TiddleLeWeb

[JayFresh - http://jayfresh.wordpress.com]

We're quite excited in Osmosoft Towers about the possibility of using
TiddlyWiki at Le Web 3, in December, as a "social conferencing tool".

Here's the idea: with dozens of sessions, not everyone can see
everything at a conference. Instead of missing out on the action,
share your notes from your TiddlyWiki with the other conference
attendees.

More than that: post straight to your blog, shout on your micro-blog
(e.g. Twitter), see who is writing about a session...

It's early stages, but we don't have long to build this. Watch this
space and please feed back on the idea; would be great to get a hand
building this too:

http://tiddleleweb.tiddlyspot.com/

J.

[FND]

> We're quite excited in Osmosoft Towers about the possibility of using
> TiddlyWiki at Le Web 3, in December, as a "social conferencing tool".

Sounds interesting!
However, I'm not exactly sure what you're aiming for in terms of
functionality / plugins - if anything... !?

By the way: Please enable chkGenerateAnRssFeed to make it easier for us
to follow all updates.

-- F.

[Phil Whitehouse]

Hi Fred,

I'd been using TiddlyWiki for taking notes at conferences for a while,
and found it really great. We'd like to encourage adoption of
TiddlyWiki at Le Web conference in December, and the TiddleLeWeb idea
came about as I was thinking about how else I might like to use
TiddlyWiki;

- I would want to know what was going on in sessions I was missing
- I would occasionally want to Twitter about the session I was in
- I would usually compile a couple of blog posts while I was at the
conference

So I've been thinking about how all this could be made easier for me
and for others. All this being designed around the main 'itch' that is
being 'scratched' - the need to take conference notes.

This is a really interesting user experience case study. We have most
of the components needed to share notes (TiddlyChatter, or a variation
on that theme), blog (using the blogging tool written by Craig Cook
and Jon Lister) and twitter (perhaps based on the blog plugin). But
I'd like to sell this as a conference note taking tool first and
foremost, with the other functionality being easily available for
those who want it, and discreet enough that it doesn't distract those
who don't.

I'm very keen to avoid 'bloating' TiddleLeWeb with functionality that
won't be used by most people, for a couple of reasons; first, if we're
importing people's notes across multiple sessions, the file size has
potential to slow down operations; and second, for every function we
add, the main benefits could become less obvious. So I'd like it to be
immediately obvious to the casual user that TiddleLeWeb is a rock
solid conference note taking tool, and then the other functionality is
surfaced gradually after that. A bit like a new computer game guiding
the user through complex joystick controls for the first time.

So there's a couple of areas where we'd really welcome feedback
please! First, we're keen to hear from other people who have used
TiddlyWiki for taking conference notes, to get their feedback on the
suggested functionality. Second, as we develop we'd be interested in
hearing from people scrutinising our implementation to see whether we
could do it better.

Hope that clarifies!

Phil

PS I've activated the RSS feed on the file

[FND]

> Hope that clarifies!

Indeed it does - especially in combination with Phil's mock-up:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/philhawksworth/1876301233/
(Looks *very* nice, by the way.)

I'm very interested in watching this evolve.
If/when I have any suggestions, I'll let you know.

-- F.

[JayFresh - http://jayfresh.wordpress.com]

Hi FND,

Glad you're interested!

Thanks Phil for explaining my original post. I should credit Phil with
coming up with the original idea for this, we're just rushing to build
on it! I'd echo Phil's clarification of my request for feedback - any
comments from people using TW at conferences would really illuminate
the project at this point.

J.

[iain]

As a conference organiser and a frequent participant in conferences I
can see the potential, although personally I take notes on paper with
(warning technology jargon coming) a pencil. This allows me to draw
battleships and plans of my model railway in the times when things
drift a bit.

I'm assuming the difficult part would be the uploading of the
conference agenda into the TW which I am presuming might be made
available by the organisers to the participants (downloadable off the
conference web site). That would have to be really easy as when you
are running a conference time is a real problem for the organisers.

The TW for note taking would have to be complete in itself and have
easy to understand instructions so that participants can simply get
up an go.

