Ruby Sinreich's blog

Only a few days left to nominate Orange Politics for a Bloggie award! The deadline is Monday. But which category suits us best? Best Weblog About Politics, Best Topical Weblog, Best Group Weblog, Best Community Weblog, or maybe Best-Kept-Secret Weblog...?

Seriously, I would really like to spread the idea of local political blogging to other communities and this is a great way to get the word out. We have already inspired one imitator, Evergreen Politics which is a group blog about issues in Washington State.

You have to get a lot of nominations just to be judged, so please take a moment to nominate OrangePolitics.org as well as other deserving web sites. Thanks!

I am so excited to see the increasing number of people blogging in and around Orange County! Greensboro has a thriving blogger community (see Greensboro 101, GSOlive, and TriadBlogs - much of this is due to inspiration by Ed Cone), I wonder if we could (or would want to) do the same here? The ball has already started rolling with a conference about blogging to be held in Chapel Hill on February 12. Yours truly will be there, and I hope some of you will come to represent the participants in this "blog community" as well.

A number of us have been talking about developing a list of local bloggers. There is already a Triangle list being maintained at NCblogs.com, but I think there would be some value in a list of blogs that discuss or are from Orange County specifically.

Two members of the Hillsborough Town Board are accused of communicating via their PDAs during a meeting. It's unlikely they really did unless they have really fancy PDAs (most of them don't communicate with the outside world independently). But what are the implications of the open meetings law when you have open wireless networks in both Chapel Hill and Carrboro Town Halls?

If a member of the Board or Council posts something to a website or sends an e-mail during a meeting, would that be a violation? What if one of their colleagues also visited that public website during the meeting? What if a constituent sends an e-mail to their repsentative lobbying them on a issue they are voting on during the meeting?