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If you ever wanted to know what we all looked like here we are.

Michael Connery, Sarah Burris, and Kevin Bondelli

I'm attending a panel right now about using social media to build an audience for your blog. It features Matt Browner Hamlin, the Online Director for the Mark Begich Senate Campaign (fomerly of the Dodd campaign and Students for a Free Tibet), Jason Rosenbaum of the Sentinel, Josh Nelson and Cheryl Contee.

Jason and Josh just are discussing best practices for getting content noticed on social news sites like Digg, Reddit, Buzzflash and Stumbleupon and they made an important point. It's very hard to get noticed by A-list bloggers or to break through the clutter on Daily Kos to get on the Recommended list or promoted to the front page. If you don't have solid connections to those bloggers already, trying to get them to link to you is not a great strategy to get noticed and build traffic (even if the audience of those blogs might seem like the most low-hanging fruit). While it may seem daunting to try to break into these social news communities, it can be a more efficient and successful strategy than trying to break through in the A-List blogs.

Other useful tips for using these site:

• Live or die by the headline. Most people try to convey their point and get people to click through to their article. That's a mistake. If you don't get on the front page, you are not going to get a lot of hits. So your goal in writing a headline should be to convince the reader to give you a vote.
• Be good community members. Don't just spam the site, but contribute other interesting articles not written by you.
• Engage the commenters. Just like on Daily Kos, you have to engage the community to build traffic and votes. And on sites like Digg, the number of comments can impact the algorithm and play a role in getting you on the front page.
• Have a small pool of allies - readers or cobloggers - to help jump-start your article with a few votes. It takes no time and on smaller sites like Buzzflash it can quickly help you get to the front page.

Netroots Nation, the blogger-spawned progressive conference formerly known as Yearly Kos, will be in Austin this week from Thursday through Sunday and Future Majority will be there in force.

If you're a young person, young at heart, or curious about the youth vote, here's where you'll find us:

Thursday
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Youth Caucus: 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM; Caucus, Room 18B

My flight gets in at 12:30 and I hope to make it to the latter half of the caucus, but look for Bondelli, Sarah, Jane or other FM contributors mixing with the crowd.

Friday
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Youth to Power Book Signing: 11:30 AM - 12PM; Exhibit Hall Ballroom D, IG Publishing booth #315.

I'll be signing books alongside fellow IG author and blogger Jeffrey Feldman. We also have a Facebook event for this - go RSVP and invite others.

What's Next for the Next Generation? 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM, Workshop, Room 18D.

Jane Fleming Kleeb of the Young Voter PAC joins Gina Glantz and others to discuss how to move a youth policy agenda after the elections.

Saturday
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Online Engagement to Offline Activism: 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM; Panel, Ballroom F

Myself, Jane Fleming Kleeb of the Young Voter PAC, Tony Cani of the Young Democrats, Sam Dorman of The League, Hans Riemer of the Obama Campaign, Maria Teresa Peterson of Voto Latino and Andrew Villaneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute will lead a concrete discussion on tactics to engage young voters online and move that support offline into the field. Bring your own ideas and be prepared to share.

For those of you who are curious, you can view video of the youth vote panel from last year here.

Celebrity Bartender After Party: Cedar Door’s Biergarten, 2nd and Brazos. 10pm - Midnight.

Once the day is done, we're teaming up with Living Liberally and the Young Voter PAC for a big throw-down celebrity bartender event. From 10pm to Midnight, Markos of Daily Kos, Matt Stoller of Open Left, candidates Scott Kleeb and Darcy Burner and more will serve you drinks. All food and drinks will be free for the first hour. You can buy tix, which go to support the Young Voter PAC, here.

This will be a great way to start your final night in Austin, and if previous years are any indicator, we'll all take the party elsewhere until the wee hours of the morning.

More details below. Hope to see you in Austin.

Sorry for the site hiccup earlier today. We were trying to get rid of a bug with the user profiles and the site didn't want to play nice.

Here's the last of my catchup - a rundown on some stories you may have missed while you were out BBQ and watching giant explosions in the sky.

• The Hip Hop Caucus reports that anti-affirmative action measures will likely be on the ballot in Arizona and Nebraska this fall. Will that be a boon or an albatross around the neck of candidates like Scott Kleeb? I'm not sure. This might rally the Republican base, but young voters are a tolerant group; this could backfire on the GOP.
• Beginning today, the interest rates on student loans have decreased. College Democrats have the lowdown on what that will mean for students.
• The New York Times profiles Chris Hughes and the Obama social networking operation.
• The Rothenberg Report profiled a long-shot but interesting race in which 29 year old Josh Segall is taking on a Republican incumbent in Alabama. I'm going to see about getting Josh to live-blog. If anyone can hook that up, please contact me.
• Sam Stein at The Huffington Post notes that redistricting will be a major issue in 2010 when 32 gubernatorial elections will determine whether Democrats or Republicans benefit most from the next round of gerrymandering.
• Katrina Vanden Huevel has a must-read piece on reforming our voting system - top to bottom.
• Obama is running into some trouble with his supporters over his flip-flop on FISA and everyone from bloggers to Bob Herbert have weighed in. Will Obama listen to the grassroots uprising within his own support base? This is a big test for just how open and bottom-up the Obama campaign really is.

Just got back from my vacation and I'm rested and ready for the long haul through the election. I've been reading through the content from the last week and the guest bloggers did an amazing job. The content on the site while I was away was fantastic. Thanks so much to all those who guest blogged.

For everyone else, be sure to check out the wonderful organizations run by our guest bloggers:

• Living Liberally - political action through social interaction.
• Young Elected Officials Network - Helping elect young people to office.
• Swing Semester - Spend a semester on the campaign trail.
• The League - Culturally relevant outreach to young, underserved communities.
• Forward Montana - Kick-ass youth organizing in the mountain west.
• Young Voter PAC - Electing youth-friendly Democrats.
• Democrats Work - Political action through community service.

And of course, a big thanks to Kevin and Sarah for making sure the site ran smoothly.

I've got a couple hundred emails and a few thousand blog posts to catch up on. I'll probably post periodically throughout the day as I catchup and be fully back in the swing of things tomorrow.

Temporarily bumped to the top since PDF pushed it down the page pretty darn fast. --Mike

I've been mentioning it here and there for a couple weeks now, and those of you who come to the site regularly have already seen it, but I"m happy to say that we're finally through with the redesign here at Future Majority. Aside from the slicker (and I hope hipper) look, there are a few new features that I want to explain very quickly, and one favor that I want to ask you to do for us.

New Features

User Blogs: Hands down, this is the biggest change in the functionality of the site. Previously, only the front page writers (myself, Alice, Kevin) and a few guest writers could post blogs here at Future Majority. That's no longer the case. Now, anyone who is a registered user can post a blog on whatever topic they want, just like on Daily Kos, MyDD, or Open Left. Those blogs will appear in the "Recent Blog Posts" box on the sidebar, right below "Breaking News." Right now, that sidebar is set to display all content posted on FM. As more and more users blog on a regular basis, I'll switch the settings and make all content in that space user-generated. I'll be reading all the user blogs as they're posted, and I expect that some of it will be promoted to the front page. As distinctive voices emerge, I expect that some users will find themselves with front-page posting privileges.

Here's where the favor comes in. Not only do I hope you'll all contribute your thoughts here at Future Majority as you would at the other - and undeniably far larger - online progressive blog communities, but I'm asking you to tell all the young, politically active people you know about Future Majority and encourage them to blog here. This isn't necessarily a selfish ask - there's something in it for you too.

This site has a far smaller audience than the bigger blogs, but the audience is quite influential. Whereas a post by a young person about youth organizing, youth voting, or a young perspective on a policy issue will usually get drowned out on the major blog communities like Daily Kos, on Future Majority what you write will be read by most progressive youth leaders, campaign staffers, funders, and yes, some of the leaders in the blogosphere. In short - it's a great place to get your voice heard without the need to compete with thousands of other voices clamoring to be heard. When candidates like Scott Kleeb and Darcy Burner come on the site, you have a direct line to talk to them without competing against 100 other commenters.

So please join our community, write a blog, and invite your friends to do so as well.

Video Feeds: Yes, we had video feeds in the previous incarnation of the site, but the videos were small and difficult to watch. That's changed. If you click on the video link at the top of the page, you'll find a list of videos getting pulled in from 20 different sites - The Onion, TPMtv/Veracifier, 23/6, News in Color, comedy sites, news sites, kick-ass user sites, youth sites and more. The content is better, but so is the display. Click on one of the thumbnails and you'll see what I mean as the movie begins to play. We also now have the ability to comment and have discussions about individual videos.

Finally, you'll notice in the main sidebar underneath the new user blogs, one large video. This is the featured video - everyday I'll be picking my favorite video of the day and promoting it to the front page in that slot.

Progressive Training Calendar: Look a little bit further down the sidebar and you'll see the Progressive Training Calendar. This is a great widget created by the Center for Progressive Leadership listing more than a hundred progressive training opportunities across the country for the next three months. Pulling information from over a dozen organizations, it's a great resource for anyone looking to hone their political chops and a useful way to stay aware about what training opportunities are available in your area.

Research and Resources: Finally, we have greatly condensed and reorganized the variety of resources available on the site. Click on the Research and Resources tab and you will find fact sheets, reports, voting data, best practices and case studies from leading research institutions like CIRCLE, the Harvard Institute of Politics, The New Politics Institute and Rock the Vote organized and categorized for ease of youth. If you are looking for research on young voters, you won't find this many reports from so many research institutions in one place.

Debugging: One final note - there may still be a few bugs in the system. If you find any, leave a comment here or send me an email through our contact form.

We're going to be doing some back-end work this weekend so the site may be wonky between now and Monday. But it will be worth it. If all goes well, we're going to have a snazzy new design and we'll be implementing user diaries so anyone can come on and post.

Just a quick announcement - I'm going to be on the final episode of Seder on Sundays tomorrow between 4 and 7 eastern. Also on the show - Naomi Klein, David Sirota, and Larry Bartels. We're all discussing our respective books. My segment will air at the top of the show.

Listen if you can. Details here.

Sorry for the site outage today. "Emergency Server Maintenance" took a little longer than expected.

Here's what you missed today:

• The Senate vote on the GI Bill of Rights is tomorrow. - Campus Progress
• David All is asking "Tech Republicans" how they can win "Gen Next." It's been almost a day and no one has answered his call for ideas. - Tech Republican
• More arguments as to why the Republican's lack of youth appeal is a political death sentence. - Huffington Post
• The increase in cellphone only households is starting to throw pollsters for a loop. This is not just a youth issue anymore. - Pollster.com
• Republicans seem to think that the indie rock band The Decembrists are responsible for Obama's 75,000 person crowd in Oregon. News flash - the Decembrists don't play stadium tours, they play clubs. - Sadly No
• Kevin Bondelli has some basic advice on how to go about creating a political group on Facebook for your organization/chapter. - Kevin Bondelli's Youth Blog
• I know I've spoken about getting younger people involved in philanthropy, but this is a little ridiculous - Time
• Brian Beutler has even more information about how McCain consistently sells out vets. - The Nation
• More young people are opting to go to grad school and racking up larger debts (like me!). Is it necessary? - Newsday
• The Oregon Bus Project published an op-ed in their hometown paper. - The Oregonian

FYI, I was just informed that due to some emergency server maintenance, Future Majority may be down tomorrow between 9am and 3pm Eastern. Could last for 5 minutes, could be considerably longer. So if the site doesn't load for you, try again later.

It's an unfortunate, but not unexpected inconvenience.