Back to our major donors. They even sponsor items for other Georgia blogs:

C, the Tondee Tavern's and BfD pens were a hit. I was told on numerous occasions that "those Georgia bloggers do know branding".

Session Two: DNC Ground Game 2008
There's a new Ground Sheriff in town at the DNC and he plans on making DNC field organizers productive, accountable, and visible. His name is David Boundy and he is bringing his hard core ground game, established at the AFL-CIO, to connect Democratic activists to grassroots programs.

David plans on building precinct level activism through the VoteBuilder system.

The DNC Votebuilder techno posse.

Here are some interesting facts David shared about voter contact:

Type: Direct Mail
# of Contacts needed to gain 1 additional vote: 389
Amount of Cost to gain 1 additional vote: $75

Type: Door-to-Door Canvassing
# of Contacts needed to gain 1 additional vote: 14
Amount of Cost to gain 1 additional vote: $78

Type: Paid Phone
# of Contacts needed to gain 1 additional vote: 460
Amount of Cost to gain 1 additional vote: $127

This means that it only takes 14 contacts to gain an additional voter going door-to-door canvassing, but it takes 389 contacts using direct mail. Needless to say, we in Georgia should use this information during the next political season.

There were too many Dem candidates who paid for 7 or more mail pieces while neglecting an effective door-to-door canvassing strategy and lost. There are too many studies that continue to document that direct mail does not move voters to the polls.

As the saying goes, "insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results".

Session Three: African-American caucus

I arrived late because I was taking a moment of quiet time.

This was a very good session. Lots of talking about how the Black 'roots lead the fight to squash the Fox/CBC debate. There was a good debate on the question "Does a person have to be Black to lead on Black issues?". The general consensus was "no". What mattered most to the group was coalition building with the black community and having the Black community define the message. One blogger pointed out the awesome work of kidoakland and bringing more diversity to YKos 2007. As kidoakland says "it's about diversity. diversity is a value. diversity is our strength."

Me and Brandon Q. White

Session Four: State/Local Blogger Caucus
kidoakland led this session. The primary discussion was on how to transfer online blogging activism into external activism. They suggested 2 methods to achieving this: 1) have more social events to bridge the age barrier divide between those that blog and older Party grassroot activists. 2) introduce blogging to the grassroots activists by developing "Blogging 101" training sessions.

Session Five: Southern Regional Caucus

Okey Dokey, Precious was not paying too much attention to the conference schedule and did not realize that she was one of the moderators for this session. Seriously, I didn't realize it until Steve Deak said "hey Nita are you coming up front?". Chile, I thought he was talking about moving to the empty seats on the front row until I looked up and saw a tent card with my name on the podium. Pretty funny.

Our session went very well. Georgia had the largest delegation - shocked even me - there were 11 Georgia bloggers representing the Peach State. Not one blogger from South Carolina - what's up with that? Don't they have one of the first Dem POTUS primaries and not one single Dem blogger was in the caucus meeting. Kenneth Quinell, another moderator, is going to develop a "southern netroots" blog where we can all place information about our candidates, what is going on in our states, and how we can help each other throughout the states. Over the course of time, we will develop an endorsement list of Dem progressive candidates in the seven states (KY/TN/MS/AL/GA/FL/SC) from local to Federal races. This will help give the candidates much needed exposure. We all nodded our heads that we will keep this blog full of content. I think this could be a great resource for our Georgia candidates to post when they need volunteers. You never know who might show up and volunteer.

Keynote Speaker: Howard Dean

Howard Dean brought the house down on several occasions, especially when he said that Democrats would continue to keep voting to get our soldiers out of Iraq while the Republicans keep voting to leave them there in harm's way.

Howard also has some work for the DNC 50-state Field Organizers - the DNC is rolling out a plan to develop a handbook on elections in every county in every state for every Democratic candidate. This means that the State field organizers must record how each county handles elections laws, absentee balloting, and anything related to voting. Sweeet!!

Howard also called on the bloggers to get their readers to send messages to their Congresspeople to reintroduce and pass the The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 811). Get to calling.

Best Howard Dean quote "power is loaned to us, we don't own power, and we must earn power every 2 years." He also said that "the power of campaigns belong to the people."

With that said, I don't quite get the placards that were distributed:

Ummm, Howie isn't this the problem already with the Democratic Party - we are too focused on a person rather than the movement. I definitely wasn't feeling like I was "Howard Empowered" - my activism isn't determined by a person. Hey C, I'm bringing one home for you just cause I thought you would dig it and can add it to the election collection.

