Following a good conference, the organizor usually provides you with fliers, pens and paper or electronic versions of presented slides.

If we take a look at the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, we clearly see that after 40 minutes from the presentation only 58 % of information we have just learned will be retained, this changes into 33% after one day, and only 28% two days later. That is the reason all the fascinating stuff you have heard while the conference will blur out in your mind soon after the event. If you get only slide decks to recall all that has been said by the speaker about a specific slide, there is a small chance they will mean anything to you in a week. Especially when the conference was filled by lectures, discussions or lasted more than one day.

What are potential solutions to store presentation materials or to retain conference knowledge? We could make hand-written notes in notebooks or type them on tablets and laptops. And do this on every lecture, but believe me – primary school with continuous writing during class will sound like pure delight at the end of every conference day.

Or else you could record the lectures with audio recorder or camera, with priorly given consent from presenter and conference organizer side. Maybe the organizor records all the content himself and provides it as event follow-up on CD or pen-drive? But then, what are the chances you will actually view the whole event at home once again? I can bet they’re pretty small.

So, in order to retain conference content you can chose from the following forms: notes, audio recording, video recording and slide print-screens. Despite technological development, it seems we still have to wait for some interesting solutions for how to use technologies to make our post-conferencing life easier.