Conference Archives

Missing Another Conference? So What.

Posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015 at 2:37 PM.

This month alone, we’ve identified more than eight separate conferences we’d like to attend during the next eight weeks. The wealth of provided information would be a fantastic update of our current wisdom and beliefs!

But, there’s just this one problem. Okay, there are six problems.

Many of them occur at the same time.
Most of them are in different locations.
We don’t even want to know the full price tag for the ones that say things like “Register early and save $600…”
Airports.
Only about a third of the content at any conference will be reachable during its live presentation, so let’s see, that’s how many dollars per live presentation?
The best use of the content would be with other people — especially when we got back. But for most of the conferences, it would have to be a solo trip, or maybe just one other person coming along, and it isn’t clear if non-attendees can use the content unless we find a way to distribute it appropriately ourselves.

SO, we’re thinking, do we have a LOT of urgency about making it to these conferences? Hmmm… not so much. They definitely would have to be offering something that we can’t get anywhere else, at least for which there is no reasonable alternative.

It’s 2015, and the chance that there is no reasonable alternative gets slimmer and slimmer.

To some extent, we get to dump the airport because we have Google, Bing, and other tools to do the “travelling” for us. If we know what the topic and problem is that we are studying, then there is a near certainty that valuable relevant content is going to pop up in our search results.

Meanwhile, the conference has an agenda; but we have eXie and the frame of reference approach.

So instead of booking premium digs in the time/space continuum, we can look for a “return” on a different “investment”.

Search the web for topical content (and don’t be surprised how often conference speakers have released their ideas already on the web)
Save the search results in a logical way for future reference
Add and save findings conveniently at our own pace
Include multiple sources of content on any given idea
Work without any restrictions on the timing of our next chance to access any stored topic

In fact, in this approach, we have one main challenge: curating what we found. Whether we are researching topics as different as air travel and how a company is making personnel decisions, the first thing that we will encounter is the vast array of content suppliers, formats and styles that are already available to us – not to mention quality.

Our biggest tradeoff, in getting the advantage of this approach, is the time and effort we will spend on curating instead of on travel, expense reports, and catching up with the work we couldn’t get done while we were away. What we want is the confidence that the content is worth tracking because the time we spend curating it cost us less than the benefit we’ll get from re-using it.

Beneficial re-use is the essence of Reference Material. By focusing on whether re-using an item of content is likely to be valuable, selecting it is less difficult to decide.

By making an eXie frame with that in mind, the content is found in the future according to what it says about how a subject should be considered and why it should be considered that way. A frame can be designed as simply as deciding a few ideas that are important about (within) a subject, along with a reason why each of those ideas is important. Those become the criteria for curating. The important ideas are frame columns (themes); each row is about something that makes the ideas important (topics).

In that design there is no limitation on how many items of content can be found and selected to add to the curated collection – but every selected item is clearly relevant in an obvious and practical way. Being practical, it will “pay off”, each time it is used.

As a result of keeping the curated content in the same location for future access, we replace the conference (only available under a few limited circumstances of time and place) with a living, evolving knowledge-base (always on, always available).

From Conference To Reference: The Knowledgebase

Posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2015 at 9:52 AM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

If you have the budget, schedule, and travel all set, you can take advantage of live interactions in an immersive learning environment, which can intensify the transfer of knowledge to you from a provider.

But if you don’t, well, there’s your backup plan: hit the web to find similar stuff.

However… the difference between the conference experience and your access to the explosion of similar interesting content online is largely one of perspective. The conference has one. Without selectivity exercised and maintained from a clear point of view, the probability is that “surfing” and collecting online relevant content will have results that are far less predictable to find, reliable to trust, and punctually effective to use.

The answer: do what the conference organizers do: curate. Here is how one typical conference becomes a 24×7 online knowledge base — with a technique that applies equally well to any knowledge collection. Using the right tool, this becomes practical for anyone to do, on a personal level on up through a community of any size.

See how in this writeup, about the TSIA Conference in eXie …

Organizing Content From or For a Conference

Posted on Monday, May 4th, 2015 at 11:05 AM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

HUNTING AND GATHERING KNOWLEDGE

The masters of content and marketing at HubSpot give a great list of tips on how to handle getting the most out of a conference. You can see the list here: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/conference-tips

They provide 14 good ideas in roughly three flavors.

One: PEOPLE. Get prepared to meet them, remember them, and also communicate with them after the conference is over.

Two: PLACES. Be sure everyone knows you’re at the conference and not somewhere else. But also, have a map of the conference locations, and start using it before you go to the conference. Know where to be and when, before it is time.

Three: IDEAS. This is our favorite group. It includes being organized about how you capture and re-use the information flying around at the conference, including of course the main meeting sessions.

It’s no coincidence that Evernote is highlighted as a must-have tool for the conference attendee. As HubSpot says, “You can create a dedicated notebook for your conference notes, and tag each note with multiple labels to organize any way you want — by topic, speaker, or even which day the session took place.”

At eXie, we always want to know what those notes turn into when they grow up. Getting them refined, composed, and classified almost always turns them into a document, presentation, or media piece that will be reused — and at that point we use eXie to make sure that they wind up catalogued in a great way.

ORGANIZING THE CONFERENCE KNOWLEDGE

Using eXie easily lets you design a frame of reference for organizing the ideas that are important to you and that you try to get from the conference. The classic framework of a conference is its “agenda” of big thematic subjects and topical meeting sessions about specific viewpoints on those subjects.

Regardless of when the topical sessions meet, the knowledge that they offer will logically apply to the subjects long after the conference is over and those meeting times and locations no longer matter.

Since you have the agenda before the conference events occur, you have the opportunity to identify the subject themes and topics that you want to continue exploring both during and after the conference. Together the themes and topics make up your frame of reference:

That leads us to our single favorite tip, that HubSpot simply called “Teach“. HubSpot says:

“The insights you gained at the conference are likely to be useful for your team, so make sure to set aside time to pass on what you learned. Whether it’s leading an in-person session or writing an email or [blog] post to document the most valuable information, proactively sharing information will help your colleagues do better work while establishing you as a leader on your team.”

With an eXie account, you can easily create and label a frame, populate it with the links to any content from or about the conference that is online, and publish your frame so that it becomes available to you and to others for re-use, as you choose. Links stored in the eXie frame are “live” just as they are in your web browser. Your frame itself is created and stored entirely online.