I think it was Mary Rickles that conceived of the idea of a "meatspace" get together, and thus YearlyKos was born. I missed the first one in Vegas (it was at the same time as Mr. Scribe's 50th birthday so I figured that took precedence), but made the second one in Chicago (worked registration desk so we may have crossed paths). I ended up sort of on the 3-year plan, going once every 3 years (like the World Cup) so was in Vegas in 2010 and in San Jose in 2013. If life wasn't throwing curveballs I probably would have planned to go this year...probably a good thing that shit hit the fan in my personal life before I made any reservations.

In the discussions over last year's convention being held in Phoenix, Markos made it pretty clear that the NN committee made the decision without input from him or Daily Kos (though there are members of DK on the NN committee along with other group representatives; I hesitate to use the term "progressive" because I'm not even sure who qualifies for that anymore), and thus DK was taking no official part in the convention because of the "papers please" policies of AZ.

Not sure your panel idea will fly -- when it comes to the First Amendment that only applies to government shutting down sites that disagree with the government; when it comes to individual web sites the owners are free to allow/disallow any sort of comments, whether it's Markos wanting to limit the worst of the anti-Hillary talk or a Giants fan banning all Dodgers fans from her baseball site.

Peace.