From the In Box: Weblog Business Strategies 2003

I've enjoyed your notes from various conferences very much. Thanks and keep up the good work! I hope you won't mind a few suggestions about making your conference coverage easier to read. I had a bit of trouble navigating, both just now for this Weblog Business Strategies conference and earlier with the GEL conference. I usually end up reading the conference notes soon after the conference ends, not real-time. I assume I'm not the only one who does so.

(1) Make it easier to find and track the conference postings. A page with links to all the conference entries would make it much easier to navigate. They're hard to find when they slip off the front page into the archives, and I also have trouble remembering which entries I've already read. I read entries in short bursts, sometimes out of order, and even if I'm reading them all in order I sometimes lose track as I'm scrolling the huge long pages. Unfortunately, Google doesn't work to find entries to this week's conference because it hasn't indexed the newest archive pages yet. I assume you can do this through MT categories instead.

(2) Your archive navigation would be easier if you (1) added the date to your post timestamps so one doesn't have to scroll back through many entries and thousands of words to find the date, (2) added a link to the archives up on top of your main page, not at the very bottom, and (3) changed the archive.html to reverse chronological order. I had the hardest time finding that link to your archives at the very bottom of your page when I was looking up the GEL conference, and then once I got there, I went to the 2001 archive by mistake.

You could add both links to the conference category page and the archive page up on the right sidebar by your review links.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind the suggestions. I realize the problem is always finding the spare time. I thought I'd send this off since you were doing such a great job transcribing these conferences. The transcripts are a great resource and a lot of people point to you, and I wanted to give you a heads up that some people may have trouble finding what they came to read. -- John Troyer

Keeping Track offers a nice index of my confblog reports.