Photography Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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I've been on the road again this week, big surprise there huh? In four days I've been from/to/through: Orlando, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Detroit, Manchester, Atlanta and Miami. Yesterday I had a quick layover in Detroit. One of my favorite airport spots is the tunnel between the A and B concourses. I could stare at the lights for hours. I took a number of photos with the different colors which I'll post later, but for now I'll leave you with this one.
Speaking of airports, the other night I was part of a select group that toured the new Indianapolis Airport. It was somewhat bizarre to stand inside a huge empty building like that. I'll be posting those
A few more favorite shots from my London trip (Part 1 here):
I'm in Wyoming to speak at their Governor's conference. I spent some time today traveling outside of Casper, WY. Words just can't describe the vastness. More pictures to come soon.
I finally finished processing and uploading all my photos from my London trip. The photoset has 417 shots, (including the PR Geek Dinner) but here are some of my favorites:
As Sandi pointed out, today is Big Ben's 150th birthday. As luck would have it, I happened to be in London this morning to celebrate (not really). Here's a shot of the clock, Big Ben, the bell, is inside with the birthday cake.
Mike and I took the train from Windsor and arrived in London early for some great light for photos. More photos from my UK trip are over on the Flickr.
Combine rain with a foreign city full of neon and you get a fun photowalk. Here are a few select shots from Seoul on Thursday night.
This past Saturday I had a quick up/back trip to Atlanta. During some downtime I walked over to the Georgia Aquarium and decided to take all my shots using my fisheye lens. It seemed somewhat appropriate for an aquarium :-) Photoset is here.
Back from San Francisco...quick, hectic trip. I was in town to help out with this and this. I did manage to get outside for a little bit to take some photos though.
Tomorrow at SoCon08 I'll be leading a breakout on photography and Flickr. What are your favorite things/tips about Flickr? Share them in the comments so I can work them in :-)
A colleague e-mailed me this morning asking which camera they should buy and which lenses? Over the past few weeks I have answered this question quite a bit and even more in the weeks leading up to the holiday season. I decided to just post my thoughts in lazyweb style, that way I can just forward this link in the future.
First off, it should be obvious I have a Nikon bias. It's what I use and what many of my friends use. Ok, that's out of the way.
One of the first questions I have back to anybody that asks for camera advice, "What's your budget?" The answer generally falls into one of three categories:
- Around $500-$600
- Around $1000
- Up to $1500
The second question I ask is, "How serious are you?" As in, is the camera just for fun, quick family shots, or are you looking to fulfill a photography hobby?
Typically the folks that are looking for fun/family stuff are usually in the $500-$600 price range. For this audience, the D40 and D40x are both great cameras with the basic kit lens. This past holiday season all the major box stores had great deals on both of these cameras and quite a few friends bought them and are very happy with them.
The D60 is the next evolution of this camera. With it's release the D40/40x will become even cheaper.
If you've been using a D80 or another standard DSLR, it's amazing to see how tiny the D40/40x/60 body style is. I've often toyed with the idea of getting a D40 and a simple prime lens for quick/everyday use.
While the D40/40x/60 line is great and an awesome entry point, there is one thing they're missing...an on-board focus motor. What this means is that you need to buy AF-S type lenses if you want auto-focus functionality. While this will not impact many users, if you ever want to expand your lenses you can hit some limits.
For example a few friends have bought one of the great 50mm prime lenses (either the f/1.8 or f/1.4). These lenses are not AF-S, so you need to manually focus. Sounds trite and trivial, but if you're attempting to shoot in low-light environments, auto-focus really helps.
This is the bridge to the next level of camera, budget and interest. I've seen a few friends say, "I only want to spend around $600", they buy the D40/40x and then quickly fall in love....and hit some limits. If they would have spent around $1000 they might be in a better position.
If you budget right around $1000 then you're into D80 land. You can buy the D80 with the basic kit lens for under $1000 and the body only for under $900. Sure you're stuck with the basic kit lens, but you have a platform you can expand on. Dave recently went through this. He started looking at the D40/40x but soon realized that the D80 would allow him to grow. I know he's very happy that he made the step-up.
