What is the etiquette around blogging about conference talks? I've attended a couple of conferences, and just standalone public talks held at universities and I've found the topics interesting, so I've written a summary on my blog to share with others (and also as a way to help myself remember the content).

It just occurred to me that I'm potentially "stealing" someone else's IP. I always mention the name of the person / people giving the talk, so I'm not passing it off as my own research, but perhaps the presenter may not want this information shared via a channel other than their own. Some of them aren't just presentations, but may involve a panel of experts answering questions from a presenter / the audience.

What is the general etiquette when it comes to writing about this on my blog? Is it enough just to cite the author(s), or should I contact them beforehand and ask if they mind me writing about them?

(I don't know if it's relevant, but I get about 4 people a day reading my blog, so it's not famous or anything.)
My general rule of thumb in these matters is the following. If you don't want to communicate your results yet, you should not be talking about them in a public seminar. Or, at the very least, you should put out a disclaimer initially that you will be discussing confidential material (I have seen some company talks that started with a similar disclaimer, but probably more for legal reasons than because the presenter themselves cared deeply about it). Barring such a disclaimer, I think it's a fair default assumption that the presenter does not mind their thoughts spreading.

Another safety line you can take is, after you published your blog, making the speaker aware of it. I have found that Twitter works very well and non-intrusively to that extend:


  .@coolprof summarizes topic X, feels more research is needed on Y. Summary: http://my.blog.edu


In that case you can assume that if the speaker really does not want your summary, or parts of it, on the Web, they will tell you.