I'm in a breakout session at the New Democratic Network's daylong conference on "New Tools, New Audiences," listening to Vijay Ravindran, the CTO of Catalist, talk about web 2.0 and its development of an "Enhanced Voter File." As usual, these are my rushed notes, and at best a good paraphrase of what was said, not direct quotation.

I spent most of last night watching the Democratic election returns roll in, with the TV tuned to MSNBC but the sound turned down low, and my laptop in my hands, watching for live reaction and commentary on the event as it unfolded. Twitter, which has now become the web's virtual water-cooler, was my main guide, but while it was fun, I want more. The world live web is arguably already here, perhaps what we need to do is stitch it together a bit better for political events.

Time for some editorial housekeeping. In our never-ending quest to cover how technology is changing politics and serve the growing community of activists, technologists, journalists, politicians, government workers, bloggers and plain old citizens who are engaged in making this change happen, we are pleased to announce two new additions to our editorial crew. Dave Witzel and Allison Fine are coming on board Personal Democracy Forum as senior editors who will help expand our coverage on PersonalDemocracy.com of how mass, networked participation in the public arena is affecting all the important arenas outside of electoral campaigns (which we cover obsessively at techPresident).

Here are my notes for the talk I'm about to give at Politics Web 2.0 on "The Revolution Will Be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America.” (Caveat emptor, your experience may vary.)

Guess what? Close academic study of the presidential candidates reveals that the Democrats' site provided more information and participation opportunities, and were more professionally designed, than the Republicans'. OK, not a big surprise. More interesting and challenging: a report on how the Obama campaign in NY coped (badly) with communication overload in the weeks before the primary.

Here are my notes on a very interesting talk by Rachel Gibson of the University of Manchester, titled "Trickle-up Politics? The Impact of Web 2.0 technologies on citizen participation." I think you'll find her overview and characterizations of politics before and during the web to be very helpful.

More reporting from the front lines of academic research on politics and the internet: Now I'm sitting in on a panel with presentations on the connections between the Dean campaign and the New Left (no, he didn't slum with the Weathermen); John Kerry's innovative (!) use of the web post-2004; and Italian firebrand and antipolitician extraordinaire, Beppe Grillo.

I'm at the Politics Web 2.0 conference at the University of London, Royal Hollaway, and things have just kicked off. As always with my visits to conferences, I will try to blog that which I find interesting (I'm no Ethan Zuckerman) and all my renderings are not verbatim, but rough paraphrasing. Here are my notes on one of the first keynotes, which definitely held my attention. Helen Margetts, of the Oxford Internet Institute, is presenting on "Digital-era Governance: Peer production, Co-creation and the Future of Government." This is one area where the possible impact of the internet has been underestimated, especially within the community, she starts off. These technologies could have a huge meaning for government.

I'm taking off tomorrow morning for London, England, where I'll be speaking along with techPresident blogger Michael Turk at "Politics Web 2.0," a two-day international conference hosted by the University of London, Royal Halloway. The conference features 120 papers organised into 41 panels, with more than 180 participants drawn from over 30 countries, and is probably a bit more academic than most of the events I tend to go to these days. My talk is titled, "The Revolution Will Be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America." What do you think I should cover?

Confronted by the prospect of internet-driven public participation in crafting legislation, the past head of the American League of Lobbyists says, "What's next? Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"