Here are the panelists bios and their predictions for the future of the travel blog emailed to me before the live blog took place. A big thank you to the panelists and guests for their contribution to the discussion.

Pam Mandel is a freelance writer and photographer. She’s written guidebooks for Thomas Cook and stories for National Public Radio’s WGBH Boston, MSN, World Hum, Scanorama (Scandanavian Air’s inflight mag), and posts about travel and travelblogging for BlogHer, the women’s blogging network. Her last big trip was to Cambodia and Vietnam, her last small trip was to a small organic farm in Fall City, Washington and her next trip? Maybe Panama, in December. She started the Travelblogger’s Forum about two months ago and blogs at www.nerdseyeview.com.

Pam’s prediction - I have some sense of what this might be, but it’s just an idea…One is that the larger entities will see the value of adding active bloggers to their sites. Sites like Expedia and Travelocity offer comprehensive booking engines, but no more than marketing jargon about what those places are really like. Bloggers do a great job of making places real, and what better way to promote a destination? The other is that PR/marketing agencies will see that travelbloggers have the same value as traditional media journalists. There’s movement in this direction already – I think we’ll be seeing more of that. I hope we’ll continue to be surprised by the amazing writing happening by bloggers and that we’ll find more ways to recognize that.

Hi, I’m Sean O’Neill, senior editor of BudgetTravel.com, the website of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine. We started our blog, This Just In , in April 2007, and our magazine’s editors and top freelancers regularly post newsy, practical tips, along with trip ideas.

Sean’s prediction – I think travel blogs will become even more niche and specialized by topic, with more video and audio and social media. WineLibraryTV.com is a model. I also expect that as travel magazines look to make their websites more dynamic, they’ll copy what nymag.com and theatlantic.com have done and make blogs more prominent on their homepages.

Marketing director Tamara Heber-Percy is co-founder of Mr & Mrs Smith, which specialises in boutique and luxury hotels. She graduated from Oxford with a degree in languages, then left the UK for a year in Brazil, where she launched a new energy drink. Since then, she has worked as a marketing consultant for international brands such as Ericsson, Honda, Unilever and Swissair in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She left the corporate world in 2002 to head up her own company The County Register – an exclusive introductions agency – and to launch Mr & Mrs Smith. Since then she has visited over 700 hotels around the world and written about her good-time hunting expeditions in the Smith Travel Blog.

Tara’s prediction - I believe that travel blogs will form an ever increasing part of the travel/holiday purchase cycle, from the very start of the research phase but also whilst on the holiday itself both finding out about the local area and reporting back to friends and family through your own blog.

My prediction – The Europe a la Carte online travel magazine will become the most popular travel blog in the world (only joking but we’ve all got to set goals).

It’s the 2nd birthday of the Europe a la Carte blog on the 22 October 2008. I wanted to celebrate the occasion but it’s a bit difficult to have an party online. I’d like to invite you to a live blog for a lively discussion on “The Future of the Travel Blog”.

The live blog will start at 20:00 British Summer Time ( which is one hour in advance of GMT), you can find out the time in your zone here. To join in all you need to do is come along to the blog, no special equipment required, and the box above will go live and you can make comments/ask questions.

Angela’s book is a blend of biography, travel guide and the history and art of Rome and Florence during Michelangelo’s lifetime. You can read my review of A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome on the Wandalust UK travel blog.

Please come along, the live blog will appear inside this post, you don’t need any special equipment or software to watch and it’s easy to make comments and ask questions.

I received a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes as part of Angela’s virtual book tour.

Euro Travellers are looking to squeeze more value from their Euro when travelling in Euro Zone in Europe which includes most of the major destinations such as France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Ireland. In order to help you get more from your euro Europe a la Carte has lined up some great panelists to give you some advice and insider information. You don’t need any special equipment to join in, just come to this post on Tuesday 20 May at 20:00 British Summer Time, (you can check the time in your zone here). So please come along and join in. I’m sure that you will have some hot tips for Euro Travellers too and/or would like to ask the panelists some questions.

The 6 panelists are:

Christopher Cook of www.noambit.com

Lisa Marie Mercer of flyaway-weblog.com

Hilary of Less Than a Shoestring

Olivia Giovetti of High Culture on a Low Budget

Sean O’Neill of This Just In

Tom Meyers of www.eurocheapo.com

You can read more about the panelist in this post.

Christopher Cook currently lives in Tallahassee Fl where he received his second Masters Degree from FSU. As an avid traveler he maintains a new budget travel blog, www.noambit.com in the hopes of inspiring others to just get out there and see Europe. He has lived and studied in Tübingen Germany and travels as much as possible each year to cities throughout Europe. His writing has appeared on thetraverag.com, vagabondish and bravenewtraveler.

Greetings everyone! My name is Hilary and I currently live in Berlin, Germany. My blog, LessThan a Shoestring, illustrates how to get the most for your meager travel budget. Fed up with “budget” travel advice from journalists with too much money to spend ($500 is too easy!), I decided to write instead for those with no (or little) money, showing that it is possible to travel well for $10-20/day. Between news, sample budgets and other travel advice, I serve up weekly travel-related freebies and host the Travel on a Shoestring Carnival, which gathers the best blog posts on budget travel and rotates weekly to different areas of the globe.

