(Cross-posted on
ePluribusMedia)
I'll be at the GnomeDex blogger technical conference in Seattle this Friday, doing some reporting for ePM. Recently, long after I registered and the main hall sold out, it was announced that Senator John Edwards, a presumed 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate, would be keynoting.
So, I'm here to ask for your help: what should I ask? What should I be focussing on? I've studied up some on the Senator's PAC site and other articles, but if you can link to relevant ones in your comments, it'll help me (and others) make the most of this opportunity.
It's unlikely that I'll get exclusive interview time with the Senator, and the whole hall will be filled with hundreds of bloggers and blog tool developers, many professional, so I'm not looking for a scoop or an inside line or liveblogging (especially given how overwhelmed the bandwidth is likely to be).
But I feel I can bring into the room (and share with others) some of the best questions ePM (and dKos) readers come up with (to increase the odds of them getting asked, or at least our frames getting used), and also interview others there, about matters technical and political (although Edwards says the talk will not be political in nature), the intersection of those realms, and their impressions of Edwards and of the process.
I've studied up some on the Senator's PAC site and other articles, but if you can link to relevant ones in your comments, it'll help me (and others) make the most of this opportunity.
Here's where I'm coming from (to get my interests/connections disclosed):
I've got a background in tech journalism and community development, and just before yearlyKos I put up a briefly-rec-listed dKos diary reporting on Markos' talk at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (audio now available in podcast directly from the club site), and inbetween doing a yKos table on communities/ecovillages/
cohousing and Peak Oil, I did some videoblogging, capturing Bill Richardson (NM-Gov) and everybody's favorite party animal General Wes Clark in a dark, noisy room, and writing a little commentary about bloggers "selling out" (no, that's not me in the video).
I signed up for GnomeDex early based on my experience there last year and the intuition that this would be an interesting conference, even though I didn't quite know how interesting, or that it would bring these particular realms together. I'll be doing networking (the people kind, but maybe also the technical kind) and promoting my own ventures, so I certainly can't promise wall-to-wall coverage, even if the WiFi were 'five-by-five'.
So what do you want to know about Senator Edwards? Or how tech bloggers react to politicians? Or the mood in the room? Where should I be focussing my attention in this time-limited, distracting environment? The floor is open. If you have an ePluribusMedia account, comment over there for best results.