Next up, lenses. I think many photography friends will tell you that then kit lens that comes with most camera's is usually the cheapest lens they make. There is nothing drastically wrong with the lens, but it's not the best :-)
When giving advice I ask, "How soon do you think you're going to buy lenses?" If you're going to buy soon, then get the cheapest kit lens, or the body only. If you're not going to make an investment for a while look to get the 18-135mm. It's a good versatile lens.
If you plan to expand your lenses, where to start first? For me the gateway drug was one of the 50mm prime lenses. In Nikon's lineup the 50mm f/1.8 can be bought for less that $100 and the 50mm f/1.4 is around $300. For many folks new to photography, these low-light primes lenses really get them excited, plus they're not that expensive (relatively speaking).
For future lenses, it also comes down to budget. Are you looking spend $500, $1000, $1500? In the next part (Friday), I'll be talking some more about lenses.
Comments, questions?
I'm not supposed to be in Seattle, but I am. I'm supposed to be in Spokane, Washington...but with 16 inches of snow and a plane off the runway we never made it. I spent the night last night at the Marriott Waterfront, aka the Gnomedex hotel. I keep wanting to walk across the street to the conference center...force-of-habit.
Anyway, I had some time this morning to play with my new 10.5mm fisheye lens. This is the rail-line in front of the hotel.
Most U.S. states have a Governor's conference. It's an event that brings together the various tourism and CVB (convention & visitors bureaus) from around a state. This year I've been booked to keynote quite a few of these events around the country. Here's the confirmed list so far:
Maryland Governor's Conference - Baltimore, MD - March 5 2008
Oregon Governor's Conference - Portland, OR - April 7-8, 2008
Michigan Governor's Conference - Lansing, MI - April 14-15, 2008
Wyoming Governor's Conference - Cheyenne, WY - April 21-22, 2008
New Hampshire Governor's Conference - Mt. Washington, NH - May 6-7, 2008
I'm looking forward to each of these visits. I hope to spend a few extra days on Wyoming and Oregon to get some photography in.
Cross posted from Media Bullseye:
A number of social media/pr bloggers are slowly becoming avid photographers...toting their Nikon or Canon DSLRs around wherever they go. They're always snapping photos at events, at home, just about anywhere. However, there is a method to their madness though (I think).
We're all familiar with the phrase, 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'. A picture is an easy way to tell a story, to set a scene. Sure you can do it with words, but as we all know, sometimes words can't quite capture the moment like a picture can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it also a substitute for a blog post or a good addition to one? Of course!
A photo can be a great compliment to a blog post, but it can also be a blog post...just a simple photo, with a sentence or two. In that way it's a very efficient way of blogging that involves less writing. The right picture can also be a great inspiration for a post. Many times when I'm stuck in a blog-rut, just looking at photos can inspire a number of different ideas. The downside is that I find myself writing less and posting more photos.
Ask any friend that is a photography buff, "Would you rather spend an hour writing a blog article, or taking photos outside?" I think you already know the answer.
Like many of my blogging friends I was recently bitten by the photography bug. My interest came from the conference circuit. I was attending a number of events in 2006 (NewComm Forum, BlogHer, Gnomedex) doing the live-blogging thing at most of them. At each event I was always impressed with the photos that people like Scott Beale and Kris Krug were taking and posting. I wanted to do the same. Great photos could enhance the blogging I was already doing.
My gateway drug was the tiny Nikon Coolpix I carried around. Sure it served its purpose, but I needed to upgrade. In September of 2006 I purchased a Nikon D80 and haven't looked back.
But let's be honest, many of us are gadget geeks, and nice cameras are a big gadget. It's also easier to 'sell' the purchase of a nice camera to the loved ones, "Honey, think of the great pictures I can take of the kids!"
I think for many of us photography is an evolution of the social media work we do in our everyday lives. Pictures allow us to communicate and convey messages in a different way. As I said earlier, photos can replace the written word, or enhance it.
It's another tool at our disposal, but it's also a gadget! (It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!)
