Yearly Kos 2007 - Day 1 (Updated)

For the next few days I'll be in Chicago attending the Second Annual Yearly Kos Convention. Last year I had a great time at the convention, but I didn't really get to sit in on many panels or blog much, as I was there on behalf of the Iraq War documentary The War Tapes. This year I'm working for myself, and so while I be spending some time networking to try and sell my "wares" (web/Drupal development and tech/outreach consulting), but mostly I'll be trying to sit in on as many panels as I can and blog about the convention here and on Young Philly Politics.

Currently, I'm sitting in on the "Connecting Major Donors the the Netroots", featuring Rob Stein, Chris Bowers, Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Mike Lux, and Dave Johnson (pictured). Rob Stein is giving his famous presentation on Right Wing infrastructure, to which he recently added a piece on the growth of right-wing internet assets. The presentation definitely lived up to the hype, and it really is incredible how many resources right-wing activists and movement players have at their disposal.

Anyway, I have to get back to enjoying the conference. I'll put updates below the fold as the day goes on.

Update-- The second panel that I sat in on was related to the first, on "Creating a Culture of Grassroots Giving." There was a lot of good information in this session (which I believe will be available online, along with a lot of other videos), including a presentation from Shai Sachs (Planting Liberally, MyDD)on ways that the netroots could fund itself, and a presentation from Patrick O'Heffernan (who I know from his work for Music for America who made a great case for activists/bloggers to do culturally based outreach, and its relation to creating a culture of giving.

I attended the Living Liberally (the great folks behind Drinking/Screening/Reading/Eating/Blogging Liberally) caucus, mostly because I thought there would be drinks (there weren't). But, at least I got to connect with a lot of great people (and friends) doing culturally based outreach around the nation.

The convention center where Yearly Kos is being held is really, really big, so I was pretty late to the creating a Bloggers Union session, but I got there with enough time to take part in a really good session that included the insightful comments of someone from the Freelancers Union.

Currently I'm sitting in the state/local blogger conference with about 75 of the best/most influential state and local bloggers in the nation, and in about 10 minutes I'm heading to the PA State Caucus.

I've created a set a Flickr set on the Future Majority flickr page if you want to see some pics from Yearly Kos 2007.