This weekend was Personal Democracy Forum 2007. It had an incredible roster. From Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler, to Clay Shriky and Seth Godin, it was a who’s who of internet thinkers.

The speakers weren’t the main appeal for me. The audience was filled with everyone I’ve wanted to meet from almost every important organization on my radar.

Just walking around on the first day I’d look left and see Craig Newmark from Craiglist and to the right I’d see Josh Marshall from TPM and looking straight ahead, oh, that’s J.D. Lasica talking to Dave Winer (East Bay represent). All talking to people from Debatopedia, the Sunlight Foundation or The Center for Responsible Politics. A meeting of minds — taking internet cultures and letting people shake hands in person. I love it.

It was a rare experience for me — not only to rub elbows we these thinkers, but because of my work with NewAssignmen.Net and Assignment Zero — some will actually listen to me. I walked up to Jeff Jarvis and said "Hi, I’m David Cohn and …" before I even explained who I was he retorted "ah yes, I like your stuff."

Jeff Jarvis likes my stuff. (just wanted to repeat that).

But enough about the people. What did I get from the whole thing?

First the low point: Tom Friedman from the New York Times. He may have a book on the "flattening of politics" — which is an "account of the great changes taking place in our time," but that account is for laymen. This was not his crowd. And most people I talked to felt the same. The conference could have used less Friedman.

The high point: Yochai Benkler: My mind exploded by the end of his rushed talk. He was the most abstract speaker — but that appealed to my college background in philosophy and rhetoric. It reminded me of The Open Book which I want to one day write — on the philosophy of open source and the diasporic spread of that philosophy via the internet to other aspects of our culture.

The evolution in the exchange of information is changing our world. This conference focused on how that shift is spreading to politics. Micah Sifry (who is obviously the brains behind PDF) mentioned that we are in the middle of that change for the media. I do not think we have even begun to see that change in politics. But this is only natural, since the democratization of information exchange does not change the arcane manner in which laws are created and augmented. Changes are afoot — at least if you asked anyone at the conference.

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