E-Media Tidbits

This past weekend I attended the second annual BlogHer conference in San Jose, Calif. I was one of many attendees who "live blogged" the conference -- that is, I posted to one of my weblogs reports from sessions as they were happening. I even live blogged one session for E-Media Tidbits.

Ms. Jen / blackphoebe.com Several bloggers documented the excitement when a red caterpillar dropped onto a Blogher discussion group table.

I've been collecting links to live-blogged and wrap-up posts from BlogHer on this wiki -- including a few posts documenting when a red caterpillar dropped from the ballroom ceiling onto one discussion group's table.

My wiki is far from comprehensive so far, but I (and others) will keep adding to it over the next several days, and there's a lot there already. Check it out to see what live blogging and wrap-up posts can do to extend the value, reach, and energy of an event.

This made me think -- maybe event coverage is a prime opportunity for news organizations and bloggers to collaborate.

Imagine there's a major festival or convention happening in your city. What if you found out which local bloggers were attending, and asked them to post live or wrap-up coverage (text, audio, photos, video, etc.). If wifi isn't available in the event area, you could focus on mobile blogging from cell phones and pagers ("moblogging"). Also, you could publish a blog or wiki to aggregate this coverage -- so bloggers could post to their own blogs, but you could present it in an easy-to-find way.

Of course, this would mean getting to know your local bloggers. Have you done that yet? If not, someone in your news organization probably should be building that valuable network of connections. It's hard to pull a network of bloggers out of thin air on the spur of the moment. But if you start establishing relationships with them now, they'll be there for you when you need or want them to help with live coverage.

One place to check to start finding local bloggers is Blogmapping. In fact, you might want to offer a Google Maps-based blog/podcast/vlog locator for your coverage region.