The first day of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference was devoted to Digital Democracy, with minimal technology content. It began with a bang, and a standing ovation for Dean organiser Joe Trippi, and ended on a high with Joi Ito (Neoteny) and Ethan Zuckerman (Geekcorps). Inbetween it mostly sagged, except for the presentation by MoveOn.org's Wes Boyd, who got the other standing ovation, and NYU prof Jay Rosen, who brought some welcome historical perspective. It wasn't that the others didn't have anything interesting to say, but putting four or five on stage together for 45 minutes generally turned out to be counterproductive.
As usual there were people blogging in the audience and perhaps even from the stage, with an IRC channel providing space for a continuous but very low-quality commentary. You could spend a long time tracking down the numerous posts, but someone has done the smart thing and launched a Blogging ETech blog. Goodness knows why O'Reilly hasn't done this, because it would have been able to provide a reasonably comprehensive set of links.
Online favourite Tom Coates has blogged DDD at Plasticbag.org.