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In preparing to write this article I began to think about the friends/colleagues that now carry around DSLR cameras. The list is long, and got longer after the holiday season...many friends found DSLRs under the tree :-)
Of course there is the eternal Nikon/Canon debate, but among my friends Nikon is the clear winner. In the Nikon camp there are: David Parmet (D80), Brian Oberkirch (D70s), Jake McKee (D50), Dave Coustan (D80), David Alston (D80), Tris Hussey (D80), Jeremy Pepper (D80), Chris Scott (D40), Judson Collier (D40), Chris Gent (D50), Erik Hersman (D40), Tom Biro (D80), Paul Stamatiou (D80), Mike Manuel (D80), Stephanie Roberts (D80) and Mario Sundar (D80).
In the Canon camp there are: Chris Heuer (XTI), Brian Solis (XTI), Chip Griffin (30D), Howard Greenstein (XTI) and Alex de Carvalho (XTI).
With all these friends, photography is another touchpoint. It's a frequent topic of conversation at dinners and conference meet-ups.
During the holidays Cinderella's castle at Walt Disney World is covered with icicle lights. It's a sight to see, while it lasts. A few days before they're scheduled to be taken down I ventured out in the Florida cold (40's) to get some night shots with the new tripod. The full set is here. I also plan to post some fireworks shots as well.
The photo above the the 'standard' light for the castle, but as the castle lighting changes to different hues, it changes the look of the icicles.
One of my favorite castle shots is always from the side with the reflection in the moat.
One day over the holiday break I flew to Savannah and visited Fort Pulaski. I posted the majority of the photos in black & white to go along with the 'historic' theme. The entire photoset is here.
Did I fly to Savannah just to visit this fort? Nope, it was mostly an end-of-the-year mileage run to up my Medallion status on Delta :-)
Here's a close-up shot of a swan near our cabin in Highlands, NC.
Since I 'went long' on the last lens I thought I'd mix it up on the next lens. In fact, it's almost the exact opposite, a very wide angle lens. I'm looking at the Nikkor AF DX 10.5mm f/2.8. If I end up playing with it I'll let you know my thoughts.
This past Tuesday we visited ICE an interesting and very cold display at the Gaylord Palms resort in Orlando. It's hard in photos to do justice to the display. Many of the sculptures are so big you can't get a sense of scale. The shot below is a tunnel that's made completely of ice and lights. Very cool. The entire photoset is here.
It's been a few months since I received my Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, aka the 'stalker' lens to my friends. The low-light zoom was a good addition to the 17-55mm f/2.8 I picked up earlier this year.
If you read many of the reviews of the 70-200mm f/2.8 you'll see a consistent thread...it's an awesome lens. For much of what I shoot, the lens is the perfect solution.
I'm often at conferences where there is a speaker on a stage in a low-light situation. I want to get a nice headshot. This lens does it every time. Some of my recent favorite shots have been taken with this lens. What you need to realize is that for the headshots below, I was standing a good distance away.
The 17-55mm is my standard walk-around lens but recently I've been shooting with the 70-200mm in many situations. Almost all the photos I took at our recent trip to Animal Kingdom were taken with the 70-200mm.
John Frost recently complimented the shots I got of the Finding Nemo Musical, I could not have taken those shots without this lens. The combination of the low aperture and VR makes for great shots in a stage/theater setting. However, I've found that the VR does get in the way of sport photography, i.e. rapid fire shooting.
There are some drawbacks, but not many. The weight of the lens is something to contend with, but I find that you quickly get used to it. It's also, well....big. The final factor is cost, currently B&H lists the lens at $1600 (if they're in stock).
Any good lens is a major investment, but they're supposed to live through a few bodies so if you amortize the cost of the lens over that lifetime....justification in process here.... :-) In the end the lens is worth the investment if you can swing the finances.
This past weekend we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom to play a bit. It was the first time we've been since the new Finding Nemo the Musical opened so we caught the early show. It was an amazing show, well worth the visit/wait. If you don't know anything about the show, the performers are puppets, with a twist. The puppeteers do not hide, they are part of the action as well.
