This year I am not able to attend Blog World Expo or Sitscation in person, but that has not stopped me from participating in many of the events. The 3 tools I am using are:

1. Twitter. My TweetDeck is all decked out to catch the hashtags #bwe09 (Blog World Expo) and #sitscation (Sitscation) and #cbbwe (Collective Bias Blog World Expo) streams.

2. Whrrl. This is the best way to virtually attend the parties because you can see the pictures along with the notes from everyone attending. Search for the hashtags #bwe09, #sitscation & #cbbwe on Whrrl to find the stories.

3. mycontent.com is live streaming all of the keynotes and a few of the sessions from Blog World Expo.

This may not be as good as attending in person, but it definitely is beneficial. I am learning a lot from watching the keynotes and reading all the tweets coming out of all the sessions (and I can attend all the sessions at once). I have made quite a few contacts through Twitter by contacting those that are tweeting something that interests me and asking questions.

You may not be able to attend all of the conferences throughout the year, but don’t let that stop you from networking and learning from these conferences.

What have you learned from watching the tweets and following the stories from conferences you didn’t attend in person?

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