Save the date of May 18, folks, and make your plans to be in New York City, because this year the fourth annual Personal Democracy Forum is going to be our biggest and best conference yet. The theme this year is "The Flattening of Politics"--how the distance is rapidly disappearing between the people at the top and bottom of campaigns, political media and voter activism.

Ambitious politicians don't need to be urged to run for higher office. But "draft" websites, which the netroots used to put mavericks like Wesley Clark and Jim Webb on the map, are becoming a standard political exercise. And that's probably a bad thing for Internet politics.

This past Monday a bunch of RootsCamp alumni, led by Ruby Sinreich, Rik Riel, and avatars named errcheck Hicks and Effulgent Brown, organized an anti-war protest on Virtual Capitol Hill in Second Life. Sinreich (nom de avatar: Ruby Glitter) expected about 80 avatars to show up -- 40 more than Second Life usually recommends, due to massive slowdown issues -- but in the end 126 residents showed up to dance, wave signs, yell slogans, and show their support. It was, Sinreich says, a smashing success.

The progressive blogosphere has been waiting with baited breath for news about the fate of John Edwards' bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen after they were criticized for writing anti-Catholic slurs before working for Edwards. Salon reported that they were fired yesterday, but TAPPED and others have heard otherwise. And Glenn Greenwald has been building an unbelievably long list of links to other blogs covering this.

The MSM has been covering the story with mixed value; for example Time Magazine does a decent job of putting it into larger context, but oddly claims that the story has an antecedent in "Democrat" John Thune's hiring of bloggers in his run against Senator Tom Daschle in "2005." Hello, rewrite? (Read our seminal story on the Thune bloggers episode here.

The Web on the Candidates

"If the liberal blogs want to understand why so few people outside their narrow echo chamber take them seriously, and what it will take to gain the broader credibility they crave, they should look no further than their handling of the recent flap over John Edwards’ foul-mouthed blogger hires," says Dan Gerstein in the Politico.

Patrick Ruffini calls John Edwards' site a "mess," in part because, as Todd Ziegler notes, there are icons for and links to 24 social news/social networking sites. "I get it. The Edwards campaign is really into the whole Web 2.0 thing. Message delivered. I understand the power of these networks. I do. But 24 accounts? This just strikes me as sort of ridiculous," Ziegler says. Ruffini says there's also too much text on the home page: "A homepage should be made for scanning, so a big graphic with your message of the day, with icons and 5-6 word descriptions of your key features is what works best."

We're excited to announce that PdF and Google have teamed up to offer registration scholarships for 40 qualified political professionals that cover the full cost of the Personal Democracy Forum conference on May 18th and the unConference on May 19th.

If you're a campaign staffer blazing a new trail in online politics, a non-profit professional trying new technologies with great results, or an activist with ideas about the next big thing to change elections, you should apply!

You already know that the 2007 PdF Conference is on Friday, May 18th, but did you know that the First Annual PdF unConference will be held the next day, Saturday, May 19th?

What's an "unconference"?

The idea is simple. At an unconference, there are no set presenters and no designated audience. Anyone and everyone can schedule a session, discussion, or demonstration, either before the day on the PdF unConference wiki or at the unConference itself. The PdF unConference is a way of extending Friday's discussion to Saturday, creating an open environment for digging into the details and nitty-gritty of how we're all using technology to change politics. Tickets for the unConference are $35 and we'll provide coffee/tea, lunch, and wifi.

The PdF unConference is the perfect chance to demo your new project or hash out that question about tech politics that's been keeping you up at night, and to do it in collaboration with some of the best minds in technology and politics.

You can go here to register for both the main conference and the unConference.

I’m here at PDF this morning, clicking, typing, surfing with hundreds of other folks here.

Larry Lessig, professor at Stanford and founder of Creative Commons, is the first speaker of the day and he provided a thankfully caffeinated start on a dreary, rainy day.

Interesting, if a bit low-key, conversation between Tom Friedman (NY Times) and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. A bit like our own PDF MBA seminar, in Schmidt’s defense, it is very early CA time for much pep.

Great talk/reading (from his version 3.0 of his book coming out later this year) by Tom Friedman.

Basically, he believes flattening is intensifying everywhere he goes.