I wish I knew who to thank for this, but a couple of weeks ago, I got turned on to IFTTT, a simple little site with lots of interesting applications. I signed up for it, then forgot about it until a couple of days ago. IFTTT stands for “if this then that,” and it really isn’t more complicated than that. The site allows you to activate “channels” of activity, like WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Tumblr, and a bunch more. Then it allows you to set up conditional actions based on things that happen in those channels.

For example, if someone tweets with a particular hashtag, IFTTT can add it to a facebook page, post it on WordPress or Tumblr, create a note of it for you in Evernote, etc. I’m currently in the process of rejiggering my whole personal mecology, and I’m finding the potential for this tool to be pretty incredible.

So I was thinking: if you were running a conference, and wanted an easy way to archive those tweets that contain links to presentation scripts, videos, slide decks, et al., it’d involve two steps. First, I’d create a separate #hashtag for conference materials (no one wants to have to wade through 100s or 1000s of conference tweets to find those materials), and then, just set up a recipe on IFTTT to archive (on FB, WP, Tumblr, wherever) those tweets (and thus the links). Leave it on for a week or 2 after the conference, publicize the heck out of the alt-hashtag, and voila. You’d have a single page that links to all the docs, blogposts, etc., with presentation materials.

Super easy, and it would save folks the trouble of hand-updating an archive page, not to mention the need to scour a twitter feed for this info.

Thanks again to the person who tipped me to IFTTT — if I manage to retrace my steps, I’ll link back to the page where I found it…