Virtual Conference Crashing via netvibes
Conference Crashing 101
Massachusetts Computer using educators annual conference takes place this week. To have one place to monitor, listen and watch what is going on I created a public page on netvibes that monitors the tags masscue and masscue09.
As soon as actual attendees post online via twitter, flickr, delicious, diigo, and blogs, it will feed to this page, making it easier to connect and listen to what is going on in sessions. I get so much more out of a conference this way, I lose that anxiety about choosing one session from the many great sessions on offer. I know that I can go back and check out links and bookmarks from most of the sessions, if and when I have time.
You can create a similar page for any conference, you may or may not be going to (just change the tag). The same ideas could work in the classroom, it would be just as easy to set up a page to follow any “tag” that is related to your curriculum topic. For collaboration and teamwork make your own tag & have the group post resources which are then aggregated automatically on the page.
Twitter search widget
This widget feeds every tweet that includes the word “masscue”. Helpful to connect to others on twitter and expand your personal learning network.
In the netvibes Add Content section choose twitter search from the essential widgets list.
Delicious and Diigo RSS feeds
To stay on top of what attendees are bookmarking in sessions, go to delicious and search for the tag you want to include. On the page with the search results you will see an rss icon. Click on that and copy the feed address (url). It will look something like this
feed://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/masscue?count=15
In netvibes, go to add content click add a feed, then paste in this url.
Blog Search
This widget will find all blog posts about a specific topic entered into the search. Add this content to your page using the blog search widget
Photos & media
To follow photo posts and other media being archived and tagged at the event, similar feed widgets can be created using
- flickr & rss,
- youtube & rss,
- slideshare & rss
If I was organizing an event, this would be job one, job two would be publicizing it. So, whether you travel to attend a conference in person or crash it via a netvibes page, share what you create & learn so others can follow you there, virtually of course.
Another blogpost with similar focus:
Create a listening dashboard for your organization
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