Monday I was all day at Conferences & Events | Personal Democracy Forum, where I talked with Nancy Scola, Aldon Hynes, Juan Melli and Gur Tsabar about The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs.

I have no idea wether anybody podcasted the panel, but it was pretty clear that we all agreed on three basic truths of blogging in the tri-state area:

(1) We're hitting insiders and wonks. We have not even scratched the surface of the local media market.

(2) Open source community platforms rule, but CivicSpace/Drupal beats Soapblox's ass 4:1.

(3) Last but not least, as I was wanton to say all throughout the conference, if there is one distinction to be made between bloggers and journalists is that we are not there to break stories like investigative reporters would do. Our brand of blogging is of activist Op/Ed writers with a simple mission : Deconstruct the news and expose the truth or lies beneath the media-speak.

Which takes me to the moral of the (conference's) story :

There is much more work to do on the activist front. These things we call blogs are just the beginning. To riff on a couple of blogospheric cliches, one of the biggest truths about our present culture is that 173 million Americans storm the internet on a daily basis because online, we don't have to bowl alone anymore. The challenge for political activists is to find ways to bridge this online activity and translate it into brick-and-mortar activism. We have yet to find ways to take the energy of social networks and the wisdom of crowds and translate that into a renewed civic society offline.

FROM AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE :

Interview podcasts from the conference are here; where you can find my utterly worded words of wisdom.

Jill calls out the testicles Feministe | PDF: A Wrap-Up

and Jill amens it at Feministing

although I still have to say that Micah did go out of the way to get more women panelists. Just saying.

Most interesting critique of the conference goes to Philo via Emboldened | Personal Democracy Forum

Allison ponders it out at Skepticseye.com by Allison Hayward | Back from New York

There's vlogging y'all blip.tv (beta)| Personal Democracy Forum 2006

A journo take on at From Poli/Tech Conference: V-Blogging, Control or No? and in the "it's good to be the kings of local MSM journo blogging" category, we have Ben Smith's The Daily Politics duking it out with Josh Benson's The New York Observer Politicker: Spitzer's Non-Campaign Campaign Speech

Doc finds the Gore meme at The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, May 15, 2006

Deanna blogs at deanna zandt | A moment to post from PDF and AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Internet thieves and straw men

Love the existential quippings of Kung Fu Quip - Politics and Pop Culture With a Kick | Live Blogging PDF and The Shape of Days: Lies for a Monday morning

Je suis toujours a la marche d'en decouvrir de blogs publies en outres langues et houjourd'huis je marque deux dans mon RSS : [Place de la Democratie]: Message politique : blog relais pour contourner les medias traditionnels et Suivre la troisieme edition du Personal Democracy Forum 2006 | New York - Le Blog de Netpolitique

Susan smells truthiness at Susan Crawford blog :: The definition of net neutrality

and last but not least, Roger L. Simon: Personal Democracy Forum - #3 - Moulitsas and Ruffini agree and takes notice of my back-channel comments.