This afternoon, I’m helping with the Self Organizing Sessions at the Take Back America conference. The idea was based on unconferences like RootsCamp. The first sessions got off to a late start because of Obama and Edwards running late.

The first sessions were Betrayed!: How the Failure to Care for the 21st Century Veteran is Endangering Families and Jeopardizing Communities and Winning Hearts and Minds: Why Rational Appeals are Irrational if Your Goal is Winning Elections. They were both well attended and ran a little late themselves due to their late start.

Fortunately, there was half an hour between these sessions and the following sessions, so the second set have started pretty close to on schedule. They are Prevent Unwanted Presidencies (And Congresses): To-Do List For An Honest '08 Election lead by people from the Election Defense Alliance and Web 2.0 and the Next Generation of Online Voter Registration, from Working Assets. They are talking about a voter registration API and Widgets that other sites, such as blogs will be able to embed in their sites. I caught a few minutes of this session. They had 63% of the people that started the registration process on their site actually get registered and get out and vote. I look forward to seeing the API and seeing where I can use it.

At 4:30, there will be a session called Make Something Pretty--Use Your Art to Advance a Progressive Agenda and a session called Hip Hop Artists and Activists: Politically Empowering a Culture of Resistance .

I chatted with some of the folks from the hip hop group and they having a special Hip Hop Organizing meeting this evening, Tuesday at 6 PM in room 1090 at the Hilton. They want to get as many people and organizations to show up to discuss both direct action now as well as long term planning.

This gathering seems to particularly capture the spirit of the self organizing sessions and I hope a lot of people attend.

(Technorati tags: tba2007, takebackamerica)