Miss your flight? There's always skype! Elizabeth Edwards never quite made it to New York, but from the comfy confines of her living room in North Carolina she parried questions from citizen journalists, accountability activists and pollitical operatives. She says - wait for it - online journalism has been good. Some issues, she says, are just "too big" for the mainstream media: Whether Iraq or healthcare, the "mainstream media will shortchange it because the issue is too big for the package."  read more »

A few weeks ago, Melinda and I attended the Netsquared conference (N2Y3) just outside San Jose in sunny Santa Clara, California. We were attending on behalf of Ask Your Lawmaker, one of the 21 featured projects chosen to participate in a dialog about how non-profits can use web sites for social benefit. The conference provided an opportunity for the 21 featured projects to share their experiences, challenges and successes while competing for three grand prizes.

Although AYL did not win, Melinda and I had the great pleasure of meeting a staggering number of people during the two very long days of the conference. We also learned a lot from some of the other finalists, including: MoveSmart.org, Squarepeg and second place award recipient Knowmore.  read more »

It's hard to drag us out of Washington, but here we are at Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA -- demonstrating Ask Your Lawmaker, and the exciting plans we have to improve this site and its widgets with enhanced customization options and social networking functionality.

We are one of 21 finalists in Tech Soup's third annual Netsquared Mashup Challenge Conference along with some great projects like www.Maplight.org, www.Metavid.org and www.OpenCongress.org - and today the leading lights of web 2.0 vote for the best. Competition is tough - and we are being judged on our chances of success and making the greatest impact. Winners get some cash and development support from the best of Drupal and open source coders and designers.  read more »