We wanted to remind everyone that applications for Google Fellowships are due this Friday, 5/8 at 12 noon EST.

Are you an entrepreneur or activist with ideas about the next big thing to change government? A non-profit professional trying new technologies with great results? A former campaign staffer still blazing new trails in online politics?

Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships that cover the full forum registration costs and a meal with Googlers for twenty well-qualified, creative political entrepreneurs to attend this year's conference on June 29-30 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Fellows will be chosen based on evidence of how you've turned ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena.

Apply here.

We're hard at work on this year's sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum, taking place June 29-30 in New York City, and I thought this would be a good time to share more details on all the incredible breakout sessions in the works. (We'll also have an announcement soon with more of our confirmed speakers; the current list is here.) As you know, this year's theme is "We.gov"--in other words, all the ways that people are using the internet and interactive communications technologies to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. And that includes more transparency on how the sausage is made. Hence this post.

Right now, we're envisioning roughly four thematic tracks to the breakout sessions, which run in the afternoon of both days of the conference: 1) State-of-the-art online politics; 2) The rise of government 2.0; 3) New organizing opportunities, tools and challenges; and 4) The future of political journalism, blogging and networked media. There's also a couple of sessions that don't quite fit any of these categories but we think will be pretty interesting as well.

Keeping in mind that this is still very much a work in progress, and names and topics may be added or changed, here's a more in-depth look at how things are shaping up. (More after the break.)

I'm going to start posting, as much as possible, about the variety of fantastic speakers and panels we're having at Personal Democracy Forum this year, and I'm starting with one of the most unusual, our session with authors Doug Rushkoff and Tara Hunt on "Building the Social Economy: CraigBucks, NewMarks and Making Whuffie."

Here's an updated guide to the breakout sessions in the works for Personal Democracy Forum 2009. This year's theme is "We.gov"--in other words, all the ways that people are using the internet and interactive communications technologies to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we're envisioning four main thematic tracks to the breakout sessions, which will run in the afternoon of both days of the conference: 1) State-of-the-art online politics; 2) Exploring government 2.0; 3) New organizing opportunities, tools and challenges; and 4) The future of political journalism, blogging and networked media. There's also a couple of sessions that bridge several of these categories that we think will be pretty interesting as well.

Here's how things are shaping up. We're still tweaking these sessions, adding speakers and moderators, but what you see here now is pretty close to solid, and we're about to put them on a clear timeline as well. If you haven't registered yet, click here: now's the time.

Together with our friends at Google, we're happy to announce the twenty remarkable recipients of this year's Google Fellowship to the Personal Democracy Forum conference happening in New York on June 29-30.

This year's Google Fellows stood out from our largest and most competitive pool of applicants thus far. Fellows were chosen based on their experience in turning ideas into action and developing new applications of technology in the political or civic arena. This group of creative political entrepreneurs includes developers producing innovative solutions for local and national governments here and in the UK; the co-creator of The Great Schlep; an award-winning blogger for the labor movement; and one of the youngest elected officials in the State of New York.

Dan Ancona, California VoterConnect
Faye Anderson, Tracking Change
Farid Ben Amor, ACORN
Daniel Bennett, Advocate Hope
Paula Brantner, Today's Workplace
Nicholas Ryan Brown, TheLobbyist.net
Dominic Campbell, FutureGov
David Carlucci, Town Clerk for the city of Clarkstown, New York
Justin Hamilton, U.S. Department of Education
Laura Hertzfeld, PBS.org Vote 2008
Leonard Lin, Blue State Digital
Larry Meyer, Meyer Communications & The Communications Network
Mik Moore, The Jewish Council for Education & Research
Joey Mornin, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
Don Morrison, Civio
Joseph Peters, Public Performance Systems
Brian Reich, consultant
Ali Savino, GastroNomalies.com
Merici Vinton, Obama for America
Nathan Woodhull, Democratic National Committee

Google Fellowships cover the full cost of conference registration; Fellows are also invited to share a meal and exchange ideas in a special session with Google staff during the conference.

Congratulations to you all and we look forward to seeing you soon!

A number of people have asked about opportunities for collaboration during this year's Personal Democracy Forum, and in response to their suggestions, we're pleased to announce that Monday evening June 29, immediately after the first day's formal sessions end and during the conference cocktail party, we're inviting attendees to lead or join in informal BOF sessions at Jazz at Lincoln Center. BOF as in "birds-of-a-feather flock together," that is.

Here are the details on three sessions that various folks have already been working on: Hacking the City, Demoing DemDash, and Open Questions/Citizen Media. We're also going to put up a conference wiki shortly, to enable attendees to sign up and start connecting around these session, post additional ideas, and also share other self-organized plans like themed dinners or late-night jaunts. Stay tuned for details.

(Photo of starlings in formation courtesy of Fi in Eden)

Unlike most of the sessions at PdF this year, this one is about the changing demographic context for politics in America, and how a younger and more diverse population is interacting in new ways with the political process.

From Twitter Vote Report and Huffington Post's Off the Bus project, to NPR's crowdsourced Inauguration '09 coverage and ProPublica's new distributed reporting network and its coverage of the stimulus spending, a new kind of hybrid "pro-am" collaborative journalism is taking shape, one that is powered by a mix of professional journalists, savvy tech

Most people are familiar with how the Obama campaign’s internal social network, My.BarackObama.com, helped win the election by raising money and getting out the vote. Some 2 million individual Obama supporters created personal accounts on myBO, and they used its tools to form 35,000 groups, generate 200 thousand volunteer-driven campaign events and raise at least $30 million by personally reaching out to their own networks.

Here's how Heather Holdridge of Care2, the sponsor of this session, describes its focus:

It's a mad mad Web 2.0 world and hot platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are fast becoming indispensable components of most online campaigns. The echo chamber of the blogosphere is a powerful voice for amplifying your message and the potential for mobile in the US grows daily.