Liveblogging Like Minds: a post-mortem

So, what did I learn at [this year’s Like Minds](http://wearelikeminds.com/events/exeter), other than lying around doing absolutely nothing on a Sunday (other than a trip to the tip. Oh, and to Waitrose…) is a good and necessary thing sometimes?

Well, this was, [as previously noted](http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2011/10/liveblogging_for_like_minded_folks.html), the first time I’ve liveblogged a three day conference and the first time I’ve done that blogging on the conference organiser’s site. Here’s what I learned about that experience:

- [](https://i1.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2011/10/exeterman.jpg)Doing three days of liveblogging and seeing your own site’s traffic drop slightly is an odd experience - Being isolated from the traffic stats of the blog you’re writing for feels like blundering around in the dark. I had no idea if my work was having any resonance with the audience whatsoever. This makes me even more determined to make sure our journalists have easy access to blog stats as soon as we can. - Being an “official” liveblogger as opposed to a guest one changes your mindset. I felt obligated to blog every speaker session that came up, when normally I’d pick and choose to give myself a break. Instead, I ended up skipping an immersive one day and a lunch the next for a little RnR and a battery charge. - Not having power to the seat for liveblogging is a major handicap - I was pretty much dead to the world each evening, hiding in the hotel and hitting the sack early to prepare myself for the next day. - This was my longest continuous period working with WordPress, and I’d nearly convinced myself to switch this blog over when database errors started cropping up intermittently. That scared me off… - It’s interesting to not the differences between what live tweeters pick up, and what my liveblogging tends to emphasise.