Good after­noon from Prov­i­dence! We have had a busy day so far here on the first day of the sev­enth annu­al Net­roots Nation, as you may have noticed if you’ve been fol­low­ing our morn­ing con­ven­tion coverage.

Though we try to be as descrip­tive as we can when we’re cov­er­ing pan­els, keynotes, and spe­cial events, a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, as the old adage goes. So, for your enjoy­ment, here is a short pho­to essay depict­ing the first morn­ing of Net­roots Nation 2012. All the pho­tos were tak­en by me and curat­ed by Patrick.

A view of the foyer at the Rhode Island Convention Center on the first day of Netroots Nation 2012
A view of the foy­er at the Rhode Island Con­ven­tion Cen­ter on the first day of Net­roots Nation 2012 (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The Rhode Island Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which is host­ing us for the week­end, is one of the best venues we’ve ever been in. It is nice­ly laid out, with plen­ty of com­fort­able seat­ing in the open space, lots of water sta­tions, . The walk from the exhi­bi­tion hall and main hall to the pan­el rooms is appre­cia­bly short, and because the walk involves ascend­ing or descend­ing a series of esca­la­tors, you always get a view when you’re mov­ing from one place to another.

Max Berg­er, Matt Brown­er-Ham­lin, Peg­gy Mears, and Lenore Pal­ladi­no dis­cuss the need for a con­crete plan to break up over­sized Wall Street banks like Bank of Amer­i­ca and JPMor­gan Chase (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Two sets of pan­el ses­sions were held this morn­ing (the first at 9 AM, the sec­ond at 10:30 AM). I attend­ed a pan­el called The Heart of the Beast: How the Grass­roots is Tak­ing on Big Bank­ing in a rather spa­cious ball­room which had seem­ing­ly a zil­lion chairs set out for peo­ple to sit in (many of them were filled due to high inter­est in the pan­el). The pho­to above is of that panel.

Atten­dees gath­er in the Exhi­bi­tion Hall to vis­it booths and talk to oth­er con­ven­tion­go­ers. (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The exhib­it hall is adja­cent to the main hall, as it was last year, and includes a blog­ger lounge (spon­sored by Dai­ly Kos, as seen above) and dozens of booths staffed by pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions, cam­paign ven­dors, and socially/environmentally con­scious businesses.

Winning Smarter: Using Data to Transform Elections
One of the sec­ond ses­sions on Thurs­day morn­ing includ­ed a pan­el dis­cus­sion led by Dar­cy Burn­er about the impor­tance of using data to cam­paign effecitve­ly (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The pan­els we’ve been to so far have been well-attend­ed. We under­stand from the Net­roots Nation orga­niz­ers that we may set a new record for reg­is­tra­tions this year, which would be pret­ty cool. The sec­ond pan­el I went to (Win­ning Smarter: Using Data to Trans­form Elec­tions) was held in one of the small­er ball­rooms and there was hard­ly an emp­ty seat in the room due to high interest.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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