It’s a beautiful fall day, full of cross-currents and coincidence. This is a quick catch-all, catch-up post so i can clear the boards for next week. I have interview questions to prepare for the AARP Orlando@50+ conference and I’ve managed to procrastinate until yesterday’s Cheddarsphere gathering ended because I’m a single threaded kind of guy.
Fall day, past the average “first frost” date, but globally warmer so the horseradish continues to grow and I won’t have to dig it and re-plant until mid-October. That’s by way of speaking of roots… netroots, horseradish roots. Roots? We picked up some beets at the farmers market this weekend too. Where was I?
Two comments in two days on how specifically this listics blogs sucks these days. I was reminded yesterday that the RSS feed is broken. I know. It has been hosed for quite a while. I’ll fix it with the upgrade to WordPress 3.0.1. really, I will. Today in a comment thread at Joho the Blog, Darryl Jonckheere suggested some improvements that I’ll tackle as part of that upgrade as well.
Meanwhile, back at the Cheddarsphere… Steve Hanson hosted Netroots Wisconsin yesterday, a great gathering that pumped energy into the progressive blogging community and provided geekular connexions for many of us who have too little face time with our peers.
The Sunlight Foundation presented a great overview of tools and websites they sponsor in support of the transparency movement. Take a look at the Influence Explorer project!
Cory Liebmann shared a list of resources for research.
Some links I jotted down…
- Document Cloud — a tool for locating, annotating, organizing, and publishing primary source documents on the web!!
- Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, a fine blog with a great sidebar.
- One Wisconsin Now — progressive voices
- Convio — fundraising software, donor management, non profit marketing
- Illusory Tenant — just another great blogger
- Wisconsin advertising project — documenting how candidates, political parties and special interest groups communicate with voters
- Net Neutral Wisconsin — answering the question, “Where do we go from here?”
The gathering was held in the Madison Senior Center, a facility my grandmother Ruth Paynter helped to found. Twenty-five years ago or so, there was a plaque in the lobby acknowledging her work. The plaque is gone. Maybe I’ll call and see if we can track it down. One of her great grandchildren would probably get a charge out of having it around.
Meanwhile, I’m ready to prep for my trip to Orlando. From the Madison Senior Center yesterday to AARP this Wednesday, there’s a deeper meaning there, much like the net-roots horseradish trope I used to begin this post. I truly hope I get a one-on-one with Newt Gingrich and a one-on-one with Secretary Sebelius. The beets go on!