I have given a lot of consideration to what worked and what did not work when I liveblogged the AERC conference two weeks ago. Gathering these best practices together, the following is my working list of liveblogging best practices. I will test this list next week, when I travel to Oxford to present at the 8th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research & Practice across Europe.
Liveblogging Best Practices
- Have an extension cord. You never know how far away the outlet is.
- Plan on there NOT being any wireless Internet access. Regardless of what may be expected or promised you never know what may happen with it, who may be downloading every DVD ever made and clogging the network in the process, and how even the most stable technology fails when we may need it most (not to mention when the access is "free" after a daily credit card mayment).
- Use an offline blogging program. I am using Ecto for this here. I also tried ScribeFire for Firefox, but I could not get the image uploading FTP to work to save me, and their help pages were not too helpful. I do not mind paying developers for their work, and think those who created Ecto certainly deserve what I paid them for what they delivered. As I am about to migrate from XP to Vista, it is important to check compatibility (such as with Macs) and have a freely-available trial period.
- Have a fully-charged battery. This goes without saying, but often the unstated is forgotten or assumed!
- Create entry shells prior to the sessions. This way, you are assured to have the correct names of the sessions and the spelling of the participants for each entry.
- Adjust the computer time to the local time. I have blogged around the world, and prefer to capture the sessions in the real time where I am.
- Disclose what editing is done later. I consider myself a researcher-practitioner, and as such want full-disclosure of what I liveblog in real-time, as I conduct research with my entries as they are. These are real data, and as such it would be counter to the research process to go back and edit, spell-check, and otherwise clarify what happened at a previous time as the point of liveblogging is to capture the experiences in real-time. Of course, if I am able to spell-check and otherwise edit as I go, then that is another situation.
- Distinguish between internal and external experiences. I am a constructivist qualitative researcher, and as such do not believe the researcher can separate himself or herself from the research experience. When I am liveblogging a conference, I find myself writing about what I see, hear, and experience, as well as the meaning-making that occurs in real-time. I cannot separate an objective happening from my perception of it, in that I do not believe there can be any objective meaning or experience apart from one who experiences it. In practical terms, I can record what I hear and what strikes me, but then I often begin to process the experience and add to the meaning-making event. This means that liveblogging makes me more than an active participant–the public-blogging and my ability to discuss my own thoughts and feelings of the event makes me in effect a co-presenter. [I think I will have to revisit this to try to develop it more]
- Have a camera and its sync-cord. While picture taking while liveblogging may be icing on the cake, it does add a nice touch.
- Have an international adapter/plug. Liveblogging in Canada, for example, uses the same plugs as in the US. The AHRD conference I am liveblogging in England means I have another device I have to carry with me if I want to plug in.
- Consider a hyper-link policy. If I am liveblogging and there is wifi, then it is easy to add links to the presentations or papers or the people who present themselves, However, with the editing policy I listed above (see #7), determine how to find the links and add them, with full-disclosure, at some point in time. This allows the readers to try to see as much of what you experienced while it happens.
As this list is a work in process, I hope to add to it as new issues arise or as feedback and research dictates. [See revised entry on 7/25/07]
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