I’m trying to empty my cup so it can be filled up with lots of wisdom in the next few days. I’m headed to The City to attend the Personal Democracy Forum conference on Monday, and the CivicSpace users conference on Tuesday.
I really wanted to go to the PDF conference last year, but I couldn’t make it. This year it looks very interesting and I think the focus will finally be moving past the election and on to movement building. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. Many have noted the extreme white-male-ness of the event (maybe straight-ness too, I don’t know). In a quick count I estimated about 20% of the speakers were women, and the proportion of people of color is even less. This is really disappointing to see that this organization that promotes the Internet as a tool for democracy couldn’t implement some of it’s own values in the conference. That said, I know many people worked very hard just to make this happen and I am really looking forward to hearing from many of the panelists there.
The CivicSpace conference should be fun. I expect to get a lot of tips to jazz up our wedding site even more (it’s run on CivicSpace). Seriously, CivicSpace is a great tool for any organization trying to build an online community so these are skills I hope to use for many other causes besides myself. š
Bonus NYC links: NYC bloggers by subway stop, NYC Indymedia