Of course I took some photos :-) You can find the entire photoset here.
We were lucky to make the visit with John Frost of The Disney Blog. John knows his Disney stuff and provided a number of trivia tid-bits during the show. You can read some of his posts about Nemo:
- Finding Nemo - The Musical, Now in Previews
- Finding Nemo - The Musical, Meet the Creators
Ever since I started using my Nikon D80 I've been a shoot and upload person, that is no post-production. I also never shot in RAW format, it was sort of a mystery to me, plus the whole processing thing took time and when I'm shooting at conferences I just want to get it online.
Lately I've been wanting to play around with Lightroom and take my photos to the next level, but it's a learning curve. At Gnomedex this year I spent a few moments with Kris Krug asking him about his Lightroom workflow and he was kind enough to share his process. It's not much, just a few tweaks for color-correction and sharpening.
Over the Thanksgiving break I decided to make the switch, that is start shooting in RAW and using Lightroom for some basic processing. I bought a new 8GB Ultra II SD card which will hold around 650 RAW shots (or 1,800 in the old Fine JPG format I was using). The first test was Bok Tower at sunset yesterday. Here are the shots:
On Thursday and Friday I was in New York City for a presentation. During my downtime I ran around the city as much as I could to grab some photos. The night shots are here, the day shots here. The highlight of the trip was being able to present in the boardroom of the New York Stock Exchange.
In the corner of the boardroom is a massive Faberge vase, the NYSE spokesperson said it was the largest piece that Faberge ever created. It was a gift to the Exchange from a Russian Czar for helping finance the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The 70-200 f/2.8 Nikon lens came in handy for this shot of the Chrysler Building (same shot in black & white).
And this shot of the Empire State Building (same shot in black & white)
I was also able to visit the famous B&H Photo Video, which, if you're into photography is like candy-land. Dinner on Thursday night featured PR bloggers Constantin Basturea and Stephen Davies. It was a quick trip, but a good trip.
Alicia Dorset, Dave Coustan and I took the afteroon and played a bit of hooky to visit the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coke in Atlanta. This was my first visit to the Georgia Aquarium since I wrote about their Flickr group. Aquariums are one of my favorite locations to take pictures, plenty of interesting subjects and plenty of contrasts. I love shots like this one below. I recently created a silhouettes group in Flickr to gather all my contrast shots.
At the aquarium it's hard to tell who is on display, the fish or the people. This fish is clearly mugging for the camera.
The scale of the main viewing room at the Ocean Voyage exhibit is hard to comprehend till you're there. This shot makes me think these people are stading in front of an IMAX movie screen.
And please folks, if the sign says no touching, don't touch. Complete set from this recent visit, shots from January 2007.
(Cross posted from the VoceNation)
Social media strategy doesn't always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed....and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.
The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr....why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That's what the Georgia Aquarium has done.
Back in October I received the following e-mail invite via Flickr. Of course I joined the group, and as of today there are 89 members with close to 400 photos. Why only 400? The aquarium has asked members to submit their best five photos. I don' agree with that entirely, but I can see their point.
The photo collection was part of their web site relaunch slated for November (which is now up). The plan is to feature the photography and stories of visitors from around the globe. Not a unique idea, but it still works well with destinations. Below is a screenshot of the new site featuring one of my photos.
The 'how-to' section instructs users to join Flickr, then join the Georgia Aquarium group...then upload their photos into the group. The description on the photo will be used as the 'story'. This use of Flickr is similar to what the University of Florida did with GoGatorNation.com. Rather than creating some proprietary and hard-to-use photo-upload system, why not just use something that everybody is using already? Smart.
Let's recap. Finding the photos is simple, just do a Flickr photo search for 'Georgia Aquarium'. As of this post there are 43,574 photos, not bad, but it pales to the 883,000+ you'll find for Disney. Once you've found the photos, create a group and begin to invite the users to the group. Of course you need a purpose or strategy for the group. In the aquarium's case it was to build out a sharing/story function on their web site.
