Are you going to Online Information next week? As a one-stop-shop to catch up on all the important developments in the information industry, the conference is pretty unbeatable. Every year brings fresh insights and clues to where our jobs and our industry are heading.
Rather than just taking sessions at face value, serendipitous encounters with strangers are often a great opportunity to exchange views on what you just heard. So much better than just going along with a colleague and following the same old thought patterns. You can do that back at the office.
With three streams running much of the time, it's difficult to know which to attend. Do you go for career development or social software? The conference organisers have done a great job of trying to avoid conflict but, sometimes, the choices are tough. Maybe it's an idea to look in the proceedings and see which session has the best documentation, then go for the other one.
It's worth spending time on the conference guide and mapping your best route through the sessions. Sometimes you'll find that a speaker in a session is also involved in a round table or a Q&A, which is one way of partially overcoming the overlapping sessions problem. It does create a new problem though. It diminishes still further the time you have for the main exhibition.
If you go, do have a good time. And, if you're following Web 2.0, search/discovery, social software or career development, keep your eyes peeled. You may want to meet/avoid me.
Yeah - that was me. I think a woman on one of the magazine stands gave it to me. American, as you guessed.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if anyone from this blog will be at the wiki and RSS section of the free conference tomorrow that is part of the show? I realise the main conference is what has to be reported but some issues will come up during the free seminars.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why the e-publishing is part of the main event while the social software is part of the information management technical stuff. With all the talk of Web 2.0 it might be thought that publishing is now about collaboration.
Britanica is part of publishing. What is the Wikipedia?
Having heard Kate Warlock on Publishing 2.0 I am even more convinced of the link to blogs and wikis etc. Could there be a better signpost to this next year?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I'm following you.
ReplyDeleteThe main conference had a ton of stuff on social computing and Web 2.0. The relevance has not been in doubt for the last three conferences.
The Worlocks are well on top of the subject, I agree.
Is there anything wrong with covering the subjects at both conferences? Or are you saying there shouldn't be two conferences? Or that, if there are, why do they overlap?
Please help me out here. Actually, I'm not the right person to be responding but, since it was my post that sparked you off...
Sorry, I have not been clear. I was not talking about the main conference, just the two streams in the free seminars on the show floor. e-publishing has become a bit technical but is still part of the Online Information theme. This year it had a lot about blogs and wikis but there was also a half day in the Information Managment Solutions part, titled 'blogs, wikis and RSS' that covered some aspects of social software. So when I said 'main event' I meant the Online Information stream not the techie bit at the back.
ReplyDeleteI did ask the publishing panel about this and Greg Suprock said he thought it was natural for there to be both a technical and publishing stream. However the timing meant that it was not possible to attend both. I did get to Jeffrey Walker on wikis. This was not too technical, mostly about the use of information in organisations.
Maybe there is always too much going on but next year I would welcome a technical discussion on what is possible with social software, then a look at publishing.
Here is a link to my story on Online Information for OhmyNews
ReplyDeletehttp://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no=332841&rel_no=1
This includes some ideas that came up through the blog.
Tried to email to david_tebbutt@vnu.co.uk but this came back so I'll carry on adding comments