The Netroots Nation 2008 convention is being held July 17 to 20 in Austin, TX.

Netroots Nation is a three-year old progressive political organization that uses blogs and other digital media to encourage public debate and political activism.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vermont ex-governor Howard Dean and congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) are just a few of the national and international experts that will be speaking at the event.

The convention will be using LocaModa’s Wiffiti application to enable simultaneous Web, mobile and in-location conversation at the event. Wiffiti will be running on large projection screens in the convention center and all messages sent by attendees will be posted in real-time on the Netroots Nation Web site and any linked blogs.

-Chantal Todé

Times are hard, budgets are tight, yet the storied Cannes thoroughfare La Croisette is throbbing with DM creatives (among those of other channel persuasions) hotly debating the work up for contention.

The results are out for the Direct and Promo Lions; JWT Mumbai snapped up the former for the Times of India Newspaper entry “Lead India,” and New York’s BBDO triumphed in the latter for the HBO entry titled Voyeur Integrated Campaign. The Cyber Lions winners will be announced on Thursday.

Meanwhile, for local flavor, I highly recommend Matt Shirtcliffe’s blog. A judge at Cannes this year, Matt is the executive creative director of Proximity Canada – and a truly splendid fellow. Yes, the entries are funny, but there’s also some great insight about the state of creativity in various markets.

…perhaps it will work for the UK’s House of Lords? I’m speaking, of course, about reaching out to youth about politics through YouTube and other online social media.

Today the Associated Press reports that Britain’s House of Lords is aiming to soften its image with young people through a series of video shorts highlighting the legislative body’s import for British history. The effort - which will consist mainly of interviews done with a pop music background - is also coupled with a newly launched House of Lords blog.

Using blogs, music videos, virtual worlds and video games is a tactic that many US marketers of finance and insurance products are investing in to appeal to youth. Recent examples include Wells Fargo’s virtual world for smart spending and Bank of America’s use of Mo Rocca’s comedy in online video ads.

There is an assumption that this sort of initiative is necessary to entertain Millennials in order to get them to pay attention to issues like voting, banking and health insurance. Strange, this group demonstrates a desire for voice in government as well as personal wealth and health security. Should these “boring” topics really be a tough sell?

Results from these campaigns are still emerging and carry an important takeaway. Companies that enter into a new medium and slap some glitter puff paint to an unchanging corporate message (Who remembers The Hub?) still seem to fail with Generation Y. But companies that focus their appeals to youth around a solid value proposition for the always-plugged-in consumer (Great example: WSJ’s Loomia) are merely leveraging new channels to build their street cred with youth.

McLuhan was right: the medium is the message. But marketers should know that their message has to stand up in any medium with buying power, and the only way to do that is understand the product or service’s value for the audience.

For more thoughts on social media’s role in marketing’s future, check out next week’s Gloves Off debate: “What works on social networking sites?”

Kathryn Pearson of the DMA has advised me that the List Leaders’ “Fast Forward