The Sunlight staff spent yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference (podcasts are available), a day well spent. After comparing notes this morning each of us came away with new information and new connections in the intersecting worlds of technology and politics. If you were there you know what I mean.

Probably best of all we had a chance to meet some of our colleagues (like Josh Koenig at Trellon who is principally responsible for this website) and Michael Bassik of MSHC Partners who designed our Congresspedia web ads. (We’d never met even though Michael’s office in just down the block from ours!). Alas, there were lots of folks there that I wanted to connect with, but didn’t have a chance, like Mike Krempasky of RedState.org, Rebecca Donatelli of Campaign Solutions, Joe Green of Essembly.com and Jerome Armstrong, but knowing that we were all there gives me the excuse to call them up — or email them —  to try to get together for coffee or lunch. And finally, there were some wonderful longstanding colleagues like David Donnelly, Allison Fine, and Nancy Watzman to brainstorm with about the future directions of Sunlight. All in all, quite the remarkable collection of people.

Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are to be congratulated for this annual meeting.