The Think Tank heads to New York to participate in Personal Democracy Forum 2009. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will give the keynote address and Day 1 kicks off with a discussion of the Obama presidential campaign between Joe Rospars, Mr. Obama’s new media director, and Mark McKinnon, an advisor to John McCain and President George W. Bush. You can check out the Day 1 schedule here.

My discussion is on Day 2 and the topic is, “State/Local Online Politicking: How Community Hubs Can Change the Scene.” I’ll be joining Jason Barnett, co-founder and executive director of The Uptake and Steve Clift, founder and executive director of e-democracy.org.

The Uptake is a video-based media organization dedicated to training citizen journalists and publishing their work. Mr. Barnett and his team have garnered a ton of media attention for their coverage of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.

E-democracy.org is a non-profit aimed at building stronger communities and democracies through the power of information and communication technologies. Very cool stuff.

I’ll be on Twitter (@blakerutherford), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/blake.rutherford) or you can e-mail me (rutherford.blake@gmail.com) with any thoughts, ideas or questions. I’ll be updating regularly here as well.