Do conferences have blogs etc?? I'm an archaeologist/historian and we
are a bit behind the times (we don't blog so much as sit around
drinking coffee or beer). I'd be interested to see an example of a
conference where something like that is set up and see how it works,
especially as I think I am being roped in to help organise a
conference on mining and industrial archaeology in 2010.

Iain Stuart

[Phil Whitehouse]

Hi Iain,

I imagine tech conferences are a bit different to archaeological
conferences - loads of people have their laptops open, and when you
look backwards in a crowd several faces are lit up by their screens.
Spooky!

Also it's a rare session when people don't mention either
collaboration, blogging, twittering or all three. Many of the people
drawn to the subject matter like to participate in this way, so we're
hoping they'll like the idea.

An interesting aspect is the sharing of knowledge with people who
aren't at the conference. While Robert Scoble (famous blogger) was at
a recent event, he was taking questions from the people he 'follows'
on twitter, and asking these questions to the panel, sending the
answers back via twitter. When I'm at a conference I tend to 'tweet'
about 10-20 times a day, and often get responses and questions from
people who couldn't make it to the conference. It can be quite
exhilarating being connected in this way (sorry I'm a geek!).

Regarding the agenda upload, we're thinking about having the
TiddlyWiki poll our server so updated agendas can be pulled down. And
the backup plan might be allowing people to make ad hoc notes, which
could include those relating to unscheduled / late scheduled sessions
or even just conversations in the corridor. We'll try and take the
conference organisers out of the equation, as far as possible. Thanks
for the tip.

The general plan is for the actual TiddleLeWeb product to be part of a
larger experience, which also links back to the stand and the 'live'
website. So the accumulation of notes can be seen online during and
after the event.

It's very early days and this still needs a lot of thought....we'll
keep you all posted, and if you have comments in the meantime they'll
be very welcome!

Phil

[Xavier Vergés]

Not really conference related, but I'm excited about the microblogging
idea, and specially doing it to multiple services that you can toggle.

I've noticed that on most days that I'm very productive (*), I've kept
track of EVERYTHING I do. Yes, I'm an old fart with lots of faith in
engineer's notebooks, and nothing compares to TW as an engineer's
notebook. Everyday I create a preformatted tiddler named YYYY/MM/DD
that has an area where I write my next task, eg

* 09:25-xx:xx Learn how to have user defined warning messages in VC++

When I'm done, I update the line and think about my next action

* 09:25-{t} Learn how to have user defined warning messages in VC++
{{review{Not sure, but {{{__declspec(deprecated("my msg"))}}} was what
I was looking for}}}
* {t}-xx:xx Refactor launch.cpp to avoid using std::string, so that we
can keep password buffers controlled

This is not the kind of twit that you want your friends to read, but
could be very valuable for a project team. Having the ability to
publish my next planned micro-task and the review of my last performed
micro-task to twitter and/or bluetwit (my company's intranet twitter
clone) and/or team-focused-twitter-clones-that-who-knows-if exist
would bring together introspection/focus and collaboration.

btw: Could those team-focused-twitter-clones be, in this context,
tiddlychatter?

-Xv

(*) It's much harder to get lost into follow-the-next-interesting-link
party when before hitting google you have written in your TW: "Google
for xyz. Budgeted time:10 minutes"

On Nov 5, 7:31 pm, "JayFresh - http://jayfresh.wordpress.com"

[iain]

The "Add notes" option seems to float around - perhaps a box should be
added that makes it go away when you don't want it. Your really only
want to add note when you click on a speaker.

Could you make the speaker tiddler open with the speaker as well as
the Conference, Session and Paper title in the header (well I know you
can but it would be a good idea to have it as a default).

How are you going to deal with multiple papers my the same speaker and
papers with multiple authors? Can a space be made in the speaker
tiddler for a url in case the paper itself is on line?

I can also see a use for this idea, for things like discussion groups
(e.g discussion on early Sydney ceramics) where people have a bit more
of a input than at conferences which are more like performances.

[Samuel Reynolds]

At 07:56 PM 11/6/2007, you wrote:
>I'm assuming the difficult part would be the uploading of the
>conference agenda into the TW which I am presuming might be made
>available by the organisers to the participants (downloadable off the
>conference web site). That would have to be really easy as when you
>are running a conference time is a real problem for the organisers.

Import an iCal/.ics schedule for the conference.

- Sam