WCoMC Live tumblr blogging

Coming soon to a WCoMC event near you ...

“So Elizabeth, will you be live tumblr blogging tonight’s event?” I asked, slightly tongue in cheek. Suffice to say I was met with a look of surprise.

It made me think of what more we could do with ICT in the Company and also how we reach out to those who can’t make our events. Many of us have powerful smartphones in our pockets and tablets in our bags but we still rely on meeting in grand places and face to face discussion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I wondered how many people might have liked to have been at Guildhall on Wednesday evening but couldn’t make it. Perhaps they would have liked to have followed it online at the time or afterwards. I spoke to a lot of people but more than likely missed a lot of interesting discussion.

So what is live Tumblr blogging and how does it work?

First, you need a tumblr account – easy enough, set one up for free at tumblr.com. Next you need something that runs a tumblr app (iPhone, iPad or other smartphone/tablet works just fine – you can do it on a laptop but you’ll look a bit funny taking photos with it). Finally, you need an internet connection at the time you’re going to use it.

Click on your app, log in to your account and away you go. You can post comments, quotes, pictures or video. The beauty of live tumblr blogging is you can do this ‘in the moment’.   I noticed the Beadle taking photos on Wednesday but presumably the camera gets taken back to the office, the photos get downloaded, processed and then added to something later – maybe like this newsletter. With live tumblr blogging you can take a photo with your smartphone or tablet and publish it to your tumblr blog in a matter of seconds (depending on the speed of your internet connection), you can add quotes and comments (the interesting things people say in response to questions), you can even add short bursts of video or documents or links. So all those discussions about new ideas of what the Company could do might have been posted online there and then along with photos and links to the documents Patrick and Richard were talking about. You could also have filmed parts of the event (perhaps Patrick and Richard’s presentation) and uploaded it to YouTube there and then but steady on…

It requires a little bit of thought to set up, a certain acceptance from participants (to agree to be photographed and to have comments published – although comments can certainly be anonymous) and of course for someone to be doing the live blogging (typing up the comments, taking the photos and pressing publish) plus the all important internet connection but it’s really not that hard. And in true Blue Peter fashion, here’s one I made earlier (albeit a non-Company project) – www.businessmeetses.org.uk

Live tumblr blogging. Coming soon to an event near you!

                                                                                 Freeman Simon Davey