Virginia Blogging Summit II

Bob Gibson with Charlottesville’s The Daily Progress covered the blogging conference hosted over the weekend by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. I attended the first Summit but family obligations kept me from attending this one. Sounds like I missed a great event.

As a sign that Virginia’s political blogosphere is emerging as a significant factor in Virginia state politics, consider that this event was attended by Virginia’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and three members of the House of Delegates. Bolling’s remarks, as reported by Gibson, were revealing:

“A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was, and now I’m looking at blogs and reading blogs and I’m worrying about whether you are saying nice things or nasty things about me on blogs,” Lt. Gov. William T. Bolling told the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s second annual Summit on Blogging and Democracy. “Now I’m doing blog interviews.”

“Maybe this whole blogging thing has the potential of bringing back responsibility to campaigns,” Bolling told about 90 people Saturday afternoon. He urged the political bloggers to “hold us responsible once we get elected for doing the things we said we were going to do.”

Update

: Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who attended the conference, has published her “random thoughts.” Read them here. She highlights an apparent division between “liberal” and “conservative” bloggers, which strikes me as an unfortunate development…. but probably inevitable. Bloggers, by their nature, are hyper-opinionated, thus prone to schism.


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5 responses to “Virginia Blogging Summit II”

  1. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I must say that there was no such division at this weekend’s event — at least not that any of the ~dozen people that I asked about it on Saturday afternoon perceived. Everybody was surprisingly good about spending time with bloggers with whom they have little in common politically, which I know was a mind-expanding experience for a few people. Sorensen is going to send out surveys today or tomorrow, I think — I hope that’ll support that notion.

  2. Jim:
    Actually, the division that I was trying, inartfully, to discuss was the division between those bloggers who chose to attend Sorenson and those who chose not to attend, some for reasons that seemed to me to suggest a “rift” in the community.

    See, for example, posts and comments at urls listed below:

    http://tomjoadsplace.blogspot.com/2006/05/this-just-inive-been-banned-by-kilo.html

    http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/doh/2006/05/blog_summit.html

    http://vaconservative.com/archives/2006/05/28/the-blog-summit/

    http://tooconservative.com/?p=606

    So, I agree with Waldo that the rift was not apparent this weekend, and I share his hope that the evaluations will reflect this fact.

    And I do hope that we can all find a way to go to the Collinsville conference and sign kumbaya (as I also tried ineffectively to suggest was a good idea in my post).

    Here’s an early post from I’m Not Emeril that I found today (earlier efforts had not led me here; probably says more about my tech abilities than I would like):

    http://imnotemeril.blogspot.com/2006/05/ball-is-rolling-on-cville-too.html

    Cheers.
    Claire

  3. I'm Not Emeril Avatar
    I’m Not Emeril

    Jim,
    One of the posts refenced by Claire in the previous comment was http://tomjoadsplace.blogspot.com/…etc

    At the time of that occurence I posted this to clear the air.
    http://imnotemeril.blogspot.com/…etc

    My post certainly seemed to clear the air, as Cliare’s post yesterday was the first time I had heard it revived, and I was in Charllottesville on Friday night. I spoke to now one who mentioned it, rather, each person I spoke to was enthusiastic about it.

    Claire and I have come to a “meeting of the minds” and I look forward to seeing her in Martinsville in August.

  4. This rift was settled long ago. I think Waldo would agree. It is strange that Claire is the only blogger to post such an opinion from those attending Sorenson//Motive?

  5. Not the only one…! I, too, lamented the references to a “Conservative Conference” to serve as a counter to Sorenson. I heard the same things that Claire did, and I am glad that Alton cleared the air.

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