Quid Nimis - Journal

To say that Republicans and Conservatives are fumbling practically everything probably isn't an exaggeration.

Months ago, I attended a conference put on by Americans for Prosperity. It was to counter the NetRoots conference that was taking place across town, and was supposed to stoke us up and help us become more savvy about using the internet to get our message out. There were social networking workshops, blogging basics, blogging advanced workshops, etc.

I gave it a C+. The organizers really seemed to miss the point about a lot of this stuff. And recruiting a bunch of twenty-somethings to teach a bunch of middle-aged folks about blogging? Please.

The conference did spur me to action, though. These were some of the results:

I joined facebook. I am Jonah Goldberg's friend. He's one of 10 of mine. I'm one of like, 6,000 of his, but that's ok. I was his 43rd friend.
I met some other bloggers. One of the ones I didn't meet called a meeting of all other Austin bloggers that was passed to me by someone who was invited. I went. I gave out my email and my url. All attendees were invited by the host and the author of another blog to contribute to their blogs, which was great because both are big and relatively dynamic. Since then, I've had friendly contact with blog #2 (UrbanGrounds) but none at all with The Travis Monitor, whose principle author extended the invitation to contribute. I've emailed, I've submitted, and no answer.
Also, as a matter of simple organization, every person at that meeting (that was supposed to be a recurring event, but has never repeated), should have listed everyone else on their blog roll. Some did, a bunch didn't. I did as many as I could find, but I admit, in the past, I've been less than dilligent on that score.

So, as of today, you'll start seeing some changes at this blog. I will have other authors and more links and I will be gracious in extending a hand. That's one thing that the Liberals do very well and Conservatives do very, very poorly: help the little guy on the internet.