Starship Congress, toward which I am headed as you read this, begins on Thursday. In the nine years and counting that I’ve been writing Centauri Dreams, I’ve been happy to see how many conferences have taken to archiving or, even better, streaming their proceedings so that those who can’t attend can follow along. Live streaming from Starship Congress will be available here, according to Icarus Interstellar. And if you’re a Twitter person, the tag for the conference is to be #starshipcon, which should be an active place to watch. Further information here.
I’m posting this automatically because today is a travel day, and another conference brings up the inevitable question about how best to cover it. I’ve tried every method in the book but have learned that so-called ‘live blogging’ just doesn’t work, at least for me. I can crank out constant updates but I wind up with a muddled notion of the big picture and my notes aren’t as detailed as I would like. I tried to tweet my way through the last 100 Year Starship Symposium, but that was worse, leaving me with a series of snippets that were hard to reconstruct into a whole.
So I plan to do in Dallas what I did last February in Huntsville (at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop), namely, to put my time and attention into note-taking to get as accurate and thorough a picture of as many presentations as I can. I’ll then write these up during the week following the event, with notes spread before me and the perspective that an overview brings. If you follow me on Twitter, I’ll still be operating as @centauri_dreams, and if I can post a few photos here on the site I’ll do so, but most of my effort for the rest of the week will be note-taking.
It’s going to be a packed schedule, but I’ll also try to keep up with comment moderation on Centauri Dreams. Looking forward to seeing many of you in Dallas!
Paul, I understand your approach regarding note taking at these events and your desire to avoid distraction. I’m here because I’m interested in an endeavor that will likely take centuries to complete. I can certainly wait a few days to hear about the conference!
You’re doing it right. Liveblogging a hundred year-long enterprise makes no sense in the scale of our human experience.
It’s different for product announcements with short lifespans and production cycles where an important milestone is presented to the public as an event.
The evolution of the science and multidisciplinary knowledge that needs to be generated for interstellar exploration to become a reality is probably too complex to be organised as a series of coordinated events in a Gantt chart, or as data points in a one-dimensional live tweeting stream.
Just saw that NASA announced repairs to Kepler, but that they don’t expect it to be able to regain its planet-hunting abilities…
very sad. :(
Anyone know if there are more details?
-Zen Blade
It’s more important that it be done right, than done right now. Especially for those of us unable to attend.