The PdF 2007 Conference hosted a spirited panel examining Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur, featuring Keen, Clay Shirky, Craig Newmark, and Robert Scoble, and hosted by PdF's Josh Levy. Larry Lessig has a response to Cult, and it's fair to say that he's not impressed.

Next Wednesday the founders of TechRepublican.com, led by David All will be leading the first-ever Modern Media Strategies workshop. The event is designed to teach conservative activists and Hill staffers about new media (or, as All calls it, “modern media”) and how to use the web the way the liberals do. It's the latest in a string of projects unleashed by a small group of online activists that has struck a chord with mainstream conservatives.

More Wikipedia un-controversies are uncovered, thanks to WikiScanner; Wired talks to David All about his Modern Media Strategies workshop; James Kotecki realizes that the candidates have been BREAKING THE LAW; Cracked produces a parody of the CNN/YouTube debate; Todd Zeigler on the most-viewed YouTube videos from the Dems; and more Facebook and MySpace friends could mean more votes.

Nobel speculation heats talk of Gore bid; Facebook Political Summit Tuesday to face criticism?; Slatecard, GOP answer to ActBlue, launches; Evangelicals going progressive?; Michael Cornfield sums up the online field; Obama spokesman goes bottom-up; Rudy makes a fundraising boo-boo; and Meghan McCain goes-a-blogging.

Trippi warns about Obama's blue-collar support; Jerome Armstrong mocks Chris Bowers; will the "emerging church" go for Obama?; Lessig aims to Change-Congress; Blogger flophouses in DC make the front page; inside Obama's Texas field operation; Ron Paul says he's still running; and we add the VP field to our charts.

A video tries to tie Barack Obama more closely to Jeremiah Wright and radical black politics; Fox News still needs to be schooled about who gets credit for writing community blogs; a new site is like Digg for the media bias set; Larry Lessig due to announce Change Congress later today; NetSquared runs a mashup contest; and combined views of Obama's big speech climb over 2,500,000 on YouTube.

I'm at the National Press Club for the launch of Stanford Prof. Larry Lessig's new project, Change-Congress.org. He's here as part of Sunshine Week, and his speech is co-sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation (which I consult for) as well as the Omidyar Network. As you may know, last year, Lessig decided to shift his focus from the fight for free culture to the fight for a clean government. Here are my notes on his talk, paraphrasing as best as I can...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Joe Trippi a week ago, as we both were in DC for the launch of Larry Lessig's new Change-Congress project. (Joe is working with Larry on CC, and the Sunlight Foundation, which I consult for, was co-sponsoring Larry's speech). If you watch closely, you can see Larry in the background of the first video, in fact. In general, the lack of production values suggests I should stick to my day job, I know. But we covered a lot of interesting ground, as you'll see...

I'm at Harvard today and tomorrow attending the Berkman Center's 10th anniversary, and boy is this is an idea-rich environment. If you want to peek in on the proceedings, there are lots of ways to join in:

You can watch Steve Garfield's live video streams on Qik.com, you can log into the IRC back-channel at irc.freenode.net/berkman, and there's a lot of blogging, twittering and flickring happening, all grouped around the tag "Berkmanat10".

With just 19 days to go (gulp) til Personal Democracy Forum 2008 opens its doors, we're pleased to announce that Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, and the author of the important new book, The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It, will be keynoting day two of the conference. Plus we have a great line-up of presenters for the Idea Market. More details after the jump...