Upcoming Panels: Personal Democracy Forum and Netroots Nation

Once again, the official arbiters of taste and decorum have lowered their standards sufficiently to allow an errant Texan to slip past the velvet ropes and sneak in to blast a crowd both innocent and unprepared with that special e.politics magic…i.e., a couple of conferences are coming up, so I get to babble at length and in public without the risk of being gagged or (openly) shunned. Huzzah!

First up, Personal Democracy Forum descends on Manhattan Monday and Tuesday, and I’m involved in two little chats there: “Email: Still the Killer App of Online Politics?” Monday afternoon, followed by “Local Campaigns After Obama: Tools and Tactics Turning Online Action Into Offline Results” the following day. Both should be great panels, and last I heard there were still a couple of spaces left for PDF, so be sure to take a look at the conference schedule and registration info. Note: I’ll be bailing out as soon as my Tuesday panel’s over so that I can get back to DC in time for the Hank III show at the 9:30 Club — would love to have you join me there, unless you have something against good music.

Next, when it’s August, you know what that means — let’s go to Pittsburgh! Well, if Netroots Nation is there, and it is. Though the exact times haven’t been scheduled as far as I know, our panel (which includes Judith Freeman, Scott Goodstein and me so far) has been accepted, so we’ll be rolling up into Steelers territory August 13-16. Our topic is “Scaling Obama: Applying the Lessons of 2008 to State and Local Campaigns” (which I did NOT steal from the PDF panel; it’s a case of parallel evolution), and seeing as both Scott and Judith saw the Obama outreach operation from the inside, it should be a fascinating discussion. In any case, if you’re at either PDF or NN, be sure to come up and say howdy.

– cpd