Pandemic Conference Blog - Tax Dollars Well Spent?

I finished perusing the Department of Health & Human Services conference blog on pandemic flu, and found many interesting ideas around how to run a conference blog:

1. Limited Time Range. This blog was designed to run a few weeks before and a few weeks after the actual event (June 13). This gives them some lead time to build interest, and a small window for maintenance and building new content. I hate the thought that this blog is going away, but I see the reasoning behind it.

2. Conference Presenters are the Bloggers. If you're going to speak at a conference, then you must be a subject matter expert, right? And if you're a subject matter expert, then people want to hear what you have to say on a subject, right? Who better to blog than your presenters! I wonder how the Department of HHS talked them into it. They seem to have received some excellent participation.

3. Separate moderator. Someone to vet comments and to see to the formatting details? I could see how this would take the humdrum out of blogging. Maintenance is always a bear. It probably reassured SMEs with low blogging confidence, too.

4. Sponsors Don't Blog. I work for a quasi-governmental agency that's deeply concerned about its reputation, and I can see why the HHS took this approach. They're sponsoring debate, but they're not actually debating. They're asking for help and kicking around ideas without risking their rep. Clever.

5. Weekly Topic List. Since this is a group blog with a group of loosely connected people, I can see a topic list as providing a useful framework for blog posts. It may also encourage more community among the bloggers since they'd have a shared sense of purpose/agenda.

6. Smart Design. I love the layout of this site, the simplicity of it, and the inclusion of a lot of information with minimal clutter. Each of the blog entries has a small snapshot of the blogger along with former posts and a biography. There's also a nice suite of social networking tools that's located at the bottom of each entry. Very nice.

7. Good Outsourcing. The HHS hired an outside agency to build this blog. They bought experience rather than doing it themselves. I think it was worth every penny.

I would be very interested in seeing the HHS's metrics for success. What were they? Did they reach them? I also want to know if their presenters enjoyed the experience and would do it again. I sincerely hope they find a way to share that information b/c if it was successful, this could be a template for other government-sponsored conference blogs.