Beth Kantor writes about collaborative note capture at conferences using Web2.0 tools, emphasizing that it’s all about the learning. She gives a great example, where several people collaborate to produce a remix of Nancy White’s Northern Voice 2006 Canadian Blogger Conference presentation. I think it’s really great what connected, technically adept people can do to change how we think of conferences.

I’m wondering about what these same tools can do to connect people in advance, to build up the collaborative capacity. I suppose you don’t need that much collaborative capacity when all the conference is all about sitting and listening passively. But when appropriately connected people get together, it’s a great experience!
Beverly Trayner and I have been thinking with others about this issue of how to jump start a community-oriented meeting. I think she’s pointing toward a new practice with a blog specifically for our “Prato Dialog” — a community oriented conference. One thing that a blog can do is create a public image of the kinds of energy mixes that go into making an engaging conference. In the past, we’ve emphasized the private side of this kind of development of collaborative capacity. But getting meaningful involvement of new people with new ideas and new problems is a key element to moving a conversation forward. And for that we need a public view of the conference launch process.