Midway highlights from Right Online 2012

Am at Right Online again this year, Americans for Prosperity's foremost technology-savvy organization on the right. The theme generally seems to be combating the dirty tricks of the left online. The left attacks conservative bloggers by trying to get their social media accounts shut down, attacking them legally and through harassment, known as swatting, and spamming their hashtags on Twitter. Another theme was the disparaging way the dinosaur left wing media treats the new media. Democrat pundit Juan Williams tried to dismiss Michelle Malkin on Fox News a few days ago by referring to her as "just a blogger." Pretty lame considering Malkin has been a syndicated columnist with left-leaning newpapers for years, started her journalism career writing for left-leaning newspapers, and now is one of the most successful figures on the right with New York Times bestselling books. During the conference, #justablogger became a hot hashtag. A third theme was remembering Andrew Breitbart, especially through learning from his tactics.

Friday night opened with the Vice-President of The Venetian welcoming the conference. He announced that The Venetian is the only non-union property on the Las Vegas strip - and it provides the highest level of benefits to employees.

The speakers discussed how the left is using personal attacks against people instead of refuting their arguments with substantive responses. Sure enough, by late Friday evening, several haters started tweeting  personal information about bloggers tweeting about Right Online.

Michelle Malkin, the biggest hero to Right Online as someone who really understands how to effectively use social media, gets more and more clever every time she speaks. She said if she had to defend all the garbage that comes from the left, she'd look like Joy Behar too. She descried the Occupiers as the "last gasp tools of the labor unions." She said we are living in the worst era for suppression of free speech that she's ever seen in our lifetime. Bloggers are now afraid to even mention the name Brett Kimberlin for fear of being swatted.

AFP's Tim Phillips introducing Sarah Palin

A clip from the movie Hating Breitbart was shown. It included a quote from Thomas Jefferson, "Nothing can be believed which is read in a newspaper."

At the end of the evening, the movie Occupy Unmasked was shown. It was started by Breitbart and finished by other conservative filmmakers after he passed away. David Bossie, one of the filmmakers, noted Ann Coulter's name for the Occupy movement: the Flea Party.The Occupy movement is nothing more than the organized left. One of the segments featured reporter Michelle Fields from The Daily Caller asking a paid protester outside of CPAC if he knew what CPAC was. He didn't. One of the best lines in the movie from Breitbart, "If you put information out on the internet about someone in order to silence them, you are a COWARD!"

Sarah Palin was full of humor, mocking the media for spending so much time trying to figure out things like who is really the mother of Trig. She told Right Online, "The more effective you become, the bigger a target you become for the left." She went on a full throttle assault against the lamestream media, "The cocktail circuit gives me a hard time for eating elk and moose...but there is a difference between that and eating dog; anyone have a pet moose?"

On Saturday morning, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, and several others spoke. Malkin said we use the pound hashtag becaue that's what we do to the left - pound them. Hewitt had some great advice for the hundreds of bloggers all trying to get their stories out, "We all need to encourage each other, not compete with each other, there is room for all of us."

Katie Harbath, a conservative working for Facebook, told the social media breakout session that the best free apps for Facebook are at involver.com and appbistro.com. She said there are 8-10 million conservatives on Twitter, and 10-12 million liberals. However, some of the most popular pages on Facebook are conservative sites. She said that photos get twice the interest as text posts. visual.ly and easel.ly can help you make infographics. 9 and 10 pm are the most popular times on Facebook for activity.

The Heritage Foundation has hired an investigative reporter, another sign that the liberal dinosaur media is gradually being replaced by new media. Lachlan Markay spoke to the social media breakout session and suggested people use filtertweeps.com to search Twitter with an amazing level of precision.

In another social media breakout session on blogging, Gateway Pundit said the media is despicable to attack us as bloggers considering the garbage they put out. Well, it won't matter in five years. Most lamestream newspapers will no longer exist. Have you noticed how many former lamestream reporters are now working for corporations instead? :-)

Social Media breakout session - photo courtesy of Erin Haust