listening to it WHILE looking at my real-time blog).



Boy did I discover some great interesting things!



One. To make the blog effectively a real-time page, where each new short item you post appears in front of the eyes of the reader, without requiring her to refresh the page every few seconds the solution is simple: embed the refresh meta tag inside the template governing the page that you are using. That's all. It works like a Swiss clock. I set mine to 60 seconds. That is: every attendee to the conference who had also a browser page open on my real-time blog could see my commentary posts literally pop-up in front of them every minute or so.



Two. The parallel channel enriches the event. As Alex Williams as so rightly pointed out during the event, having blogs, RSS and wikis extend the conversation channels that a conference naturally sparks is absolutely the way to go. Real-time blogs may be a new valuable additions to an already existing trend.



Three. Contextual ads can get a boost in this scenario making their offering more valuable both to the real-time blogger as well as to the readers. By refreshing the page every minute or two automatically, the Google AdSense ads placed in the left column are naturally refreshed, and as in most cases, different relevant vendors and products are displayed each time. So while my reader gets a continuosly updated opinionated commentary of the conference she is following, the contextual on-topic ads that are served next to the latest news item, are updated and refreshed each time. How does that sound to you?



Four. It is a difficult task. To follow the live conference, look rapidly at their slides, while typing, correcting, and posting with a frequency of a post every two-three minutes is a challenging task. What it is even more difficult is to keep a diplomatic but critical perspective on what is being said, as to offer not a live report of what is being said or showcased but rather a lively and opinionated commentary on the points and issues being raised. Be an uninvited panelist!



Five. It is influential. Thouh I didn't email or notify in person any of the conference organizers or participants, and I posted a note about my intention to live blog the event only less than 18 hours before the event started, everyone at the Conference seemed to be aware of this parallel channel running next to them, though no-one would explicitly make any reference to it. The most powerful sign of influence was that attendess to the conference, which I had not contacted or co-opted to help me, spontaneously re-submitted my critical comments, questions and requests for clarifications to the official Q&A area of the live conference, creating a virtual mesh between multiple parallel events in real-time.



To see, now shamefully static, the output of this 60-minutes of ongoing real-time blogging, here is what it came out of it. Now, try to imagine it, refreshing the page automatically in front of you, while showing a new commentary post each item.



What do you think of it?