Rafe Needleman says wireless blogging makes business conferences better:

At PC Forum last year, some people were busy blogging (keeping a real-time online opinion diary) as Qwest (Q) CEO Joe Nacchio delivered his talk. The color commentary from certain audience members, who kept one eye on the stage and one on their screens, made Nacchio's talk a lot more interesting. It also made the audience better informed, which spiced up the Q&A session.

I just spent last week blogging from a conference, although not the instantaneous, wireless blogging Needleman talks about here. Yet even the slower pace at which I was blogging CPSI last week is a much quicker turnaround of ideas and opinions about the proceedings than was available in pre-blogging days.

And not only does wireless conference blogging vastly increase the flow of ideas and opinions coming from the conference, it also opens the proceedings in real-time to people who aren't physically there - some of whom may then blog on what they read about in a conference blog, that may in turn be read by someone at the conference with wireless access, who may then ask a question about what the non-present blogger blogged, or otherwise insert that new idea/question/information into the conference proceedings.

And all likely in less time than it took to either read or write that last sentence!

Real-time conference blogging really taps into your ability to do "in and out thinking." Apparently, American Psychological Association research has shown that while listening to a speaker, people do the following things:

• 18% are really listening to the speaker
• 25% are having erotic thoughts
• 57% are thinking about something else

(Note: I say "apparently" because I read this in a handout I got at the CPSI conference, and haven't been able to find any actual confirmation of this research on the APA site.)

Most people can speak about 150 words per minute, but can hear and comprehend 900-950 words per minute. So after the first 20 seconds or so of a presentation, the audience will fade in and out and think about other things. So, we were told, you can make this work in your favor by drawing a line down the center of your notepaper and recording "in" thoughts on one side, and the "out" thoughts on the other side. This is supposed to free you from trying to remember "out" thoughts, and encourage you to generate ideas without losing track of the presentation.

Well - what is a conference blogger doing, but recording these "in and out" thoughts, making connections, and generating ideas? And then, if the blogger is looking at what others are blogging too, there's more input, probably both on the "in" and "out" sides. And pretty soon the conference bloggers are surfing the idea flow.