What's next? You have a community, but you need to provide something of value to the community. I'm not sure what their plans are, but here are some ideas:
1. Host a private function at the Aquarium for the photogroup members and invite in a professional aquatic photographer to host an instructional seminar. Then give the photogroup access to the aquarium for a few hours all to themselves (before of after normal hours). I can't speak for everybody, but if they offered that, I'd fly to Atlanta on my own to take part
2. Provide photogroup members access to behind-the-scenes area for pictures.
3. Feature select photos on the primary home page of the Georgia Aquarium Site.
4. Take the best 12 shots (determined by a user vote) and produce a calendar.
What other innovative campaigns have you seen built upon user photos? For me the Nikon campaigns come to mind..how about you?
I'm not really at Buffalo Airport, I'm in Athens, GA for the UGA Connect conference. However, I did take some cool photos of the sunrise at Buffalo airport this morning.
At the end of this past week I spent some time with the Indianapolis CVB. As a CVB, they have some connections and were able to get me into some cool places. One of which was the RCA Dome, home of the Indianapolis Colts. I was able to have my run of the place, even on the field. I snapped quite a few photos, including some shots of Peyton Manning's locker, and his chair :-)
I even got to ride the turf fluffer.
On Wednesday of this week I was at a speaking event at Daytona Beach. Before my session I walked up and down the boardwalk area. This was a shot of the bandshell that I snapped.
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I stopped by BarCamp Orlando for a little bit today. Photos from the event are here.
The other day a colleague and I went to the airport at the same time and went through security at the same time. He gets held up by the TSA for the 'extra' bag search because he has a small amount of lip-balm in his bag. I walked right though with no problem.
What's in my bag? Or I should say, what's almost always in my bag? My Bogen Manfrotto 680B monopod. The thing weighs a few pounds, is made of metal and can be extended to five feet in length.
Yep, you can't take lip balm on board but a metal bat is OK. In all the trips I've taken this year I've never been questioned once about this, or received extra-screening. Of course I do use the CLEAR program so maybe that has something to do with it. However I mostly use CLEAR at the Orlando airport, they're just now opening up in SFO and other airports I frequent.
While I'm spending time in Mobile, AL for a conference I snuck away and spent some time aboard the USS Alabama. The thing is huge and photos don't do it justice. There is one sense of scale when you're on the deck, then you go below deck and keep finding room after room and story after story. I've uploaded a photoset from the afternoon. The bottom photo here is from the engine room. Lots of tubes :-)
In the past few days I have been receiving the following message when I visit Flickr. Needless to say it scares the shit out of me. I have close to 12,000 photos on Flickr, so when they say they don't have them....well it's not a good feeling.
A number of us use external services like Flickr or YouTube to store our content. Most of the time it's free and easy. In the case of Flickr it's not free, I pay the yearly subscription fee. In the end though, we're putting a tremendous amount of faith in their hands.
I think I just found my next camera :-) Nikon just released the specs for the D3 and the D300. While the D3 is sweet, it's also pricey...so it's the D300 that's calling my name.
Looking some more.....the D3 has a full-frame sensor. Perhaps I'll wait till the next generation when the full-frame moves down the family...perhaps the D400?
A few hours ago Chris Pirillo kicked off the 7th edition of Gnomedex in Seattle, WA. The wifi and EVDO is very slow so photos will be sparse today. Look for a massive upload tonight.
I have a new toy for the D80. It's a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8D G-AFS ED-IF VR Lens and as you can see it's big :-)
Nikon is loaning me the lens on consignment for a few months. I had planned to take it to BlogHer '07 but it arrived a bit too late. The lens would have worked out great during Elizabeth Edward's session.
I'll be using it at next week's FPRA Annual Conference and Gnomedex.
Last week I asked how many photos would be uploaded from BlogHer. Looking at the numbers exactly one week later it was 2,903 photos. If I look now it's 3,321. That's quite a few photos :-)
At some point the uploading from the event will stop, but who knows when. Each day a few hundred more photos are being uploaded. I'm going to put together a set of my favorite shots from the conference. What are yours?
