Comments on: Late Nite FDL: What Was Your YK Experience?

By: op99

op99 — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:13:26 +0000

catherineD 274
Linky-dink?

By: Rick Hegdahl

Rick Hegdahl — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:11:54 +0000

i hit the wrong button………..
So the whole conference was like that……
orange clouds 115, MSOC (man that woman can party), devilstower, Sterling Newberry, Jerome a Paris, Matt Stoller, David Sirota, George Lakoff, Paul Rieckhoff, Sam Sedar……..

As I said so often: YK will never be like this again……..

By: Rick Hegdahl

Rick Hegdahl — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:01:59 +0000

My experience (as someone who registered for YK while on my second tour in Kuwait last year) was one of profound and estatic joy!
I reg’ed with DKos about a year or so ago and quickly became a regular lurker. After being deployed to Kuwait for the 2nd time, I tended to spend a LOT of time reading and learning about who this incredible group of people were.
Scientists, mothers, laborers, teachers, the whole scope of humanity.
I wanted to meet you.
I wanted to see that you were real.
I wanted to party with you!

Well….who knew what would happen.

As Susie and I stood at the hotel check-in desk waiting for our room at one of the many windows in the lobby, i looked over to my right and noticed one of the many orange necklaces hanging from the neck of an “ordinary fellow”. I idly asked him where the reg desk was for YK.
He immediately introduced himself.
“Hi, I’m Steven Darksyde..”
Ga..ga…ga.. I was helped along by Susie who blurted out “He’s one of your biggest fans!!!”
Well.. I had to admit I really enjoyed what he wrote , but was immediatly struck by the fact that here was just “another guy that blogs”.
So, we get on the elevator after checking in and who gets on with us?
teacherken…..
I’m sure I was the deer in the headlights….

By: catherineD

catherineD — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 05:21:40 +0000

I had a post today on dailykos called “yearlykos statistics” which I spent about 10 or 11 hours on (why? why?)that looked at blogging on clark, warner, vilsack and richardson at Yearlykos. I used technorati to assemble statistics and categorize them. There were many posts passing around quotes about how important bloggers were. There were only six fairly decent posts on the substance of what two of these men who may be our next president had to say. Clark and Warner got three each, nothing of note for Richardson, and if the mainstream media hadn’t quoted Vilsack talking about the importance of bloggers, he’d have been pretty much invisible.

By: neurophius

neurophius — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 20:59:57 +0000

sandra y 269

“It seemed to be [dot dot dot] about the politicians lined up for endorsements and the media coverage [dot dot dot] even about the big name panels. I was glad I had missed it.”

I did not see any politicians seeking endorsements. Boxer and Reid are not running for anything other than, perhaps, re-election, and most of the crowd was not from their home states (maybe not as true in the case of Reid). Warner is very openly running for president, and he did wine and dine us, but my sense was that he was not pandering to us; he knew much of the crowd would not agree with him on all the issues, he just wanted a fair shot at being considered.

And there was nothing remotely resembling any effort to secure an endorsement of any kind from the convention as a whole. Markos, in introducing Warner, made it explicitly clear that he was not endorsing or asking us to endorse Warner, but appreciated Warner’s early commitment to attend YKos and that he thought it was good for us to have an opportunity to meet candidates.

The whole event was unlike any political convention I have ever attended in the sense that there was no voting, for a platform or resolutions or a straw presidential poll. I thought Reid and Boxer were there to reach out to the blogosphere and let us know they respect us, not for any personal electoral agenda.

As for the media, I happen to be a graduate student in journalism as well as a longtime political activist and a blog reader, and I found the chemistry of those three elements invigorating.

There is no question that blogs are a form of news media, and becoming a more important one all the time, as this conference demonstrated.

I welcomed the chance to listen to someone like Jay Rosen, a well-known professor of journalism as well as a blogger, or Dan Froomkin and Murray Waas, two outstanding political journalists. I didn’t sense that the conference was primarily about media coverage (although that was welcome), but rather about an exchange of ideas about the media and the role that blogs play as a part of the media.

I’m glad I was able to go.

By: op99

op99 — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:28:12 +0000

Geez, remind me not to put hyphens and quotation marks in italics!

By: op99

op99 — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:26:43 +0000

It seemed to be%u2013 as this post says%u2013 about something else all together %u2014 about the politicians lined up for endorsements and the media coverage%u2013 even about the big name panels.

sandra y, didn’t seem like that on the ground there. In fact, check the on-site blogger reaction to Warner, Boxer’s faux pas, some of Harry Reid, etc., and you can see that if they didn’t have the goods, they got slammed hard online in real time. The same skepticism and critical thinking that we apply to “our” politicians every other day of the year was alive and well in Las Vegas.

By: sandra y

sandra y — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:28:02 +0000

Part II of my post.
Well, rethinking my last post, I see that the presence of the Press and the Candidates at Yearly Kos means something positive — not something negative.
It means that the netroots are much further along in making an impression on the country, in having an effect on the outcome of elections, on influencing the media to pay attention, than we thought. On the one hand, we knew that, but on another we weren’t claiming it yet, in quite that way, if that makes sense to anyone.
And so our job is to begin to think of ourselves differently, and to own the successes that you pioneers have earned us by your very hard work and determination.
It’s a sort of where-do-we-go-from-here? moment. To grow it out in different ways, and to continue with the same enthusiasm and truth that you folks started –

By: sandra y

sandra y — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:13:04 +0000

I was not able to go to YearlyKos, but in the lead up to the convention, for so many reasons, I wanted to go desparately …
I thought it would be a seminal meeting of new progressive thinking. I thought that a movement would be borne there that would have the huge potential of the brainpower and the passion of the people I read on a half-dozen or more sites every day. I thought– this is the moment when it will all come together, and it will be the beginning of a big change.
Then as I read about the convention itself, I was glad I had not gone. It seemed to be– as this post says– about something else all together — about the politicians lined up for endorsements and the media coverage– even about the big name panels. I was glad I had missed it.
Perhaps we are past the beginning I had envisioned. I had thought that the politicians were coming to participate, not to ask for endorsements.
I don’t know, what would have happened with just bloggers — no press and no endorsement-seekers present– or is it really past time for that?

By: mommybrain

mommybrain — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:47:24 +0000

Right on, Calvin. That was the sexiest part of the weekend for me, the Big Brains.