Laura Rozen of War and Piece writes:
With flying here today, running to pick up press credentials from a colleague, intense security, and then walking through a really beautiful summer day from Charlestown to the Fleet Center in Boston, I decided to leave my laptop back at the ranch in Cambridge and just see what I could at the Convention, sans laptop. it's a bit of a trade off; I couldn't write while I observed, and I would have been too tired to run around much if I had to lug my laptop around and worry about it. Briefly, because it is midnight and I am a bit exhausted and will certainly feel more energetic in the morning, I enjoyed meeting colleagues - both journalists and bloggers; the bloggers are really the cool kids at the convention, and it's a bit like being in high school again sitting with everybody, half of them doing their thing on their laptops as a very part of experiencing the Convention. The connectivity was fairly awful, a lot of people couldn't get on, and when they could, it was not just slow, but there seemed to be weird technical kinks -- posts that were 'saved' as published didn't actually appear on the site, etc. Rumor is too many people were able to penetrate the wireless network and it's collapsing under the strain. It's almost to the point that you can either go to the Convention, or you can blog from elsewhere and watch it on TV.
I got to shake Wes Clark's hand, and saw Jon Stewart chatting with fans at the security entrance to the fortress that is the Fleet Center. Especially enjoyed meeting Daily Kos's Markos, Susan Epstein who blogs at Daily Kos, Bill Sher of Liberal Oasis, Matt Stoller of Blogging of the President, and some others. After six hours watching Gore, Carter, and many others, a fellow blogger and I decided to take off back for separate points in Cambridge, and I made my way to the house where I'm staying via a lovely pub, Cambridge 1, where we close captioned the Clinton speech, and frankly, were very moved, even without hearing it. I was struck especially how Clinton used his own weaknesses to great effect -- his new wealth, his not going to Vietnam, (like Bush and Cheney's not going to Vietnam), etc. I was also struck by how genuinely nuts the audience of delegates went for him. He's just the Lance Armstrong of politics, his sheer gift for it is undeniable.
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