Bloggers Convene in NOLA @ Rising Tide

As media attention focuses on New Orleans and Katrina anniversary observances, bloggers are massing in the city to demonstrate “Internet activism” at the Rising Tide Conference this weekend.

The conference Saturday at the Howlin’ Wolf intends to bring bloggers together to “dispel myths, promote facts, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels.”

The conference agenda is here.

The keynote speaker is Mother Jones’ human rights reporter Mac McClelland, who’s been covering the BP spill in the Gulf.

Conference organizer Sharon Barnhart said earlier this week she’d working on a live feed, but certainly the conference Twitter and Facebook sites are actively reporting on the event.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally-built levees.  After the disaster, the Internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the fl ood, the bloggers of NewOrleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.