Some last thoughts on YearlyKos

kid oakland offers some challenging questions about what this conference was and about how the "netroots," if trying to become a coordinated movement, should make its decisions and represent itself to the press. He does a good job of capturing some of what was neat and some of what felt funny (or was missing) about this event.

I sympathise with those who revel in how successfully we presented a poised and compelling face to the press...and that the press came to us and gave us our due. That emphasis, however, meant something else had to give. We left "lateral conversation and networking," if not political canvassing and debate, outside the official structure of the event.

To me, it felt more like a Coming Out party (with self-celebration and presentation to the public) than like an event aimed at helping us work together more and do concrete building for efforts on the ground. Some of that comes from being the first such event (given that Eschacon was much smaller and more social gathering than conference), which inherently draws inchoate excitement from the attendees and curiosity from outsiders. I suspect that future conferences won't be able to say "look at this new thing! what might it do?" for session after session, but will have to get some lower-profile but higher-focus experts to help various factions move their work forward, whether that's via on-the-ground political organizing, networking between local and national efforts, candidate recruitment, or media leveraging. All touched on, a bit, here, but not at the level that sends anybody home with an entirely new skill set . . . A challenge for the next set of organizers!!

(via Medley)

Update: Since I'm calling this the "last thoughts," I should include a link to this post by Markos, pointing out that dailyKos isn't a cult of personality but a vibrant and largely independent community that grew up in the fertile space that he provided. Again, this is what perplexes and/or bypasses the media, which is more used to Great Man stories than to Empowered Everyguy stories. So I guess that all that "this is what the blogosphere can be" stuff isn't wasted, given the black hole of ignorance out there...

Update 2: and for more flavor of the event -- the attendees, the hallway scene, the smaller meeting rooms, see this Day1 summary which has plenty of all of that, and the great collage/montages from ePluribus...