Miss Netroots Nation this year? Perhaps the next best thing to being there, Slate's intrepid Christopher Beam somehow managed to drag himself nearly every single session at the fourth annual assemblage of left-leaning bloggers, held in Pittsburgh last week. Though he did draw the line at "the fifth event on 'messaging.'" That kind of coverage seems nearly impossible, but perhaps Beam walks really, really fast. I'm thinking there was copious Red Bull involved. Anyway, Beam hunted around for a central theme, and came up with this: How does the netroots hold President Barack Obama accountable to the progressive vision he ran on, without providing ammunition and momentum to the other side?

The ever-insightful Digby, reported Beam, cited FDR: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." In other words, goes the thinking, there is much that liberal bloggers and Obama agree on. Where they can serve is by creating the political momentum to make that change possible. It was the same point that NN '09 keynoter Bill Clinton made when he angrily told a heckler in the audience that the reason his Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy on gay servicemembers fell short because activists on the left failed, not him. The extra-governmental left failed to create the political will in Congress for a smarter and more resilient policy on gay folks in the military, said Clinton. And so, when DADT went out into the world, it got warped and queered into an unworkable approach. Clinton's message to netrooters: Keep Obama in check, for sure. But focus the bulk of your energies on pushing for the change you both want.

In other Netroots Nation news, its been announced that the 2010 gathering will be held July 22-25 in that land of Elvis impersonators and chocolate fountains known as Las Vegas. (Photo credit: Matt Ortega)

The former prez keynoted last week's Netroots Nation gathering of progressive bloggers and those that love them. Which includes Bill Clinton. Knowing the crowd like he knows how many antiretroviral drug doses are available in each African country, Clinton rewarded the crowd with a savvy assessment of their importance in the political sphere. He thanked the assembled bloggers for "dramatically elevating the level of our public discourse, and the base of knowledge and people participate...in reading" -- here he waved a hand -- "all the things that you put out." Ol '41 noted that he carries around more articles from "blog sites" than from newspapers.

Think of him what you will, but Clinton has a certain gift. He reliably extracts the essential and, in retrospect, obvious truth of a situation and serves it up on a platter. There it appears to glisten with insight. If you're the subject of his reflection, you feel good that he understands you so. And so it was with the bloggers. Clinton framed the depth of knowledge that bloggers can bring to a topic by saying that, often, they are unburdened by the demands of time, resources, and audience that can drag down newspaper folk. Many are free to write once or twice a week, he said, and thus can bring a certain genius to the table. Plus, they can take sides, and that's a good thing.

Not a bad assessment of how things work from the past president.

Yesterday, in the city by the bay, Netroots Nation hosted an information and idea-packed New Media Summit in part to gather Bay Area locals and also to convene progressive activists in preparation for the Netroots Nation conference coming in August.

The half day program, followed by a party, began with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ended with candidate for CA Attorney General, Kamala Harris, and contained some fascinating panels on different aspects of new media in politics and activism. As always, Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) drew interest from the full house, as did Clara Jeffery (Mother Jones), Karl Frisch (Media Matters), Cheryl Contee (Jack & Jill Politics), Gina Cooper (Netroots Nation founder), and speakers from Digg, Facebook and Ning.

"At this point," writes Colin Delany on techPresident, "the Internet is pretty much done." Our work here is finished! Actually, Colin's talking about the idea that new media campaign staffers' heavy lifting is behind them. But let's play dumb and indeed jump ahead a week to start thinking transition; Will the Huffington Post and its ilk be old news by next Wednesday? That's the question being asked by Advertising Age's Nat Ives. There's evidence indicating that the answer leans "yep;" Forget robocalls, says Salon's Farhad Manjoo. Their efficacy is more rooted in myth than fact. Text messaging is where it's at, argues Farhad, and it's also where Obama and his robust mobile campaign has a huge lead over McCain and his non-existent one.

The Prince of Darkness explains away his propagation of the story that John McCain was picking a running mate this week by saying that all he did was post the story on the Internet; barackobama@gmail.com is not the direct connection to the Democratic candidate's inbox that we may have thought it was; a new video feature puts congressional competitors head-to-heard, answering the same questions; and loads more.

A straw poll of attendees at last week's Netroots Nation conference finds that respondents have different priorities for themselves and their president; Ed Cone interviews the Next Right's Jon Henke will DC's new-media-media young conservatives are profiled in the hometown press; Twitter stats reveal which recent conferences generated the most chatter; and much, much more.

In today's Daily Digest, we rather exhaustively recap Netroots Nation and RightOnline, the blogger conferences held this past week and weekend in Austin, Texas.

Both the online left and the online right gather in Austin, though the size and profile of Netroots Nation demonstrates the distance that conservatives still have to travel on the Internet; a congressman takes up a new post as Flip-equipped correspondent for the effort to move elections to a more sensible day; a candidate's web comic helps to sextuple the existing fundraising record in his race; and much, much more.

I'm in Austin, Texas for the Netroots Nation conference today and tomorrow, and will try to do some live video interviews as I bump into people and post them here. I'm speaking tomorrow on a panel on "Transparency, Participation and Reinvention in Government in the Next Administration Through Web 2.0 Tools and Culture," which I think could have had the shorter title of "Rebooting Government in 2009" but you get the drift.

Bill Richardson and -- sooprise, sooprise -- Ron Paul come out on top of Slate's vice-presidential picker; the Obama campaign is, in the words of one Dean veteran, not innovative but "extraordinarily professional;" we get a look into how professionally-made video fits into the Obama campaign; and much, much more.