Christopher S. Penn had a really useful idea about a social media dashboard. His had all kinds of great news information, as if you were the press. Me? I’m hacking the idea for the upcoming conferences I’m attending. Only, I don’t know what else I’d want to see in there.

So, I think YOU should do something better with my idea.

Conference Dashboard

Let’s make a “dashboard” using a tool like iGoogle to “see” the elements you might want to know about at a conference. Thus, whenever you have web access, you can get a fast scan of a lot of data that might prove useful during the event. Here’s the steps I took to start the project.

1. Log into iGoogle (or NetVibes or Page Flakes.
2. Add some search strings from Twitter Search for the event. (Oooh, I just realized that I’ll want to add “Las Vegas” for my Blog World Expo one.)
3. Add a local map.
4. Add a news feed. (Nice to know if Godzilla is invading the city where your conference is being held.)
5. Add a chat client (if that floats your boat).
6. Add a Technorati search for the event

Voila: a functional conference dashboard.

Even as I’ve started this, I can see lots of other things to add: Flickr tag searches, for instance.

Make YOUR Own Dashboard

What would you want to see? How would you change this? What other kinds of gadgets or widgets or feeds would you add to the above?

Why not make your own “Conference Dashboard” post and see what you can do with the basic premise? If you’re not attending any events soon, how about a “local dashboard” for your town or village?

Make sure you link back here, so I’ll know to go and check out what you’ve created.

Questions?