The NDP is holding their leadership convention on March 23-24 in Toronto, and they put out the word a month or so back that they would be accrediting bloggers to cover their convention. After some consultations, instead of applying as representing my individual blog, I decided to apply to represent Progressive Bloggers as an organization, along with my 1 moderator James Calder (who blogs at the Progressive Right) and Chris Slothouber, our webmaster/coder.
We received the word just recently that Progressive Bloggers has been approved to attend and cover the Convention. That involves a fair bit of things: we are allowed access to the convention floor, the NDP’s “Blog Command Centre” (which should be interesting), and all the exclusive parties and events happening over the weekend, plus a nice discount at the hotel the NDP is using, if we needed it (which I won’t). What it doesn’t involve is just as important: bloggers are not paying an overly exorbitant fee with little to show for it other then an “observer status”, or having to beg mainstream media to vouch for us – something another Canadian political party could learn lessons from, but I digress.
It will be interesting to cover this convention and compare it to the last leadership convention bloggers covered, which was the 2006 Liberal Leadership Convention, which I had the pleasure of attending. Since we will be there representing Progressive Bloggers as a whole, and not our individual blogs, I hope that our writings – if we do some, which I expect we will – will be overall observations of the Convention, and not as partisanship charged. We all have our biases, but we will try our best.
To my blogging comrades and political friends/foes, either there as fellow accredited folks, or as delegates on the nDP convention floor, I hope to see you there (will probably be there only for the Saturday part of the Convention).
