Today Alisa and I attended the democratic state convention. The opening ceremony was held in the Mullins Center, with remarks by various guests, including John Kerry's brother Cameron. Attendance was actually rather light -- the Mullins Center was well less than half full. As a member of the 'host committee' we had seats in the very front row. It was nice to get a chance to chat with our local representatives and participate in political action.
The balance of the convention was billed as a form of political training, organized into a series of tracks for grassroots, candidates and campaigns, affirmative action, issues, and youth. We attended the grassroots track. It was a bit disappointing -- they had panels of speakers, but each speaker spoke for such a short period of time, it seemed like a lot of the time was just spent on introductions and generalities. Some of the speakers were very good and it would have been more interesting to hear them in more detail.
A lot of what was presented was fairly commonsense, but not necessarily things that would occur to everyone. How to make your group welcoming and make sure it doesn't become a 'private club'. How and when to write a press release. How to network with other local organizations to form regional collaboratives. Example flyers and links to additional resources. Lots of good nuts and bolts stuff. I'm excited about putting this stuff into practice with our local town committee.