My good friend Michele Perras invited me to live blog for Interactive Ontario’s Interactive Content Exchange, a fabulous digital media conference she helped organize. I must say I was intrigued, after all I had never live blogged before. I was assigned four sessions (see the details in the previous posts) that lasted about an hour each. I typed furiously, and tried to keep up with the  fascinating dialogue and learned a few lessons along the way I thought I would pass along.

1) Preparation is key! Save your self the anxiety and stress of having to set the context for your post. I prepared drafts before hand outlining the panel description (from the site) and linking to each of the participants. This saved me loads of time as I was ready to go right away.

2) Do your homework.  Since you’re going to the trouble of preparing beforehand, take a few minutes and poke around the sites you’re linking to. They can give you a good idea of why the panelists were invited up there, and could help frame the discussion if you’re not familiar with subject matter.

3) Don’t Transcribe.  You’re not a stenographer in a courtroom! I always listen to what people are saying and then try to capture the essence of their idea. When I post, especially a discussion, I always make sure to state that I am paraphrasing. This way you won’t be caught up in taking dictation and can concentrate on the flow of ideas.

4)  Find your own style. Find your own groove, be it just capturing a few ideas that defined the session, discussion style or a mix of the two, the important thing is to communicate the key take aways of the session to your readers. Check my MaRS posts of the Emerging Tech  for a style comparison.