Forgive me for having the temerity to not blog during a blogger convention. As you can imagine, it was a hectic few days. And there was value in actually participating in the event, and taking a little time to reflect .

What did YearlyKos accomplish, outside of the event's basic goals of strengthening the netroots community?

I'd say the event is helping dispel misconceptions about bloggers, misconceptions which I think are barriers to drawing more participants into the online community and giving more voters a louder voice in their democracy.

Simply holding a successful and substantive presidential forum shows that regular people engaging in politics online are enhancing the discourse, not degrading it.

What did I learn at YearlyKos?

Non-bloggers in attendance generally want to figure out how to market their ideas to the blogosphere, or in reality, to those with the most traffic in the blogosphere.

But that approach is all wrong. It's not about marketing. It's about engaging. It's about creating your own space in the blogosphere.

As a veteran blogger, I generally knew this already. But my understanding of it crystallized during the global warming panel discussion.

Panelist Bill McKibben lamented that the netroots were not a major part of the success of the Step It Up citizen action. This is true, global warming policy has not been a major focus of the most trafficked blogs.

But expecting certain blogs to lead on an issue is not what the blogosphere is about.

Each blog can't, and won't, tackle every issue. If an issue is important to you, and you want it to be heard in the blogosphere, you have to blog about it. You have to identify other bloggers, regardless of traffic, who care about it. You have to it link to them all, build a network, and make waves.

You have to either become part of an existing community, or build a community yourself.

Only if that happens regularly will the blogosphere be a inviting, vibrant and growing community, where new ideas and new voices are constantly emerging.

If individuals don't regularly take that initiative, then the blogosphere will stagnate, and just become a clique constituting another arm of the punditocracy. Not even the present crop of top bloggers want that to happen. But there's a risk of that happening.

The blogosphere has become so big that building fresh communities with others sharing similar interests is increasingly difficult.

But an event like YearlyKos (which in the future will be called Netroots Nation) with its wide range of panel discussions and highly friendly attendees, helps enormously to bring folks together.

Without it, it's hard to see the blogosphere being all it can be.