Just over a week ago, Fox News host Glenn Beck announced that he would be rolling out a series of "educational conventions" to be held around the country starting in Orlando, Florida, next spring on March 27 at the UCF Arena. He told a crowd at The Villages retirement community in that "up on GlennBeck.com we've partnered with a company called Eventful" where people can vote for their area. The whole series is supposed to culminate on August 28 in Washington, DC, "at the feet of Abraham Lincoln" (a date and location that ought to make students of the civil rights movement wince).

Since then, more than 37,800 people have gone onto Eventful to "demand" that Beck come to their town. Their numbers are spread over nearly 5,000 locations, with Houston at the top of the list with 846 and tiny Hartford, South Dakota one of several towns with just one "demand" for Beck.

This morning I attended the Adfero Group's Winning in a Web World forum at the US Chamber of Commerce. The topic of this forum was "How Associations Engage Online in a Presidential Election." The half-day forum started out with a panel on User Generated Campaigns, featuring among others one of our newest TechPresident colleagues, Patrick Ruffini. Patrick was joined by David Almacy, who used to serve as the Internet and eCommunications Director for the White House and is now a digital media strategy consultant. The second panel featured e-advocacy strategists from AARP, Children's Defense Fund, and Strong Schools for America to talk about how they were leveraging the campaigns to raise awareness of their issues.

It took just a few hours, but at the moment it looks like the same grass-roots army that has been showing up online and on the streets for Barack Obama has also swung into gear on Eventful.com's new Politics page.