Well, Nile posted his, so I started to feel guilty.

Nile set a standard of blunt honesty, so I will follow that here. Nile and I attended both attended all the plenary sessions, though some different panels.

On Thursday night, after checking in, we went to the Save The Internet Party for the Future. There wasn’t really any facilitated way to meet new people, and we were the only people we knew there, and we were pretty tired after traveling, so we hung out for a little bit then turned in. Since the activities started early each day, this was a wise decision.

Before the opening session, I went to a breakfast for scholarship recipients, which was nice. My brain wasn’t really working quite yet.

The opening session was OK. The mayor of Memphis was sort of random.

Bill Moyers’ opening keynote was really awesome and my favorite thing out of the whole weekend. I will write more about this in a later post.

Jesse Jackson was alright. I mean, he was Jesse Jackson.

From Computer Screens to the Streets: Activism in a Wired World was pretty cool. It focused on tactics, the ways that digital tools are being used for activism. Marty Kearns gave an overview of social networks and the way they come into play in activism. Noah Winer talked about MoveOn.org’s tools online. The guy from Working Assets talked about using cell phone text messaging. If I am ever organizing mass mobilization campaigns, I will want to revisit this panel for some tips.

Saving the Internet was OK. As with most of the topics at the conference, there could be an entire conference dedicated to this subject alone, but in this case, I would actually want to go to that conference. I basically agree with Nile’s sentiments here.

The Southeast regional caucus was interesting. Everybody in the room introduced themselves, which took a long time (no thanks to the fact that lots of people wanted to give speeches rather than introductions — damn long-winded activists). It was a bit surprising how much activity there is in the Southeast — especially since, at every other conference I’ve been outside the South, I’m usually the only one from the South, more or less. I guess this was aided by being in Memphis, which is within driving distance for a lot of these people. Once the introductions were done, there was hardly any time left. We broke into states, and there were plenty of us Floridians, but we didn’t talk about much because some wise person had already scheduled an ad hoc caucus meeting the next day. (Unfortunately for me, this is the same time I had scheduled for the free culture caucus.) We were supposed to break again into subject of interest, but that never happened.

The nighttime plenary was cool. I really think Danny Glover had been drinking. The FCC commissioners (the two Democrats) both gave good speeches. The gospel choir was kind of odd, especially given that liquor was sold and plenty of people in the audience were drinking. Davey D was good, Dennis Kucinich was a bit “wtf,” and Amy Goodman was OK. There was another band, and they were OK. The North Mississippi Allstars slash Burnside Explosion were awesome. Adelstein on harp was pretty cool — he was rocking pretty hard. The band got consistently bigger, and after about the 5th piece, the extra additions didn’t make much difference. But they were really good.

We were late to the morning plenary the next day, with Bernie Sanders, and I didn’t really care.

The FCC update was informative, but not very entertaining.

The Congress update was neither informative nor entertaining. Half the Congresspeople bailed out, so it was only the local Rep, Cohen, who had just been elected and didn’t have much clue what was going on, and Hinchey. In both this and the previous session, there were really asinine and off-the-wall questions, which I will not repeat here. I will note, though, that the first two questions on this panel both mentioned the need for copyright reform, and neither of them were me or anyone I knew. Yay!

The lobbyist update was pretty good. These people really knew what they were talking about. I certainly agreed with Gigi Sohn in her disappointment that intellectual property was basically not discussed at the conference. I was also disheartened to hear that DMCA reform isn’t high on anyone’s agenda in the 110th Congress. We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of the death of fair use in digital media — how much longer will we wait?

Running Effective Congressional Advocacy Campaigns: What it Takes to Win was very good. Similar to the activism panel, it focused on tactics and tools. Particularly good was Ben Scott’s inside story of the Net neutrality fight in the 109th. Again, a panel to come back to the next time I’m working on such a task.

The evening keynote was fun. Bob McChensney reminds me of a somewhat more successful Lessig, in terms of the success of his movement. George W. and Helen Thomas was really hilarious (though the video is a lot less funny to watch on Youtube). I don’t remember some of the other speakers. The Reverend guy, I remember, repeated himself quite a bit. Ed Markey was a pleasure, and Geena Davis was good as well, talking about women’s representation in the mainstream media, and particularly in children’s programming. I thought the band was terrifically annoying so we skipped out and retreated to the laptop zone before heading back to the hotel.

Generation E: Organizing Youth to Reform Our Media was OK. It was sort of more for non-youth organizing youth, than for youth organizing their peers, which made it less useful for me.

The closing plenary was good. Jane Fonda again on women in mass media, and Van Jones with a terrific closing. Time to coalescify.

(Links forthcoming when I feel like it)