Lisa Marie Mercer is the editor of flyaway-weblog.com your first stop to budget travel. She writes the Snow Goddess blog and is the author of Open Your Hear with Winter Fitness. Lisa Lives in Summit County, Colorado. When she’s not skiing, writing or teaching fitness, she and her husband use his business travel frequent flyer miles to hop the globe.

Olivia Giovetti’s High Culture on a Low Budget is a blog-guide to European culture on the cheap–where to find the best deals on theatre tickets, how to do a night at the opera and still afford a night at the hostel, when to get into a museum for free, and why you should care. We’ve recently expanded our editorial content to also include tips from the locals, travelers’ playlists, and–as a weekend treat–an intro to one composer/artist/performer/etc. so that you can fake your knowledge from baroque to Baryshnikov to beaux arts without missing a beat.

Hi, I’m Sean O’Neill, senior editor of BudgetTravel.com, the website of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine. Our blog is called This Just In and our magazine’s editors regularly post newsy, practical tips, along with trip ideas. We aim to help middle class Americans who have real-world travel budgets. In a world where luxury advertisers define much travel coverage, we’re fighting an uphill battle–though our magazine was recently nominated for a national magazine award for general excellence–the US magazine world’s equivalent of “best picture Oscar”. Anyway, for the next two months, BudgetTravel.com is running a series Affordable Europe offering tips on how to make Europe more affordable. The series is mainly driven by freelancers in Italy, Paris, and Rome.

I’m Tom Meyers from www.eurocheapo.com. EuroCheapo is a guide to budget travel throughout Europe, and publishes a daily blog about practical ways to save money while traveling.

I’m Karen Bryan, creator of the Europe a la Carte blog, hosting tonight’s event. I’ll be moderating tonight’s live blog. My travel business Europe a la Carte features authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget. I started a blog for my travel business in October 2006. I try to make my posts useful, informative and entertaining for readers who want to see more of the real Europe, beyond the well worn tourist track. I recently started as the editor of Wandalust a UK travel blog.

I’ve listed the panelist in alphabetical order of their first names. I asked the panelists to email my their own introduction.

David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks South Pacific, Moon Fiji, and Moon Tahiti, published by Avalon Travel Publishing of Berkeley, California. His South Pacific travel blog is intended to provide updates to his printed guidebooks and to discuss issues of interest to Pacific travelers.

Gil Zeimer is an accomplished travel writer, advertising wordsmith and globetrotter. His true passion is his role as lead editor/writer of www.Vagablond.com, a luxury travel blog focusing on travel, food, wine and shopping. Since the site’s launch in April 2005, Gil has crafted over 1,325 stories and acted as catalyst for Vagablond’s position as the online resource for luxury travel with highly entertaining content.

Hi, my name is Jeanne from Soultravelers3. We are 20 months into an open ended, multi-year trip around the world as a family on a tight budget & we blog/vlog about our adventures and collaborate with other readers, travelers, teachers, schools, and homeschoolers around the world. We retired early and also share how-to information about that, mobile global living, e-education & homeschooling while traveling, budget family travel and RVing in Europe and world wide. This year we are excited about bringing a few classrooms of disadvantaged children in NYC and Chicago along with us virtually!

I’m Sebastien Tobler, I believe that my blog Colliding Continents offers a true travelers perspective that strays from the beaten path. I think that my experiences around the world can help people find a more qualitative approach to traveling. Having lived in a significant amount of countries throughout my life I find that there are ways to better assimilate with the cultures you live in/are visiting instead of maintaining an outsider’s perspective.

Tom Meyers is the founder and the Editor-in-Chief of EuroCheapo.com. EuroCheapo’s mission is to make travelers’ time in Europe affordable and memorable. EuroCheapo’s editors have scoured Europe’s most popular cities to find hotels that are both welcoming and wallet-friendly. The hotels EuroCheapo recommends are perfect places to settle in for a few days while exploring cities, interacting with locals and learning about the places you’re visiting. EuroCheapo’s budget travel blog includes daily posts containing advice and insider information for saving money while traveling. The EuroCheapo blog focuses on areas that are most likely to impact travel budgets, including hotels, budget airlines and alternative transportation options, and the occasional restaurant recommendation.

1 Publicise the live blog well, ensuring all publicity has correct time and working links.

2 Explain how a live blog works, that a screen will display within the blog post at the start time and you don’t need any special software or technical knowledge to make comments. Although participation is encouraged, there’s no pressure, you can just read the ongoing discussion.

3 Double check that the live blog is live on the blog post once you launch the live blog.

4 Introduce yourself and your co-producers and panelists and the topic of the live blog.

5 Have one person (producer) responsible for moderating comments who only allows relevant comments. Better fewer comments than irrelevant comments which can lead the discussion off topic.

6 Have at least one producer and one panelist with knowledge of the topic briefed and ready to do live chat and then even if you don’t get any comments there will be an interesting discussion, which stays on topic, for viewers to watch which may encourage viewers to participate.

7 If producers and/or panelists need to communicate over the progress of the live blog, don’t communicate through live blog use some other form of live messaging.

Live blogging can easily degenerate either in to chaos or a empty space if you’re not well prepared for the event.

Do you have any tips to add to help other live bloggers pull off a successful event?