| I'd like to be able to sing "my bags are packed and I'm ready to go", but my bags are NOT packed and I'm NOT yet ready to go, but I do have my list, and I will be on the road to Charlotte Sunday morning. Here are the coverage logistics: Twitter: Back in 2008, I live tweeted election day. I think there were something like 11 followers. Now, between the official DCW feed, Oreo's feed and my two feeds, we're close to 2,000 followers. Twitter itself has changed: its much easier now to tag, link and post photos. If you don't follow the DCW feed, please add it, as all tweets will come via that feed. It will also be the best place to see photos. I'll be traveling with an iPhone and an iPad, and neither makes it easy to get photos to the blog, but incredibly simple to directly tweet photos. So if you want to see photos of the trip down, that first shot of my media credential, immediate photos of the people I meet, add the DCW twitter feed. For you techies, this is my big experiment of traveling without a laptop to see if it IS possible to live exclusively on an iPad on the road! DCW Blog Posts: I plan to blog as often as possible. That requires WiFi, and while there appear to be a lot of places with WiFi available, it's not possible to be there all the time, so expect intermittent posts, in groups. Facebook: I'll be posting to the DemConWatch Facebook Feed. If you currently follow my personal FB feed, there will be a daily note there redirecting you to that feed. Want to meet me? I want to meet you too. Commenter tsal is a delegate, and we're planning on finding one another in Charlotte. Four years of comments back and forth, and finally, we've exchanged real names! A number of DCW lurkers will be in attendance, and I'm planning on hooking up with all of you who've contacted me also. Going to Charlotte? Drop me a line with your handle, name and cell phone and we'll find a time and place! Want to see me? Morning Joe will be broadcasting live, and I'm planning on being in the audience on Tuesday. Details to follow. Matt and Oreo will be posting from their respective home bases. They'll make sure that you have the live feed of the convention itself and everything else they find important! Local (PA) Press Coverage: If you live in the Philadelphia area and read the Daily Local, they are linking to DCW from their main page starting Sunday night. What I'm looking forward to: it's a long list, but topping the list is breakfast with Madeleine Albright (and like a hundred other people), the NJDC panel discussion, the DNC Women's Caucus meeting and the DNC Senior Council meeting. I also have some surprises planned for you! Above all, I'm looking forward to that first moment in the convention center, Monday morning. I expect to have the awe of a young child. I've written more times than I can count about the importance of the party platforms. The platforms (despite the fact that I'm not convinced anyone reads all of them, except yours truly) define a party: what it stands for, where it's going. Being in Charlotte is being "amoungst my people" for whom our platform is written. A chance to celebrate that ours is the party of the people, by the people, and for the people. I look forward to being on the ground as my party shows the world who we are, and how we differ from the party of racist old white guys and their concubines. Tampa showed the world the worst of America: the über rich partying as the Gulf flooded, again. A wizened and seemingly senile Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair. Who but the senile would show such utter disrespect for the office of the President of the United States? A place where token blacks were on the stage, but nowhere to be found in the audience. A litany of speakers who spoke about themselves, and told voluminous lies, but couldn't find a way to speak kindly of their candidate, except as a passing line at the end. The candidate's wife who dissed all women who were not mothers. Charlotte, I'm sure, will show the world the best of America: a love of all the people, a party committed to moving forward, and the party that kept America from falling into an insurmountable abyss in the face of a GOP dedicated to stopping all efforts. People committed to the ideal that education, health care, the environment and actual science matter more than moving our country back a couple centuries. There will be bbq and craft beer in lieu of truffles and pâté. Funky hats and buttons in lieu of designer duds. Real people instead of mannequins. You know. And so I'm off. I'll be celebrating a birthday in Charlotte. I generally never celebrate, and I never want anything. Except this year, I want three things. The first is to be in Charlotte to get a year older. (Check!) The second is my 23,000 project. I'm asking everyone I know to get me five committed voters this year, and to ask their five to each get five committed voters. And so on until hitting the magic number of 23,000. I'm up to 900+, but there are still two months to fulfill my wish, and it's on track. And finally, and I don't know about this one - if Keith Olbermann is in Charlotte, I want to find him and shake his hand! |
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