Last year, Bill Hobbs, who is a fellow member of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), convinced the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to cover their annual convention in Nashville. He wrote several posts, including one about a session where State Legislators explored “the role blogs and other Internet technologies have in the policymaking process”.

He included an email that he sent to the NCSL pressroom suggesting that the MBA and NCSL work together to get more bloggers covering the 2007 convention in Boston. I haven’t heard anything recently from the MBA about this, but on a mailing list of progressive bloggers interested in regional issues, one person asked if anyone was going to the convention. Since Boston isn’t far from here, I figured it would be a good trip for me. So, I signed up as a member of the press and communicated with their Public Affairs Staff to confirm my attendance.

In Bill’s post last year, he spoke about how only around 100 people showed up for the session on E-Legislatures: Technology and the Policymaking Process. A staffer for NCSL commented that with the packed agenda that NCSL has, 100 people showing up to a session is actually pretty impressive.

As I look through the agenda for the 2007 convention, I have to agree with the staffer. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading through the agenda trying to decide which sessions to attend. It is going to be very hard to choose.

I posted on a mailing list that I’m going to the convention and asked what sessions they would like to see covered, and I’m getting some suggestions there. If you have any thoughts about what sessions you would like to see me cover, please let me know.

Next week I hope to post more about the different sessions I plan on attending as well as other thoughts about the convention. Stay tuned.