My NECC Strategy

Being that I am on the outside looking in, I've tried a few approaches:

• I took all of the tags that were associated with NECC proper (NECC07, NECC2007) and did a Google Blog Search for them, then I subscribed to the feed for that search.
• Next, I did the same for Technorati

Note: This has caused a fair amount of double-dipping, but at least I am getting some good intel.

• I also took a gander at Steve Hargadon's blog where he labeled each of the sessions with specific tags. Any session that I would have attended I grabbed the tag and did a Google Blog Search and aggregated it as well.
  

What this has given me is a general picture of what has been occurring; however, the main aspect that I am lacking, or was until about three hours ago, was the conversations that were occurring. The secret there? Twitter. I have resisted for too long, but could no longer. My resistance was not due to a perceived illegitimacy, but rather due to a fear that this would pull me further into a life that I was not comfortable with just yet. The amount of time I am spending in front of my machine here has increased significantly in the last few months. My feeling was that if this was going to pull me further down that rabbit hole, it wasn't something that I thought I could do.

Watching, reading, and listening to the activity surrounding NECC this past week has convinced me that this is another tool that will have some use for me, especially in a large group collaborative session. I love how someone, I think it was Jeff, claimed that Twitter has emerged as the "backchannel" for the conference.