Netroots Nation Wants My Ideas!

Really? Little old me?

Yes!

They sent me one of those electronic mail thingies -- every bit as stirringly personal as the occupant-addressed, Democratic primary literature that are now bursting the welds on my mail box -- soliciting my ideas on panels they should have.

Touched I was. Deeply.

So I clicked on the link and discovered a very long questionnaire that made it clear that, well, they don't really want my ideas.

They want Mr. Crowdsource --

"...a neologistic compound of Crowd and a short for Outsourcing, for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an "open call" to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions."

-- to organizing panels. Line up panelists. Figure out times. Coordinate troop movements. Calculate the tides. And make sure that each panel has "a Netroots hook", "a range of diversity (ethnicity, gender, age, viewpoints, geography, etc)" and a several other bells, zippers, whistles and childproof caps.

But see, those are not "ideas". That's whatchcall your "event planning": hard, detail-oriented work, which is so many organization pay professionals to do it.

So no thanks.

Instead, here's a counter-offer

Bring me out, put me up in style, and Live-And-In-Person I will interlocute any two of the following driftglass-original-panel-topic guaranteed winners.

"Rent-to-Own Activism": Are we outsourcing our passion?

"Smart Liberals/Foolish Choices": On the flogging of dead horses and the starving of live ones.

"Shut Up and Send Money": How to blog every day until you go anonymously broke.

"Down-wonking Your Policy Casserole": They don't call it "The Power of Myth" for nothing.

"Virtual Protester Beaten by Digital Redneck": If a talking point falls in SecondLife...

Act now!

Operator are standing by!

Supplies are limited!

Now with extra Tom Waits!

Skip the middle man!
Don't settle for less!
How do we do it?
How do we do it?
Volume, volume.
Turn up the volume.