Documenting BbWorld14

I am sitting in the airport at Philadelphia, waiting for the next stage of my journey to BbWorld14 in Las Vegas. It seems a very long time since I set off, early this morning, from Galway. I got the 5:15 CityLink bus from Galway to Dublin airport, accompanied by my 12 year old daughter, who is spending a few days with family in Dublin. 

As we sat into our seats, my daughter took out her mobile phone, connected to wifi, attached her ear buds and proceeded to ignore me for the whole 3 hour journey. As we left Galway, I was surprised that she started taking photographs out the window - it was dark - and posting them on snapchat and Instagram. Then I realised that she was starting to document her visit to Dublin, which is probably almost as exciting for her as my trip to Las Vegas. Maybe she's a future blogger?

In contrast to her single device, I am travelling with at least four (five if you count my watch - which I still use to tell the time). I have my phone and my iPad, to keep me connected. But I also have my 8 year old iPod, which I use for my music, and my kindle, for proper reading. I don't like extended reading on the iPad, although the kindle app does come in handy. And I have my whole music collection on the iPod, so why would I take up extra space on my phone? Evidently it's a generational thing - or is it?

Of these, my phone and iPad will both be used to document BbWorld14, in a variety of ways. 

During the conference, I will be tweeting my most immediate thoughts and reactions, using the conference hashtag. I will also be taking photographs, with my phone, and tweeting some of these. I haven't got comfortable using the iPad for taking photographs - it just seems too big and awkward. 

While tweeting is immediate, and can be conversational, it can also provide a useful archive after the event - the nearly now. A tool like storify can be used to collect together a more permanent record of an event. For example, I created a recent archive of the twitter feed at 6IIPC. 

But of most value, to me, and hopefully also to you, dear reader, is when I manage to reflect a little bit, and put something more connected and considered into a blog post. Sometimes this can happen quite quickly, and sometimes it takes a little longer to let the ideas take shape. But I've already had 3 hours on a bus, 7 hours on a plane, and quite a bit of time hanging round airport lounges today, so hopefully this one makes a little sense. 

In the last little while I have noticed David Hopkins, in particular, making use of sketchnotes. This is something I would love to try, and I am told you don't require artistic talents. I have gone so far as to download Mike Rohde's book The Sketchnote Handbook to my kindle, but haven't tried the techniques yet. Maybe this is the event to start. 

So, I will be interested to see the other BbWorld 14 bloggers, and what devices and techniques they use. What is your approach to documenting events?