Bloggers' Presence Grows at 2008 Democratic National Convention

The 2008 DNC is expected to be the most blogged-about political convention in history.

The Democratic Party says it has granted press credentials to around 120 bloggers. That, of course, is just a tiny sliver of the estimated 15,000 total media here in Denver, but it's more than twice the number of credentials granted to bloggers at the 2004 DNC in Boston, I'm told.

The increased presence of the bloggers is interesting for a few reasons. The first is the immediacy we've come to expect of coverage of events like the one happening here; many of the bloggers will be blogging in real time from the floor of the convention center. Also, many of the bloggers are either one-man shows or small, independent "citizen journalism" pubs that may portray the convention in a very different way than larger "establishment" media outlets.

The growing number of bloggers underlines the need for massive amounts of broadband connectivity here. The volume of wired and wireless calls, e-mails, instant messaging, text messages, blogs and video that will eminate from the Pepsi Center and INVESCO Field is expected to be massive. So connectivity, and the performance and reliability of that connectivity, has become a central focus of the organizers of the convention. Same story with the Republican convention, which kicks off September 1 in Minneapolis.

Qwest, the official voice and data provider of the DNC, says it added an additional 2,600 data lines and 3,400 voice circuits to support all that digital traffic from both the Pepsi Center and INVESCO Field, where Obama is expected to accept the nomination. Bloggers and other media people will have access to a total of 5,500 voice and data lines, Qwest says. Infrastructure-wise, Qwest says it ran an additional 3,344 miles of single strands of fiber and 140 miles of single strands of copper and coaxial cable in preparation for the convention.

The last time the Democratic convention was held in Denver--in 1908--the hall was wired with a whole 12 phones and six special operators.

So with the huge demand for connectivity in the hall this week, the big question is this: Will it all work?

More on that soon.

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