Netroots Nation: Pub Quiz ][ !

Last year, y'all booed Mother Theresa and got written up in the NYT.  How can we follow it up?

My friends, we will indeed have PubQuiz ][ next Friday afternoon, July 18, starting at 5pm at the Champions Sports Bar in Austin, just across the street from the Convention Center.  

In other words, our beer supply problem from last year has been solved (plus margaritas!).  Also, there will be food available.

But for the uninitiated, let's talk about the quiz itself, and I'll just self-plagiarize (and edit) from last year:

Most disagreements among the netroots cannot be easily settled -- which candidate would best bring change to Washington? What region of the country hosts the most active political grassroots? What website has the most interesting analysis?

On Friday, July 18, however, some of these scores will be settled, albeit in another realm.  During Friday's happy hour, Netroots Nation will host its second annual Political Pub Quiz, a trivia contest in the British tradition to allow teams of 4-8 to test their knowledge of current events, civics and American history in a fast-paced, fun format.  Without the aid of Google, which teams will remember the subject matter of the Gadsden Purchase, or the name of the current head of the Department of Veterans Affairs?

The event will consist on multiple themed rounds of trivia questions of increasing difficulty to test the teams' knowledge of fundamental and arcane facts.  Teams can organize on whatever basis they choose -- preferred websites, regions of the country, preferred candidates -- and we'll help you form teams onsite for unaffiliated participants to break the ice.

Prizes will be awarded for the winning teams.  They may be shiny.  More importantly is the title of "Biggest Nerds In The Blogosphere," which the winning team may trumpet until Netroots Nation 2009.

Last year's winners were Raf Noboa and the Loofahpalooza team, which bested the Calitics, MoveOn, GardenBloggers, Connecticut for Lieberman, ActBlue and other squads on these questions.

Please start organizing your teams (and bragging about their chances), and if you're with an organization or candidate that has swag which we can distribute as prizes, let me know.   Because as of now, we have none.

Also: I can't quite do this all myself, and I will need some assistants on-site.  These are some of the tasks for which I could use some help (and these responsibilities will overlap):

• Team/individual registration and assignment
• Distribution of answer sheets
• Scorekeepers
• Narcs.  I need folks to police the room to prevent the use of outside reference tools (PDAs, laptops, cellphones, etc), because no one wants to test how fast you and your friends can Google.

The Connecticut for Lieberman team's mid-tournament protest can still be viewed at this link:

Are you in?  Let us know.