Hey, I’m (sort of) liveblogging John Battelle’s search presentation which is currently … online via WebEx conferencing. John’s always interesting to hear, but this is more about the process than the content. I did like his slide noting that Web 2.0 is about digitizing the customer where early efforts were digitizing the office.

John’s talking about search and it’s neat to have some real time attention and the chance to ask questions via a text control panel – but HEY, nobody answered my questions yet! The WebEx system is not quite as navigation friendly as I’d expected but that’s OK because it’s trying to do a lot of things – polls, questions, and the audio broadcast itself. However I think Pirillo’s videocasting efforts may be a good lesson for WebEx as they move ahead with these approaches.

Even on my laptop with WIFI the audio is fairly stable and good quality. There appear to be about 64 people online per the poll results.

After attending about 10 conferences last year I’ve wondered how much better learning and retention I’d have if I’d just read up on the presenters and topics rather than actually go to the conferences. Shmoozing is fun and often educational, but even that might be done better away from conferences.