conference tag goodness with HitchHikr

HitchHikr (by David Warlick) brings together a couple different conference aspects in one place.
Mainly, letting you specify a conference tag (allowing me to retire my unusued wiki List of Library Conference Tags).

As far as I can tell, it basically provides a central conference inventory, and then uses all the tags indicated to query Technorati for postings and Flickr images.

Here's what he has to say about choosing tags in the FAQ:

First of all, I think that you need two tags for a given conference event, assuming that it is an annual or otherwise regularly held event. One tag should apply to the conference as an organization or concept. For instance, for the North Carolina Educational Technology Conference, a general tag would be ncetc. This tag would bring up all blog, podcasts, and flickr images associated with the conference regardless of the session, or any actual occurrence.

The second tag would be built on the general tag, focusing on a specific conference event or date. Typically, for an annual conference, this would require adding the two digit year. The next North Carolina Educational Technology Conference would be tagged ncetc06.

Finally, tagging blog entries and photos with specific conference presentations or features can be accomplished by adding an acronym for the feature or the speaker at the event. For instance, I might ask attendees who blog my presentations to tag them with ncetc, ncetc06, and ncetc06warlick. I, as a presenter, would need to visit Hitchhikr.com and add that tag to the conference.

I've been thinking about this for a while.
Personally, I think the tools should be mature enough that we can combine tags.  Taking his example, we end up with both

ncetc ncetc06

To me, if our tools were good, we'd just do

ncetc 2006

and search on the intersection.

I'm also anti-two-digit.  As a CS person, particularly since we just turned the century mark, it bugs me to see two digits when I know this will break in a hundred years.  Also, 05 could mean "the 5th conference", not 2005, as I mentioned in a previous posting.

I do very much like the idea of adding the first presenter's name as a standard way of tagging presentations.  And put this at the end of your presentation, so people know what to use.

In case you're wondering why I have such an interest in conference blogging, this blog started in November 2004 as a more professional (e.g. less strewn with cat photos) hosting space for my presentation notes from Internet Librarian 2004.

Wishlist:
It would be nice if you could automatically add conferences to the calendar tool of your choice (Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, etc.)

HitchHikr found via Disruptive Library Technology Jester.

Previously:
April 30, 2006  Postgenomic - conference review markup
April 24, 2006  Google Calendar experiments
November 07, 2005  conferences, tag collisions, the power of AND
October 26, 2005  blog and wikis for conference coverage *****
October 24, 2005  IL05 - Internet Librarian 2005 - blogging and such
September 05, 2005  Internet Librarian International 2005 in 5 weeks
July 05, 2005  more ideas for conference websites and webtech *****
June 27, 2005  Gnomedex conference
June 07, 2005  how to tell if you're at a geeky conference
May 02, 2005  in which everyone finally starts to get wikis
March 17, 2005  some thoughts on conference blogging
February 16, 2005  more on conference blogging
February 12, 2005  OLA! more grumbles about conferences
January 17, 2005  SLA blog and wifi?
November 20, 2004  very old conference notes