Sunday, December 2, 2007

Tips for conference bloggers

As I travel around attending conferences, more often than not I've found myself liveblogging part or all of them. Several times, I've done so in the very engaging and friendly company of Ethan Zuckerman, one of the most interesting and insightful global bloggers -- at TED2007 last March, where we took over the "Bloggers Avenue", we even started, jokingly, identifying ourselves as "twinbloggers".

So when two months ago Ethan posted some thoughts on how to blog a conference in detail, I responded adding a few of my own. An e-mail correspondence ensued, and we ended up putting together a small 6-pages document, "Tips for conference bloggers", that anyone can freely download and use (it's under a Creative Commons license). It's available in two versions, full-page and booklet format, within a layout created by our friends at Bread-and-Butter using pictures taken at conferences. Feel free to download it, redistribute it, re-post it. Or to add your comments at the bottom of this post: as you will notice, the document is labeled "version 1.0", so we may amend/augment it in the future, including your suggestions. We hope you find it useful.

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The Peter Answers

How to Use Peter Answers

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Peter answers is a fun little website in which "Peter" appears to read your mind. Use it to prank your friends or to just have a little fun.

Steps

Visit http://www.peteranswers.com where there are two text boxes: "Insert Petition" and "Insert Question."
Ask your audience for a question. If it's a question you know the answer to, proceed to the next step. If it's a question you don't know the answer to, you can ask them for the answer, telling them that if they say the question and answer out loud, Peter will hear them with his psychic powers. If you don't know the answer, you won't be able to follow the next step, and Peter will answer with a very generic statement like "You shall not doubt of me at all, keep trusting on me and soon I'll answer." In other words, the trick won't work!
Enter text into the petition box. The directions tell you to type in either "Peter, please answer the following question:" or "Peter, please answer:" in the petition box. What your audience doesn't know is that you're telling Peter the answer...
- Note the colon ":" at the end of each of these queries. This is essential because without it, you will not be able to proceed to the question box. Once you type the phrase and enter the colon, your cursor will automatically move to the question box.
- Instead of typing "Peter, please answer the following question:" or "Peter, please answer:" start off your petition with a period followed by the answer you're looking for. For example, if you intend to ask "Why is wikiHow the best how-to manual ever?" then in the petition box you would type.Because it's a group effort
- As you type the answer you're looking for, that's not what you will see showing up in the text box. You will see the standard petition being typed, even though you're typing something completely different. Your audience, however, will have their eyes on the screen and will never suspect that you're giving Peter the answer.
- Your answer should be shorter than one of the standard petitions. When you finish typing the answer, the standard petition will still need to be finished on the screen. In the following screenshot, all that has been typed is ".Because it's a group effort."
- So, after you type the answer, end it with a period. The period will show up as another character of the petition. After the period, however, anything you type will show up on the screen as you type it. Finish whatever is left of the query and send it off with a colon. In this screenshot, the actual typing was ".Because it's a group effort.owing:"
Type in the question. Be sure to end it with a question mark "?". As soon as you enter the question mark, a box will appear with some warnings about privacy. For Peter to answer the question, you'll need to click the "I Accept" button.
Watch as Peter thinks for a second and then displays the answer that you typed. If your audience doesn't know that you typed in the answer, they will be flabbergasted. You can probably keep them amazed for quite a while as long as they don't start paying close attention to what your fingers are actually typing.

Tips

When you're typing in the petition box, it helps to NOT look at the screen, because it can throw you off and make you forget what you're typing. Instead, look down as you type the answer. Only look up after you've typed the period to check how much of the query is finished.
Peter is only as accurate as you are, so if you enter a typo, Peter will answer with a typo, and people will get suspicious pretty quickly. If you think you made a mistake, you can backspace and start again at any point. If you delete all of what you entered, remember to enter a period again to signal to Peter that you're entering the answer. But, deleting everything you entered is not a good idea because people will wonder why you're erasing a perfectly good petition.
If you're typing a short answer, you can save time by completing only the shorter petition phrase (Peter, please answer:)
You can also tell your viewers to stare at the screen so that they can correct any spelling errors that you might make.

Warnings

Peter will accept and display answers that are longer than the petition phrase, but it will be pretty obvious something is up if you continue to type after the screen displays the entire petition phrase. Nothing more will show up once you've reached the end of the phrase. Once in a while, at the bottom instead of the repeating "Peter answers:..." it will say "Emily answers" or another name. No one knows for sure what happens at that point.
As soon as you type a colon ":" the cursor will automatically jump to the question box, even if you haven't finished typing out the petition. This will likely ruin the illusion, so don't accidentally type that colon too soon.

Sources and Citations

PeterAnswers.com

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Use Peter Answers. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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