Thursday, May 01, 2008 Toral:Documentation tools available online By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
LAST Saturday, “iBlog4: the 4th Philippine Blogging Summit,” went as planned. Up to 250 bloggers participated in the event. I must admit that documentation can be tough after an event, just as sustaining a movement’s momentum can be difficult.
Doing an event for bloggers is an excuse to try out as many technologies as possible, such as:
Social networks. Sites, like Facebook and Multiply, serve as tool to initially spread the word about the event. Photos and videos of the event are then uploaded to these sites for everyone—including those who were not able to attend—to see. In Facebook, photos and videos can also be tagged. The system informs the user who got tagged. Those who are connected are informed of the “tag” and word about the new content is spread.
Photo-sharing sites. Most of the attendees uploaded pictures taken of the event through Flickr. By just typing iBlog4, I get to see all photos that have that tag. After being added as a friend by the photo owner, I can suggest additional tags or labels to further explain the photo, such as adding the names of persons in it.
Video streaming. I used Justin.tv to stream the event live to folks who can’t be there. One of the interesting feature of Justin.TV is capturing highlights in a video stream. If the clip highlighted is no more than 10 minutes, this can be uploaded to YouTube as well. Saved clips and YouTube videos can be added to a playlist and these are shown whenever a channel is not doing live broadcast.
Presentation materials sharing. In the past, presentation materials are simply uploaded so that interested parties can download them. But with sites like Slideshare.net, visitors can view, comment per slide and even download the whole thing.
If you’ve created an event in Slideshare.net, presentation files can be added by participants. The same goes to embedded videos (from various video sharing sites) and photos (tagged via Flickr).
Video sharing sites. As all presentations were recorded, we’ve decided to post on video sharing sites so that more people will benefit from the content.
Recorded video presentations that are less than 10 minutes long were uploadedto YouTube. If the recording is more than 10 minutes, one option to consider is Revver.com or Viddler.com.
What helped the documentation is the number of bloggers who covered the event. They wrote about it, shared their insights, uploaded photos and videos, and greeted the people they met.
As of this writing, there are at least 80 blogs containing posts, photos or videos taken from the event. I consider this exposure as priceless and makes the whole volunteer activity worth the while.
Thank you to everyone who joined and supported “iBlog4: The 4th Philippine Blogging Summit.”
