I've trained myself to take notes. Nearly always, when I'm at a lecture or presentation, I like to jot down key thoughts, action points, references I don't understand, ideas warranting further research and development.

I posted a few of my notes on the web throughout: Tzvetan Todorov, Kurt Vonnegut, Shayna, William Burroughs, Mom to name a few old spews. I've gotten better at trimming my notes I think, leaving myself with less to pick through to find what was fascinating to me. Less poetic transcription, more deductive provocation.

Now that I'm practicing more professional journalism, I see less value in a straight recitations of events. I want a summary, with key glowing thoughts brought out, hyperlinked and put in context. Notes are good for article building, but they don't make much of an article in and of themselves. Still, I've done the work of typing up my reflections and take-away as the event passed. My hard drive seems a fallible place to stick them, sharing them online might allow someone interested in some core concept to come across that idea and find the speaker who shared it.

So I'm going to experiment with publishing my notes online, in a different form. I used to take my notes in HTML, with a lot of DTs and DD tags. Then recently I switched to Microsoft Word, since it was prittier, I think, and offered more complex margin setting and i would save myself the BRs and P tags for online display and publishing. Today I'm frustrated with Microsoft Word, since it is so oriented for print pages. I don't need to see the actual one inch margins around my notes. I don't need to see where the page break will fall. I can't remember the last time I composed a document and it ended up going straight to a printer. I think it was last year. Otherwise, everything I write is either emailed or left moulding on a hard drive. Data, not pages.

I mostly take my notes in outline form these days - I appreciate the order, small thought heirarchies. MS Word has an outliner function, but then the web pages you get from Microsoft are loaded with ugly, unnecessary machine babble.

So I'm going to experiment by using Radio to keep my notes (inspired/reminded by Joi Ito). Radio is software designed by Dave Winer, a man with a history of building software tools to help track thoughts. Lately he's been active in weblogs and personal web sites, but he made his early reputation in software creating More and Think Thank - outliners popular on the first Macintosh computers.

So I'm curious - taking notes in outline form on my laptop, I'll put my brain in Dave Winer's hands for a little while.