Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, March 13, 2005

DailyKos Members Plan National Convention

[via yKos] Members of the reform democrat collaborative political blog DailyKos are spreading their online political organizing offline.

These technoprogressive blog-activists are looking to make history as they plan for the first ever blog-driven political convention, "YearlyKos." Like much of the content available on the site itself, the event will be planned by the "Kossacks" themselves, the readers and contributors to the blog who comprise its growing community.

The upcoming convention has now, naturally enough, officially launched a companion website, where more details are being published as the planning proceeds.

The Executive Organizers of the event are hoping that some hundreds of the more than 300,000 average daily visitors to DailyKos will converge June 8-11th, 2006 for their first national convention. Convention attendees will network with other activists, organize for Democratic Party success in the midterm elections, and further define the quickly changing role of blogging for political organizing and media participation.

Gina Cooper, one of three Executive Organizers of the event, said, "Our mission is to empower the DailyKos community, to strengthen the Democratic Party through community building that reaches across geographic barriers, [and] to educate and inspire the next generation of leaders while establishing social connections that encourage mutual responsibility in maintaining the health of our democracy."

DailyKos, run by owner Markos Moulitsas ZĂșniga, is the highest trafficked political weblog. In 2004, the readership of the site raised over half a million dollars for progressive candidates in dozens of contested races throughout the United States. In its first year, DailyKos attracted over 1.6 million unique visits and about 3 million page views. The blog recently hit a milestone of 10 million counted page views.

No comments: