Upcoming events that are sure to touch on issues of participation and democracy include:

• Netroots Nation (formerly known as YearlyKos) "amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate." Micah and Andrew will represent PdF there, you can get $75 off (enter promo code "PDF"), and it is in Austin this year (July 17-20). How can you lose?
• If you can't leave Washington, DC you can hang with the Feds at "Social Media for Government" (July 14-17). Sessions will include topics like How To Monitor Community Conversation, RSS, podcasting, and social media on the intranet.
• If you can't leave your desk, John Wonderlich from The Open House Project will be taking questions live and online on Thursday July 10 at 2pm ET.
• For the more academically inclined, the IEEE's ICDIM has a track on "eGovernment and eParticipation at the crossroad: how social software, SOAs and semantic technologies transform the citizen-state interaction". While the conference isn't until November, the call for papers is out now.

I'll track what I hear about on this calendar. Leave a comment or send me a note if you know of an event that should be included.

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