Day 1 of FORA @ the Democratic Convention

It's morning in America.

Well, morning in Denver anyway, as my already jamming partners Stuart Schulzke and Trevar Mazza stumble out of bed. Trevar went to bed at 2am after producing some video segments and set the alarm at 2:30 to start new importing new footage. Hotels are booked out to Wyoming so we rented a friend's condo, which makes work seem like a frat retreat (pizza delivery!).

Hot on the heels of our successful coverage of the Aspen Ideas Festival, where we produced daily highlights, and provided backstage interviews and a customized social networking widget, we are experimenting once again. We thought Day 1 would be our lightest day but ended up with:
-- interviews with Danny Glover and Giancarlo Esposito at a Creative Coalition screening
-- a briefing by New Republic editors on what's happening behind the scenes at the convention
-- a panel discussion called "How Would They Govern?" co-sponsored by Brookings and AEI led by FORA favorites Norman J. Ornstein (AEI) and Thomas E. Mann (Brookings Institution). Panelists include Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); former senators Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), and Gary Hart (D-Colo.); former representative Abner Mikva (D-Ill.); and reporters David Rogers of Politico, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Dan Nowicki of the Arizona Republic.
-- At FORA partner Tattered Cover bookstore, a panel with leading thinkers on sustainability and the future of energy, including Rep. Ed Markey, Cass Sunstein, Senator Jeff Bingaman and others. Moderator Frank Foer, executive editor of The New Republic, moderated and also conducted interviews with participants for FORA after the event.
-- We outfitted several TNR writers with Flip video cameras to do backstage interviews with delegates, journalists and political leaders. We are getting spectacular footage as we try to develop efficient production systems to shoot, collect, vet and post. Watch the clips from the Hillary convention HQ with TNR's Eve Fairbanks. A great look at delegate emotions, the ambience of the venue, and the positioning of candidates.

We checked in with Gerry Baker of the Times of London who is assembling a terrific line-up of leading political observers for interviews this week. We ended up at a late night Times of London co-sponsored party, practicing our Flip video BarCam interview technique and then headed home. Gerry will also be doing interviews for FORA at the Republic Convention. He told us about a recent story he did about Obama as Biblical pilgrim ("he ventured forth to bring light to the world...") complete with his reading of the story. It is great reading and the video is hilarious.

Visit the FORA@DNC page and watch the videos as they post from the venue. Most will get to air within hours of the event, with the rich FORA experience of chapters, speaker bios, embeddable players and links, and downloads for convenient viewing/ listening.

A big day today. Stuart is at 24 Hour Fitness (new corporate membership! the benefits keep on coming!), Trevar is producing video clips, and I'm blogging and wondering who thought of breakfast.