Welcome to the capital of the on-line nation (well, at least through Sunday)

If your web connection seems to be running a little slower for the next few days, fear not, gentle reader. It will just be the ripple effect of bandwidth-gobbling and backbone-machine-stretching that comes from having the biggest on-line political writers and some serious Democratic heavy-hitters in town. The Netroots Nation convention is in town, so ever progressive blogger in the nation is down at the convention center, trying to work out how to turn page hits into votes come November.

For more on the convention, check out our earlier coverage, including a quick guide to Netroots, a guide to the main convention, the role of bloggers in politics, some more about why it came to Austin, and our interview with Chris Bowers of OpenLeft. There’s also some anticipated highlights that are on our radar.

Like everyone else in the building, Newsdesk will be blogging up a storm at the various events over the next four days. Here’s hoping there’s no Zuckerberg Moment (the jury is still out on whether that was popular democracy in action, or just a Twitter-powered mob.)

This article appears in July 11 • 2008.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.