I had never heard MG speak before - no interviews, keynotes, nothing. Read both the books. Loved TP and liked Blink. So I had no frame of reference and only great admiration going in. I think that helped me enjoy him more.

I agree that he went on and on. In the end, I felt like I could derive his point but he really didn’t spell it out for us.

Liveblogging is something I have done at a number of academic conferences, and is something I am beginning to do at virtually any conference I attend. In one sense, it is terribly tiring, though it forces me to pay more attention than if I just sat and watched / took notes on the paper. I think the value is that I immediately react to what occurs, rather than thinking about it first, and then editing / reediting. Yes, that also means it can be rough around the edges, but from a learning perspective, I am really interested in how we learn in real-time in a public medium. This seems to me different than what I am doing now, namely considering my response, trying to get my words right, checking my spelling, grammar, etc.

It was very interesting the one big point that he made….

Don’t focus on immediate wins only based on metrics. Look at long term development.

Juxtapose that with Tony Bingham - they should have had a debate.

Loved reading this post. I’m into sports and happen to like Fleetwood Mac back in the day … I was still with you on how slow it was going …

In fairness, I’ve gone to keynotes before and was completely unable to find anything to blog about.

What I find even more interesting is how I meant something different than what you understood. I wonder how often this happens in presentations themselves (such as what Malcolm Gladwell did in his very presentation that I liveblogged)?

Nevertheless, the lesson for me is that unless dialog about the dialog (metadialogue) occurs, misconceptions can begin and lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.

Interesting about Gladwell. When you wrote: “He spoke about The Tipping Point, which I bought and which he signed and which I then left in the seat pocket on a Continental flight on the way home. More useless stories, perhaps?” I interpreted that to mean you found the book full of useless stories so left it on the plane as not worth carrying around. That was why I thought you might have a negative view of Gladwell from before the conference.

Oh well– you are right that many good writers aren’t good speakers. Most, probably. It’s a truism in creative writing circles as well!

Gladwell is a really great inerview subject though (the speaker-interrogator format is sadly under-represented a conferences… even most situations where it *looks* like questions and answers and real discussion could happen turn out otherwise).

I have spoken with several people today about my liveblogging of this session, and mentioned that this has been a very new experience for me. I liveblog to capture my experience of an event and then share it in real time. My experience is often more positive, and when it is not, I try to avoid saying something otherwise, as I often think. . .

Scratch that thought. If my experience is not positive, that should be reported as well. No, I am not giving myself a license to be mean or nasty or otherwise unprofessional, but rather I will try to be as polished as possible while calling a spade a spade.

After all, this is my experience, isn’t it?

Bwaahhahhahhaaaa! Sorry; I’m laughing with you, not at you.

So glad you didn’t censor yourself. Now I know that I’m not the only one who sits in presentations scratching my head in bewilderment, and waiting for the time to process.

Great job of liveblogging, Jeffrey. Thank you.

I find the older I get, the more I need to reflectively engage in my experiences as part of the processing I do when I learn. Doing that (which cannot be done, I contend, adequately while liveblogging (though that is a research project peculating in itself)) is valuable before I find sharing and discussing / engaging with others.

I wonder if anybody has written on a connection between reflective practice and collaborative learning?

I think the issue was that his speech was more for reading (such as in the New Yorker) than for listening to (where we need to follow his main point without any way of reviewing what he said before to make sure we “get it.”

I am looking forward to speaking with others at the conference to see what they think.