The State Blogging Corps for the National Democratic Convention has been announced.  This is the official announcement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                        Contacts:   Jenni Engebretsen
      May 14, 2008                                                                                 Damon Jones
                                                                                                            Natalie Wyeth
                                                                                                            720-362-2006

DNC CHAIRMAN GOVERNOR DEAN ANNOUNCES BLOGS SELECTED FOR 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 'STATE BLOGGER CORPS'

Party Chairman Notifies Selected Blogs Via Online Video Message

DENVER - As part of the Democratic National Convention Committee's (DNCC) commitment to engaging a broad spectrum of audiences in the 2008 Democratic National Convention experience using new technology and other creative means, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean today announced the blogs selected to participate in the DemConvention State Blogger Corps during the four-day event in August. Governor Dean notified the blogs selected via an online video message available at www.DemConvention.com .

"Similar to the record-breaking voter turnout our Party has seen during the primary season, the demand for these coveted blogger positions is yet another indicator of the tremendous interest in this historic Convention," said Governor Dean. "The Internet has played a critical role in connecting Americans to elected officials and candidates seeking office. The DemConvention State Blogger Corps will continue to foster this dialogue - in all 50 of our states and our territories too - as we head towards this year's historic election and elect a Democrat to the White House."

The DNCC previously announced an expansion of the credentialed blogger pool from past Conventions and the addition of a state blogger credentialing program. As part of the new DemConvention State Blogger Corps, designed for bloggers covering state and local politics, bloggers will receive unparalleled access to state delegations and the floor of the Convention hall. In a truly unprecedented move, the DNCC will seat these bloggers with their respective delegations during the historic four-day event, providing even greater access for local coverage and perspective. Highlights from these blogs will also be featured on www.DemConvention.com in the lead up to and during the Convention.  Read More »

We just received word out here at the farm that Uppity Wisconsin will be the credentialed blogging organization from Wisconsin at the National Democratic Convention in Denver. We're excited.

We'll have more news later about this, and information on what you can expect from Uppity Wisconsin in August. The list of state blogging credentials will be released later today.

We just received word that Uppity Wisconsin will be the Wisconsin state credentialed blogging organization for the Democratic convention. We're excited. Look for more news soon, and plans for covering the convention from the Wisconsin point of view.

Why the site is acting oddly this morning - well, it appears that YouTube has dropped off the Internet. At least, we can't get a route to them or their DNS servers. We'll see what happens.

Reports are that this was a world-wide outage - I don't think this looks like the February outage caused by Pakistan.  No word yet from Google on it.  But things are now back to normal. 

Just to let you all know where we were this morning -

We run in a set of servers in Minneapolis that is in a normally very reliable co-location site. This morning they seem to have had a huge power failure in the datacenter which took out almost all of their customers out. And our servers seem not to work very well without power for some reason.

Anyway, after a somewhat crazy morning of scrambling (and a LOT of coffee) out here in Cruiskeen Lawn/Uppity Wisconsin land, things are back up and running. Have at it.

What's with the ads? I hear you cry.

We're going through kind of a transitional period here at Uppity Wisconsin, where we're starting to be a little more successful, and are also starting to have more expenses. Bandwidth needs are increasing, and I'm going to be doing some remote blogging from both the National Conference for Media Reform, and (we're hoping) the Democratic National Convention.

So we need to pay for this stuff somehow. Thus far almost all of the cost for running the site has come out of my own pocket, and a few generous contributors. But if the site is going to stay here and thrive, we need to start earning a little more money.

So as an experiment, we're chucking the Google ads and are signed up with ClicktoBlue. This is an interesting new ad network that works with progressive web sites to bring them more ad revenue. This is a big improvement for us in a number of ways, not the least of which is that we get more control over who advertises here (hey - the McCain ads are gone) and lets us work with a bunch of great advertisers. I'm not sure what the long term advertising situation will be on the site - it's a work in progress.

 Read More »

As part of our increasing program to cover external events, I've just received my credentials to be a reporter from the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis. We'll be having live coverage of the conference on Uppity Wisconsin June 6-8.

Follow the Uppity Logic - Uppity Wisconsin [Uppitywis Reactions]

You may have noticed that I haven't ever been prone to comment on the blogs of other people on this site, or for that matter on the blogs of other sites. But at the moment I'll make an exception.

These days I see my role here mostly as keeping the software functioning, adding features, and more or less working as an "enabler" for other people in the state with a point of view. So I find myself a little surprised that anyone confuses the viewpoints of the other bloggers on this site with my own, and particularly amazed by the notion that we are a site promoting a single "group think" point of view.

If there's some similarity in viewpoint on the site I think that's mostly self-selection. We've always been open to varying points of view that are nominally within the liberal/progressive sphere. I've never denied an account to anyone on the site (and in fact spend quite a lot of time trying to encourage people with a range of viewpoints to contribute - usually in vain).

 Read More »

Click to play 11:42 minutes (10.71 MB)

KPOJ radio in Portland OR interviewed Steve Hanson and Bill Christofferson of Uppity Wisconsin on today's morning program. We chatted about tomorrow's primary in Wisconsin.
Thanks to KPOJ for their podcast.