The BlogLeft conference/gathering in Worcester on Saturday was quite a success. I think most all of the bloggers attending felt it worth their while, as consensus was in favor of another meeting in six months from now. After a couple of excellent keynote speeches from Stirling Newberry (echoing Habermas at his best) and Frederick Clarkson, we went into break-out sessions, then back into a plenary wrap up, where we converged on a number of initiatives to pursue in order increase the power of our collective and individual voices in the Commonwealth’s political scene: getting more people into politicial blogging, pressing for press credentials to state party conventions, fostering communication fora between MA liberal bloggers and getting involved in the state party. .08 Acres has a good run down, and he pretty well expresses my sentiments exactly:
I have to say that I was impressed with how well the whole thing went, and I’m looking forward to working more with my fellow bloggers. This is a community that didn’t exist just a year ago — heck, even six months ago there were fewer progressive MA political bloggers than there are today, and we mostly didn’t talk to one another. Hopefully we’ll build on the momentum we created yesterday and work more in concert to try to influence the political discourse in Massachusetts.
It was great, too, to be able to finally meet the people behind the blogs. Lots of folks from my blog roll were there…. Charley, sco, Elias, John McDonough, MassMarrier, David Eisenthal, Michael Forbes Wilcox, as well as organizers Lynne and Mariposa, who did a fabulous job bringing us all together. I didn’t have a chance to personally introduce myself to everyone attending (including Frederick Clarkson, who’s quite the popular man and was always in midst of conversation), so apologies to those I’ve not listed here. And the event was a reminder that I need to update my blogroll and my RSS subscriptions.
Thanks should go out to the various candidates who showed up to talk to us and with us: Tim Murray, Jarred Barrios, John Bonifaz, and Mike Festa. Clearly, they came out of self-interest in campaigning early for what looks to be competitive races for Lt. Governor and Middlesex DA. Still, they didn’t have to show up to such a small event on a cold, snow-covered morning, and their interest in the direction of the state’s political discourse was particularly appreciated.
UPDATE: Rick Heller profiles the event in the Nashua Telegraph (reg. required). I’ve checked a couple of the major papers in the state and still haven’t found any other mention. But given that Heller was the only journalist/observer there, I wouldn’t expect more. If you know of any coverage or media mention, feel free to point to it in the comments.
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