LIVE from Minneapolis: That’s a wrap… Day One is officially done!

The first day of Net­roots Nation 2011 has come to a close.

It was a long day, but a good day. We’ve met up with many old friends from con­ven­tions past, and made new ones. We attend­ed sev­er­al thought-pro­vok­ing pan­els, explored the exhib­it hall, and became experts at nav­i­gat­ing Min­neapo­lis’ Sky­way sys­tem. And, of course, we joined the thou­sands of oth­er activists who are here for the open­ing keynote fea­tur­ing Russ Feingold.

To say that Russ was well worth the price of admis­sion would be an under­state­ment. It was one of the most com­pelling speech­es I’ve ever heard. If you did­n’t catch it on C‑SPAN or the live stream, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to check it out when it becomes avail­able in the Net­roots Nation video archive.

Here’s a roundup of some of the tra­di­tion­al medi­a’s cov­er­age of the hap­pen­ings today, as well as a few pre­view-style sto­ries pub­lished yes­ter­day on the eve of the convention:

• Politi­co: Net­roots kicks off with all eyes on Wisconsin
• Beyond Chron: Net­roots at a Cross­roads in Min­neapo­lis This Weekend
• NPR: Pro­gres­sives to gath­er and focus on economy
• Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio: Some at lib­er­al con­fer­ence dis­en­chant­ed with Obama
• St. Paul Pio­neer Press: Polit­i­cal blog­gers from right and left get conventional

Tomor­row, there will be a Q&A ses­sion with White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Dan Pfeif­fer, more pan­els, work­shops, and train­ings, a big LiU­NA ral­ly at the Stone Arch Bridge, and a lunchtime dis­cus­sion of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. We will con­tin­ue bring­ing you live cov­er­age start­ing ear­ly in the morning.

For now, good night… and good luck. 🙂