I know I haven't had a lot to say since Thursday night about the convention. Well, absolutely nothing to say. At the moment I'm trying to get caught up on my own life and business. There will be some more posts, more or less reflections about the convention and my time in Denver. It was at the same time both inspiring and infuriating.
Inspiring because I had an opportunity to meet a lot of great people, hear many great speeches, and listen to some great music.
Frustrating for a number of reasons - the incredible presence of police throughout the city (and the tendency for many of them to work much harder at frightening and intimidating people than being helpful), the huge amount of corporate money going into what amounts to a TV extravaganza, and my frequent feeling that there just was not a lot of consequence to do.
Many of the speeches expressed the hope I feel that the country will make a serious change in direction. But the general hoopla and money involved made it clear that in many ways life is still politics as usual. I don't see any way for the people of the US to take back their country when the attempt to take it back involves handing out schwag bags to all of the attendees emblazoned with Coke and AT&T logos.
One thing I found interesting was that the experience at Invesco field was much less choreographed than the evenings at the Pepsi Center - it would have been impossible to get a crowd that size to perform on queue. The feel of the evening was therefore quite a lot different - looser, and more genuine, even in the state delegations. The crowd was huge, and I think the response to the speeches was much more genuine.
I'm not sure that this is an experience I will repeat. It was an interesting way to spend a week, and I'm glad I went. But for anyone craving actual hard news, the only real action I experience was due to the protests, not the performance going on in the convention hall. I think that if I were to do it over again I'd probably try to be in the general blogger pool rather than the state blogger pool - the state bloggers were given a lot of close contact with the floor during the convention, but in many ways that was the most isolated place in Denver. I'd only be likely to do this at the next convention if it could be done with a team (which many of the other blogging organizations had). As it was, so much of the day was taken up in logistics of obtaining the daily credentials and getting around town that it left precious little time to do interview with the delegates (hopeless in the convention hall due to the noise and press of people).
I hope that the opportunity to see the convention from the delegation floor was at least a little useful in and of itself.
Right at the moment I need to get back to finishing the drywall repairs I started before I had to get in the car for Denver last week. I'll probably have more to say about the convention in the next few days, and I have a potload of photos and video that I will use in some way to make a gallery when I finish decompressing.
SO - what did all of you think of the convention?