The photo below is one of the most powerful images I think I've ever captured. It's a moment between Elizabeth Edwards and Jen Lemen. Jen was sharing a personal story with Mrs. Edwards. They spoke for quite a long time and as you can see there is a tremendous amount of emotion there.
One of the best 'booths' at BlogHer this year was Scrapblog. Carlos, Alex, Cindy and the rest of the gang offered hands-on demo of their product and a great photo opp for BlogHer attendees. Bloghers had a number of props and costumes available to 'dress up' and have a Scrapblog made.
During the event I heard a number of women talking about the booth and organizing group shots.
From a social media standpoint, Scrapblog has been uploading all the images created to Flickr and will be doing some follow-up features after the event.
Last year I noted that the BlogHer conference generated over 2200 photos on Flickr, I wonder how many will be taken/uploaded this year in Chicago? 3000? 4000? 5000?
As a baseline, I did this search. It shows 5,982 results as of 11:00 PM on Tuesday night before the conference. I'll do a search again on Tuesday after the conference.
Update: I did the same search at 11:00 PM this Tuesday and got 8.885. Doing that math that's 2,903 photos from the event. I think if I give it a few more days we'll easily crack 3,000.
At some point on Saturday during WordCamp my Flickr account passed over 100,000 total views. That's kinda cool. I missed the actual 100,000 but was able to take a screen-capture of 100,006.
After I sort thru my 300+ other photos from San Francisco and take quite a few at BlogHer I'll be well over 10,000 total photos online.
Last week I received the good news that one of my photos was going to be used in the print edition of BusinessWeek. They needed a photo of Randall Stephenson, the new CEO of AT&T.
I took a few photos of Randall last year at the Mplanet conference in Orlando. BW ended up using one of those in their June 18th issue, page 42 to be exact.
The relatives are in town, so that means a trip to Walt Disney World. While at the Magic Kingdom yesterday we also had the added bonus of a shuttle launch.
It's late Sunday night and I'm back from the Florida Keys. This little guy was outside our hotel room this morning, and as you can see, was a brilliant green.
Paul Stamatiou has learned that once you go DSLR, it's hard going back to a point-and-shoot camera. I have found the same thing to be true. The quality of shots you get with a good DSLR makes me ashamed to ever pull out my old point-and-shoot or worse-case scenario, the camera-phone. Sure it's a bit heavier and bulkier than a pocket camera, but it's worth it for me.
Paul received his Nikon D80 as part of Nikon's blogger outreach program, so did BL Ochman. While BL is also impressed by the D-80 she still likes the convenience of her Canon A-85.
The only downside to the DSLR addiction is cost. As some of the comments on Paul's post have pointed out, the cost of the DSLR body is only the start. The real investment is lenses. However, the investment in lenses only makes the camera (and hopefully) your photos better. My most recent lens purchase, a Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 cost more than my camera, but it's been worth every penny.
Now I'm saving for the 70-200mm f/2.8.
There isn't a week that goes by that I am not contacted by somebody wanting to use one of my photos from my Flickr account. Sometimes it's just a blogger, but more and more it's a publication. Recently there have been a run of chambers of commerce and CVBs who find my photos of their towns from my travels. I don't ask for monetary compensation, just a simple photo credit and a copy of the publication.
Like many other bloggers, most of the content I produce is covered under a Creative Commons license. You're free to do what you want with my photos and blog posts as long as you attribute me and share-alike. When I relay this story to traditional media audiences they are often baffled. Why do all these people give their stuff away, for free!
Well like many other folks I'm not in it to make money directly off my content by selling it or allowing advertising on it. I make money off the services I provide, so like Dave Winer has said, the content is the ad, for me.
Getting back to photography, I am constantly pointing folks to Flickr for stock photos. Chances are you can find somebody that has taken a photo under a CC license that you can use. All you need to do is following the licensing terms, or contact them directly if you wish to discuss using the photo in a way that doesn't fit the CC license.
When I attend a conference and take photos, I seek out other bloggers at the event and point them to my photos from the event telling them they're free to use them in their posts, "Take my pictures, Please!" The end result? Other blogs use my photos and link to me, and I am getting offers to attend conferences for free (or reduced cost) to take pictures. Who says giving something away for free doesn't pay off?