Here is John Leek, of Cottonmouth blog, posing with the sign. This guy had me in stitches all day. Great guy doing some great blogging in Mississippi. God Bless him for having the only democratic blog in the entire state.

Our Dem POTUS candidates and their campaign staff:

John Edwards - John Edwards' blogger outreach person takes the "WTF" award for the day. She attended the African-American caucus and managed to offend almost everyone in the caucus. Nice, real nice. She started whining about how easier it was for her to distribute campaign information to other constituent groups like women and the LGBT community than it was to outreach to Black bloggers. She actually said that the Black Bloggers should get a listserve or google group like other progressive national blogs (i.e. White bloggers). OK at this point, the entire room gave her the "who the hell is this fool" look, but no that didn't deter the Edwards' chick, she kept on saying "ya'll aren't doing this, ya'll aren't doing that". Yes, she actually kept referring to us as "ya'll" with a hint of dysfunctional slang tone; not sure if she thought that would make her seem "blacker" or "cooler" but you could tell that it was annoying most of us.

Oh, she was damn determined to keep telling us that we, Black Bloggers, were not making her job easy. Her job as she described it is to "distribute black message issue statements" to us. WTF is "black message issues"?? Finally, Brandon Q. said "we have two large listserves and I actually manage one. It's invite only to Black Bloggers.". Whew, she actually shut up for 15 seconds. But...she started back again whining about how the campaign wanted to get "critical black messages" to us. OK sweetie, the problem with you not reaching Black Bloggers has nothing to do with technology...I'm thinking its your lack of communication skills with Black Bloggers.

Oh the greatest quote from her was "yeah I'm always distributing stuff on the LGBT listserve so much so that I can't get a date because everyone thinks I'm gay". Yes, no lie, those words actually came out of her mouth. So if you send your candidate's info out to a particular group that automatically makes you a member of that group??? eh??? As a Board member of Atlanta Stonewall Democrats, I was doubly offended. What's the word Benson taught me this year - ASSCLOWN!!

Someone please explain to me who in John Edwards' campaign thought these chairs were a great idea:

Barack Obama - Barack Obama's campaign staff takes the "Yes, we are too dumb to think beyond the corporate rules set forth by our campaign" award. So, Team Obama has a table in the exhibitors' section. I go with a friend to the table so he can collect some Obama material to distribute back in his home state. The Obama staffer gives the first rule: you must sign your name and email address before they can give you materials. OK I get that rule. It's a way to track how many persons visited the table. My friend grabs a bumper sticker and then proceeds to pick up a button. Well the Obama staffer snatched the button and said "you can only have 1 item because we have to keep a count of everything and you only signed up once". OK my mouth dropped and then I recover and said "you have got to be kidding me. What kind of grassroots movement are you guys building when you don't allow people to have material to promote YOUR candidate". The very slow fella looked mighty confused and said "that's the campaign policy. I don't have authority to change it".

OK how stupid is that policy when you are at a freaking national convention with bloggers. Bloggers who bothered to stop by YOUR table and inform your staff that you would distribute the material in their home state. A state with a large number of electoral votes. Once again, I must quote Benson - ASSCLOWN!!

Hillary Clinton - after Howard Dean spoke and the crowed clapped for 3 minutes they were treated to the news that Hillary was going to attend the Presidential candidate's forum but she was NOT going to attend her breakout session. She was instead sending a campaign strategist to speak one-on-one to the bloggers. The crowd quickly changed the loud and boisterous applause for Howard Dean to one very long and very loud "boo" to this news. OUCH!!! I pity the campaign strategist that has to answer to the bloggers. I believe he/she will also be quoting Benson after standing smackddab in the firing range for 45 minutes.

Bill Richardson - Richardson sent his internet outreach staffer to the Hispanic/Latino caucus and was well received. He actually understood that he was an observer and added a lot to the conversation by understanding the caucus' mission of unity. He didn't come off as a political wonk and didn't try to force Richardson's agenda down their throats. Reported by my quadmate, Nez.

Biden - no presence
Dodd - no presence
Gravel - no presence
Kucinich - no presence

This chickee is done for the night. My feet are killing me. My brain is overloaded from all the great information. No late night partying for this old lady, so no reporting on Tondee's.

Sleeping in late tomorrow then going to hear the wonderful Andy Stern at the luncheon.

** Note to reader: it is very hard to live blog at a blogging convention **