Laptops and bloggers at Internet Librarian

I came back to find out that Karen Schneider of LII & Free Range Librarian is irked at bloggers for blogging during the conference, specifically during people's sessions.  The argument is that one should be paying full attention to the session itself.  I for one was not one of these bloggers, as I found my laptop to be so frelling heavy (it's a few years old now) that I didn't want to be lugging it around.  Plus, no free wireless access.  Anyway, Dave at Dave's Blog does a good job of explaining why it's probably okay to blog at conferences, even during people's sessions, so I won't reiterate those arguments here.  I would like to add one more, though.

More often than not, the posts that come out of sessions are nothing more than notes on that session.  Pretty much the same notes someone would produce if he/she were using paper & a pen, or taking notes on a PDA.  I don't see the real difference, other than that with blogging, those not at the conference get almost instantaneous feeds of notes from these sessions, thereby sharing the knowledge in a way that hasn't been possible until now.

In the sessions I've given over the last few days, I've seen people taking notes on their laptops (maybe even blogging), on PDAs, and on paper.  I don't care which medium.  As long as they're taking notes.  What truly offends me is those people who are nodding off or doodling in the margins.  That's what irks me.  Blog away good folk, blog away.