Coming out of New Comm Forum there was a roaring debate over live-blogging. Since I do quite a bit of live-blogging for conferences, I figured I'd put in my two-cents (Another great live-blogger is Joe Thornley). For the background you can read the following posts:
- Steve Crescenzo's original post
- Shel Holtz responds to Steve
- Shel Israel responds to the response
From my perspective, Steve didn't like what Shel Israel wrote so he questions the validity of live-blogging. Is this one of those shoot the messenger not the message situations, or perhaps in Steve's case shoot the message, the messenger and the medium?
One way to get called out on the blogosphere is to make a broad generalization like 'live-blogging is useless' or 'all women who blog are mommy-bloggers'. Do you agree with either of those statements? Didn't think so.
Much of the debate seems to hinge on the word live-blogging, or as I define it, writing real-time notes of an event and posting them during the event. It's an interesting phenomena. Last year at Mplanet, Ann Handley commented on this real-time process:
Josh -- I think I'm having a meta experience. I'm in the back of the room while you are live-blogging this...seeing these guys on the stage at the same time I'm seeing the photo here. Cool...and only a little scary....
One of Steve's main points is the quality and editing of the content. What happens though, if instead of posting during the event, I spend 5-10 minutes editing a post and then post it? Does that change things? For arguments sake, how about using the word
conference blogging?
If you're questioning why somebody is doing something than the Cluetrain hasn't taught you anything. Bloggers and individuals do things for a number of reasons. Questioning their reasoning or saying it's not worth their time is very short-sighted and selfish. It's my time and energy, I'll do with it what I want thank you.
I recently spent quite a bit of time live-blogging the WOMBAT event and Forrester's Marketing Forum, was that useless and a waste of time or was the quality of the coverage lacking because I live-blogged it? I don't think so.
There are new wrinkles to the discussion. Jeremiah talks about people using his concepts/content in sessions and not crediting him. Chip Griffin also talks about live-blogging and about video blogging and conferences.
One of the benefits I see about conference blogging is that it's forcing organizers to get good speakers. If you have lousy speakers or people that use the time to pitch their own products/services the word gets out rather quickly and kills the vibe about your conference. The long term relevance of blog content via Google is becoming key to conferences. Google the name of a conference, the first result should be the official conference web site. More and more though the other results are blog posts from attendees.
I choose to attend conferences not based upon marketing materials I receive but the comments and feedback I get from friends that have attended the conference or blog posts from attendees. In other words, conference blogging is becoming an important part of the 'marketing' of conferences.
There are now organizations like WOMMA, FPRA and PRSA that actively seek out and support conference bloggers. This is a smart move since they have a hand in the blog coverage of their events. This is where thing can sometimes get sticky though.
I am often asked and compensated to live-blog a conference. This usually includes free conference registration and sometimes partial (or full) travel costs and in some rare cases I am paid for the service. In this role I disclose what I have been given. I am also there to document the sessions and not necessarily critique them. If you read through my live-blogs of events you will see they are more of a play-by-play than an analysis.
Yes there have been cases where I am sitting in a session saying to myself, "Boy this person is useless, or this is a pure sales-pitch." While I might not come out and say this directly, I usually find myself writing less about that session than others. On the flip side if I am at a conference on my own dime I might call out a speaker, but I usually don't.
Looping back to the recent New Comm Forum which started this whole debate, I can say that there were a few sessions I would probably call out, but I didn't blog much from NewComm....why? Sometimes it's good to step away from the laptop and enjoy the sessions rather than covering them. Plus I'm having more fun with photography at conferences anyway :-)
The Sun 'n Fun Fly-In wraps up tomorrow in Lakeland, FL. Always eager to play around with the camera I made two visits to check out the hardware and snap a bunch of photos. If you're an aviation geek there is no better place than a fly-in. There was plenty of military gear around, including: F-14, F-18's, F-16's, C-130, KC-135, A-10's.
You can check out the entire Sun 'n Fun photoset on Flickr.
