It seems most of the convention-goers have already escaped Vegas, or perhaps have stopped wearing their badges since the official events are over, and so I - perhaps like some others - am relaxing in my lovely suite, looking out over the Las Vegas basin at the beautiful Spring Mountains lit by the desert sunset. So I have som time to gather and perhaps blog about my thoughs of the past four days.
Thought 1: Screen names on badges should be mandatory! And they should be bigger. And identify the blog where they're used. And preferably be positioned in a location more than 2-3 inches above the wearer's crotch.
Thought 2: There weren't that many Kossacks here. I was expecting more. Of course the front pagers were here (kicking our asses in the pub quiz), along with some other high-profile people whom I was mostly too intimidated to approach, but on the whole the convention was dominated by people who work in political advocy groups, campaigns, and other assorted offline and/or professional activism. Which of course is great, but it wasn't what I expected. I did find a few people I know though - hugs to PerfectStormer, /wave to Jyrinx and ben masel.
Thought 3: Twitter is actually useful! I had no idea. The #nn10 and #lgbtnn10 hashtags were absolutely invaluable for coordinating unofficial activities as well as for getting the word out about interesting happenings at the official ones. I've been a slow adopter, but I think after this I might actually become a serious tweeter. Twitterer? Twit? Whatever. I've seen the light.
Thought 4: A byproduct of not being able to identify people I know (point 1) and of there not being terribly many of them in the first place (point 2) was that I got to meet a ton of interesting people I didn't already know. A shout out to the great guys from Bilerico - Bil Browning, Phil Reese, Josh Cohen, David Castillo, Jerame Davis, and the others - who totally adopted this lost lonely kid and introduced me to what seems like hundreds of other interesting people like Pam Spaulding and Jillian Weiss and all the others whse names I don't recall.
Thought 5: The netroots is a whole lot older, whiter, and straighter than I'd pictured. My favourite session of the whole convention was the one about involving more people of colour in the progressive blogosphere. It was hosted by five of my top 10 favourite DKos bloggers (Deoliver47, shanikka, TexMex, navajo, dopper0189) and the audience was also full of people of colour, GLBT folks, and other non-middle-aged-straight-white people.
Not that I have a problem with middle-aged straight white people supporting progressive politics, but the contrast between the racial/age/class uniformity of the NN goers and the diversity of the rest of the hotel's clientele and its staff was quite striking. The rest of the guests looked like America, and we...didn't. How do we fix this?
Thought 6: I don't smoke. Not, that is, unless I'm surrounded by smokers. Like in a Vegas casino. Which I had to walk through to get to the convention hall. Now, I happen to like Vegas, and casinos, and I won't have any trouble quitting again when I go home - but as I hung out smoking and chatting with people after I came out of my shell on Friday, I met literally dozens of other former smokers who'd been seduced into lighting up again. And not all of them will have as easy a time quitting. I also couldn't help but wonder how any attendees with asthma or allergies or respiratory problems were coping - or if they'd been forced to stay home by the nature of the venue. I also wondered about any recovering compulsive gamblers or alcoholics who might have wanted to attend.
Thought 7: On the other hand, Vegas is a location where I can get a nice strawberry daiquiri just about anywhere. Including at each of the bars located approx. every 100 feet throughout the casino floor. I'd been missing daiquiris, living in Seattle. And here I get to enjoy them while standing in a waist-deep pool, smoking and getting skin cancer. So thanks NN organizers for that :)
Thought 8: On another positive not, thanks NN attendees for being trans-aware. I think I was called "she" perhaps at most 4-5 times over 4 days of interacting with hundreds and hundreds of new people. The hotel staff also were either highly trans-aware or completely oblivious to everything on my ID besides my age (I think, honestly, it was the latter, since most of them just kept being astounded that I was 27 and saying I look 15 - but I know at least among the LGB NN folks it was awareness and not obliviousness. So thank you).
Thought 9: I'm sure there are a bunch of people who were here whom I'd have loved to meet but just didn't know who you were. Perhaps next year. But we really have to do something to label ourselves better. Maybe we could make up pins or something with DKos UIDs to stick on our NN badges?
So those are my thoughts. Anyone else have any closing comments you want to share?