It’s not like it was free. I’m taking a break from my grad-school research slash GRE studying to provide you with my comments on the events of this weekend.
Yeah, this is pretty sweet. The yearly in-person gathering of the Netroots is happening today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday in the dangerously blistering heat of Austin, TX. I’m not there, for better or worse, because I have little money, and no one to go with. But the great folks of netrootsnation.org are streaming some live video, and tonight its Progressive hero Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC and former governor of Vermont. I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say in front of his biggest fans; he won’t be worried about cleaning it up for the media moguls, necessarily. There are currently 23 of us waiting for the feed to begin, and I’m sure that number will grow as the time gets near.
All this said, I was quite flabbergasted when I saw the agenda for the gathering. Holy Shit. It’s a lot. A lot of great names, topics, etc. Can’t believe how many people the bloggers can attract to a convention, even in Austin. I wrote a really long paper about technology helping to revitalize democracy in America From The Left, so I have an understanding of just how impacting this group of people can be on the American political arena, and yet I was still taken aback at the names on the list. I don’t even want to go through them all, because most of you probably don’t hold the same kind of dear appreciation I do for them. (As I’m typing this, there is some horribly encoded Rage Against the Machine blaring over the stream. Yikes).
They say that attending the convention will change your life. I’m willing to bet that it probably doesn’t; it more likely is going to energize you to make this world better, shaped by what you believe in. So I guess I’m missing out on the motivational energy. Oops.
Well, I just wanted to let you know that political blogging manifests quite literally offline sometimes too. This is really just a heads up post. Talk to you all later.
You can watch the happenings here:
