Since this is Day One of the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum, we’ll be (mostly) devoting the Daily Digest to a recap of what’s going down at the conference, being discussed in the halls, and heating up the back channels. We’ll return to our regular digest format on Wednesday.

• BlogHer's Morra Aarons has a great overview of this morning's opening sessions, including Zephyr Teachout's questioning of the value of metrics like Facebook friends or YouTube views when it comes to affecting political change. Here's Morra: "Teachout says it's like the wonder men must have felt when witnessing the first steam engine: a beautiful feat of technology, but it doesn't capture the human power and capacity to change things." Teachout, a veteran of the Howard Dean campaign, gracefully tapped into Walt Whitman's As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days to outline her vision for transformative politics. ("Democracy rests finally upon us [I, my brethren, begin it,] and our visions sweep through eternity.")

• Global Voices's Ethan Zuckerman is doing his usual stellar job liveblogging the conference. In particular, check out Ethan's take on what concerns him about the future of partisan journalism. The New Republic has an overview of day one of the conference. ABC News frames the conference by asking whether the affair between technology and politics is a "crush or long-term relationship."

• Politico's Ben Smith covers a panel between representatives of the McCain, Obama, Romney, Clinton, Paul, and Edwards campaigns that turned fiery when Edwards' rep (and TechPres blogger) Tracy Russo argued that a President who doesn't use a computer isn't capable of leading the country. McCain rep Mark Soohoo defended his candidate, saying: "This is a man who has a very long history of understanding on a range of issues."

• On a panel this morning with Townhall.com's Chuck DeFeo, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington engaged in a spirited defensive of "new media," saying she much prefers its "obsessive compulsive disorder" above the "attention deficit disorder" of "old media." The Nation's Ari Melber has more on the colorful DeFeo/Huffington panel and Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland has her take on the session.

• Feeling obsessive compulsive yourself? Keep up to the second on PdF '08's goings-on by following the pdf2008 Twitter hashtag using a tool like Summize. If it's video you're after Micah Sifry is using Qik to stream both onstage and behind the scenes. Tech blogger Robert Scoble has his own streaming going, including a segment on his own session on the "live web."

• And as if all that's not enough, you can participate in the PdF 2008 back channel conversation using the Berkman Center's Live Question Tool, created by PdF presenter Jonathan Zittrain.

We'll be adding content from the conference as it comes up, so if you're reading this via email check back in on the web.

In Case You Missed It...

Douglas Rushkoff has posted his take on "Beyond Brand Obama": "The danger in Brand Obama is that our focus on a heroic or mythic presidency could easily distract us from the hard work and reality of creating change ourselves."

Micah Sifry covers the Obama-McCain Twitter Debate and offers thoughts on "Obama and His Movement: The Internal Battle Begins."

Colin Delany ticks off "Seven Things about Online Politics We Can Learn from Barack Obama and the 2008 Primary Season."

pdf2008
Nancy Scola's blog | email this page | delicious | digg | technorati