Netroots Wisconsin is a non-partisan meeting of bloggers, citizen journalists, activists, and others doing progressive work in Wisconsin. Netroots Wisconsin 2012 is scheduled for May 20, 2012, and will take place at the Avalon Hotel and Conference Center, Chippewa Falls, WI. This year our emphasis is on the topics that have affected Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012, and what you can do to effectively fix it.
If you heard Russ Feingold speak at Netroots Wisconsin 2010 (Video Real Soon Now) you may have noticed that he mentioned the $10,000 raised by Netroots in the state for his Cheddarbomb online fundraiser. I thought I'd talk a little about how this came about, since I think it illlustrates a few points about how these things can succeed, and how they can become viral.
There will be more photographs and video coming from the conference - but here's a start: -- Thanks to Carol Gruba! You can add your own photos and videos to this Flickr group by signing up in the group pool here.
Despite a few planning implosions and communications issues, most everyone I've talked to who was at Netroots Wisconsin Saturday had a good time, and I think it all went pretty well.
We have a lot of people to thank. I'll probably foget someone here, but -
One Wisconsin Now - our major sponsor - for giving us the financial capability to get going, and for providing two great talks at the conference.
John Quinlan for his help in getting the conference rolling, promoting it, and helping to get us going on the venue -- Get Well Soon, John.
The Sunlight Foundation for sending out Lacey Maffettone and Nicole Aro, who gave such great talks and were such good eggs about everything.
The staff at the Madison Senior Center including Karen Cator, for being so amazingly helpful before and during the conference, and for giving us such a great place to meet.
The anonymous sponsor who chipped in just because he wanted to support us
The candidates and their staffs who came in the afternoon and rounded out the day with great speeches and their enthusiastic presence. You capped off a great day for us, and we really appreciate that you found time in such a hectic campaign to drop in and meet us. I also personally want to thank all the candidates for managing to not all show up simultaneously - I have no idea how that happened, but I'd been having that nightmare for days, and it's finally stopped. In particular I want to thank Melissa Ryan from the Feingold campaign for all her help, and for being such a force of nature.
My wife Lori, for all her help on the day, for everything in general, and for not killing me during the preparation for the conferenc,e even on days when I deserved it.
Lastly, but not least, I want to thank everyone who came to the conference, participated in such a whole-hearted manner, and brought an astounding level of enthusiasm to the event. You were great, and it was a pleasure meeting you all. I also want to thank you for showing up in numbers that managed to make the event a success financially, thereby fixing the other nightmare I've been having for some time. It appears we managed to make a little bit of money to put forward to future events and work.
You'll be hearing more in the coming weeks - at the moment I'm going to be busy for a couple days catching up with everything I've ignored for the past week.
We will, as an experiment, be attempting to live stream some of the conference sessions from Netroots Wisconsin. The stream will appear here on the Netroots Wisconsin web site. We make no guarantee that this will actually happen, or how good the video quality from the conference will be, as we're not in a position to do much testing before the conference. Watch this space!
For those of you who will be in Madison on the day before the conference (That is, Friday, Sept. 24) there will be an informal gathering at the Malt House in Madison. The Malt House features a great seleciton of beers, wines, and whiskies.
Come over to the Malt House around 8 PM on Friday. The Malt House is located at 2609 E. Washington Ave - at the corner of Washingon and Milwaukee. Don't be fooled - the sign on the building says it is the Union House Tavern -- but it's really the Malt House. Come and have a beer and meet with fellow progressives. Get directions and see the map to the Malt House here
Netroots Wisconsin will be a regional conference of Netroots Nation on Sept. 25 in Madison, Wisconsin. It will be a place for the Netroots in Wisconsin to meet each other, discuss issues, and celebrate the Cheddarsphere. We also hope to invite progressive politicians from the state, and have discussion on the future of journalism in Wisconsin, local blogging, and how to be more effective bloggers/citizen journalists.
We have 2 roundtable sessions scheduled for the conference, and we're looking for more bloggers to be part of the panels ---
If you'd like to participate in either a panel on Getting Started in Blogging, or the Cheddarsphere Panel (which will be more of a general discussion of your blog and the state of the Cheddarsphere) please be in contact - we need your help!
If you're interested in Netroots Wisconsin, you get a few opportunities to help promote it, and to talk to the organizers:
For one -- follow us on the Facebook and Twitter links in the box on the left.
We're adopting the twitter hashtag #netrootswis for the conference, and our twitter account is @netrootswis. Glad to hear from you all.
Lastly, I'm going to be making a few personal appearances for those of you who are sure that I'm a little white box sitting under someone's desk. Netroots Wisconsin and Uppity Wisconsin will have a booth at Fighting Bob Fest in Baraboo on Sept. 11. Come say hi. The day after Bob Fest, I'll be in Chicago at the Chicago COunts event, which is a local Netsquared conference. If you're a nonprofit techie type, this is a great place to go. I'm also planning on being at the Madison Independent Media Kickoff party for Bob Fest. See you at any of the above.
The preliminary schedule for Netroots Wisconsin is now available on the web site at http://netrootswisconsin.org/conference-schedule . There are still a few sessions that are not confirmed, and some changes will be made before the conference. But the current schedule will give you some idea of what types of sessions will happen at the conference.
If you're going to Baraboo for Fighting Bob Fest, stop in at our booth. We'll have literature about the conference, and the schedule wll be almost finalized by that time. September 11 at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo.
The Political Environment
If you heard Russ Feingold speak at Netroots Wisconsin 2010 (Video Real Soon Now) you may have noticed that he mentioned the $10,000 raised by Netroots in the state for his Cheddarbomb online fundraiser. I thought I'd talk a little about how this came about, since I think it illlustrates a few points about how these things can succeed, and how they can become viral.
For those of you who will be in Madison on the day before the conference (That is, Friday, Sept. 24) there will be an informal gathering at the Malt House in Madison. The 
