Blogging in a Vacuum at the Defending the American Dream Summit

This is the first of a series of reports from the Defending the American Dream summit in Washington DC

Americans for Prosperity has some very good ideas, one of which is to try to ignite the right-leaning grassroots through their efforts to involve bloggers in their Defending the American Dream summit and their Right Online project. I've attended one of their regional summits and participated in their 'bloggers alley' at the Texas GOP state convention. This weekend I'm attending their national summit in Washington, DC.

The initial dilemma I've discovered at the summit is that while they've got some great ideas for getting bloggers here and educating bloggers, they haven't really got much of an idea what to do to really make good use of those bloggers they've rounded up. They've got a neat little 'bloggers alley' set up in a conference room, and they've formed a partnership with the Sam Adams Alliance to put on some useful seminars for novice bloggers, with a great schedule of speakers, but they seem not to have really figured out how to pull all these elements together and really capitalize on them.

Here we sit in our bloggers alley, talking to other bloggers and typing on our blogs, but we're doing it largely in a vacuum. No one is coming in to talk to us, except for people who are flogging some particular product or program. Apparently at some point they're going to bring in a live video feed from some of the events, but so far that hasn't materialized. The step which the well intentioned but relatively inexperienced people at AFP seem to have missed here is something which they had very right at the Texas GOP convention, which is bringing their speakers and notable guests to the bloggers and making them available for interviews. Those guests are presumably the best spokesmen for the messages that AFP wants to get out, but to make that work they really need to make a concerted effort to bring those guests to the bloggers. Bloggers are resourceful and inventive, but they are kind of introverted and not so experienced at going out and digging up stories. Some of them may have the chutzpah to go wandering the halls looking at badges to find the notable figures, but from what I'm seeing most of them are hunched over their computers with no real idea what to do with themselves, falling into familiar habits of blogging about the things they could cover just as easily in their pajamas at home.

Article Author: Dave Nalle

Dave Nalle has been a magazine editor, freelance writer, capitol hill staffer, game designer and taught college history for many years. He is Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, working to promote liberty in the GOP. …

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