The Bloggercon 'politics' session

One weakness of Bloggercon was the overwhelming left / libertarian nature of the audience. It would be good to have heard some pro-Bush voices. The US political blogosphere is afterall about 40 percent conservative by some reckonings. The clear lesson from 2004 is that when it comes to online politics the killer app is still email. Though, again, blogs seem to have been good tools in local campaigns and in raising money (specifically the Dean campaign's $40m). Some key points to emerge is that a blog doesn't work if it reads like a medai release, it has to feel like a conversation with the candidate. The other major point is that a blog takes years to build a strong and sizeable following. So we can expect blogs to be far more prominent in 2008 then this year.

There are also lots of demographic and socio-economic issues around blogs and campaigning which unfortunately didn't get enough attention. How do you build an online relationship with someone who can't afford a computer?