Over the past year so I've had the incredible good fortune of helping put the YearlyKos convention together. My role has been limited - and focused on giving advice on what lawyers and other professionals to use, what kind of topics and subjects would be popular with the Daily Kos community, and also doing some writing and engaging in discrete mission critical tasks when necessary (I'd tell you more, but then I'd have my security clearances revoked).
In any event, I remember back about 14 months ago when I first started getting involved, that I was struck by how BIG the plans were. The original conception of YearlyKos was going to be along the lines of a super-meet-up, with all the Daily Kos readers from across the country gathering together for a "happy hour-dinner" in a central location and having a giant group hug. Remember, we were a bunch of volunteers with no discernable experience in putting together a convention, or really in putting together any kind of social event larger than a dinner party. And we had no money whatsoever. So doing it small seemed logical at first. Bu then, out of nowhere, the YearlyKos organization got taken over by a bunch of
half-crazed nutjobs with REALLY REALLY big plans. And when I say big plans, I mean renting out an entire hotel, getting the biggest name politicians in the business to come speak , and organizing panel discussions of world class experts. Not only that, the plan was not just to do this once, but to set up a self-sustaining organization that would do these conventions, of this size, year after year after year, and to also provide tools and resources for progressive bloggers to amplify their voices and influence our national conversation.
Needless to say, when I first became aware of these plans, I had some concerns. How would we afford to put such a large thing together? How would we attract such a high profile set of speakers? How would we get enough people to pay plane fare, hotel rates, AND a large registration fee, so that we would actually be able to call it a "convention" and not a "large empty conference room with a couple of people wandering around aimlessly?" To be honest, I was concerned that the new leaders of YearlyKos were trying to do something TOO BIG, that they were biting off more than they could chew, and that they would fail spectacularly and have to cancel the convention.
Boy am I happy to be wrong. The people running YearlyKos saw something that I missed. Daily Kos and the progressive blogosphere did in fact have enough passionate committed individuals willing to contribute, provide support, and attend, that a convention of this size and scope could not only be put together, but could become the most interesting, thought provoking progressive policy convention imaginable. I, for one, am now beyond psyched for the event itself, and amazed that I actually was in some very small way involved in making this happen. (The real credit, though, goes to the full-time volunteer leaders who have been pounding the pavement and making the calls day after day after day - sometimes 18 hours a day - to make this thing happen against incredible odds).
We all know Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Wesley Clark, and Mark Warner will be there. But let's remind ourselves of some of the other events and panel discussions there that may be grabbing fewer headlines but will be just as interesting:
CIA Leak Investigation - Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Dan Froomkin, Jane Hamsher, Larry C. Johnson, Christy Hardin Smith, Marcy Wheeler, Murray Waas
And
Moving Beyond the Failure of Conservative Economics - Sterling Newberry, Rep. Brad Miller, Linda Beale, Kathleen Tyson-Quah, Hale Stewart
And
Communicating the Progressive Vision- John Javna, Justin Krebs, Jim Derych, Jeffrey Feldman, George Lakoff
And
A Sustainable Energy-Energize America - Jérôme Guillet, Mark Sumner, Adam Siegel, George Karayannis
And much much more.
If you haven't registered yet, there's still time to do so ---- just go here. If you are on the fence, try to think to yourself if, in six years, you will have been happy that you attended one of the most important and groundbreaking progressive conventions in history. And then try to think if you would feel any regrets if you let the typical things that get in the way in life keep you from attending.
I am here to tell to you that if you attend, you will NOT regret it, and you will have a memory that you not only will cherish for the rest of your life, but you will return energized to take the things you learned and experience and translate them into action.
Oh yeah, and YearlyKos will be featured in tomorrow's Sunday New York Times magazine. It's not quite up on-line yet, but, nevertheless, here is an exclusive peek at the article:
Can Bloggers Get Real?
By Matt Bai
Las Vegas, as the ad campaign likes to remind us, is a place people go to untether themselves from reality -- to become, if only for a weekend, anonymous and uncensored. It's odd, then, that Vegas is about to play host to a gathering of ordinary Americans whose objective is precisely the reverse. Next week, 1,000 devotees of the liberal blogging universe -- people who know one another only as pseudonyms on a screen, connected by only their running commentaries -- will descend on the Riviera Hotel in hopes of affixing names and faces to their online personas. The event has been dubbed the YearlyKos convention, and it is the first-ever corporeal assemblage of the bloggers at the Web site Dailykos.com. These are the people who are said to be changing the very nature of American politics, transforming the old smoke-filled room of insiders into an expansive chat room for anyone who wants in. And so it's not surprising that Democratic luminaries like the party's chairman, Howard Dean, and its leaders in Congress, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, have arranged their schedules to address the convention, along with at least a few 2008 presidential contenders. No small contingent of political professionals and journalists will show up as well. (I myself will sit on a panel about political journalism, which is kind of like being the Dunkin' Donuts spokesman at a cardiologists' convention.)
I'll update with the link when it becomes available.
Update [2006-5-27 17:51:25 by pontificator]: The Article is up -- read it here.