2009 State of the Black Union

I participated in a number of the 'Blacks in Technology' events that Tavis Smiley hosted a number of years ago. I had high hopes for a growing relationship between BDPA and Tavis' folks back then. In fact, he served as honorary chair for one of our annual conferences back in the day. I understand Tavis did a nice job as the keynoter for ITSMF banquet last year.

Tavis lost a lot of points with me last year when he showed a tremendous amount of disrespect to Barack and Michelle Obama. But, this is a new year ... and President Obama urges all of us to listen to our better angels.

As such, I'm sharing some information on the 2009 State of the Black Union from the Black Web 2.0 folks.

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Tavis Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union, set for this Saturday the 28 i n Los Angeles, will use social media to carry the conversation on “Making America as Good as its Promise” far beyond the halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center where its being held.

Facebook, MySpace, BlackPlanet.com, and theloop21.com are some of the sites spreading the word about the 10th anniversary edition of the event. The event is free and open to the public, but for folks across the country or around the world it will be webcast at TavisTalks.com via BroadcastURBAN.net. Of course the event will still be aired on C-SPAN, so check local listings for station information.

Bloggers have been invited to cover the event as members of the media, and five will be on stage live blogging during the event, including Dr. Michael Fauntroy, Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff, Carmen Dixon Rosenzweig of AllAboutRace.com, conservative commentator Lenny McAllister, and Kevin Ross of 3Baas Media Group.

Each blogger will be posting about the event on their own site, so there will be a diverse range of coverage. Event sponsor Nationwide Insurance will also be live blogging on a site created just for this event.@TavisSmiley will have official event coverage on Twitter. For long time fans and history buffs, a DVD collection with highlights of SOBUs from 2000 until 2009 is available for presale, and the site also has video archives of select spots from previous SOBUs going back to 2000.

Are you planning to attend, listen or watch this year's State of the Black Union?