And on the thirteenth day, I rested. As of today, I have been gone thirteen days. Today was my first day off in that period of time. We completed setup yesterday. The security sweep began this afternoon and lasts until tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we begin production in earnest. Today was our one day for ourselves. Jim went over to the media center workspace this morning just to check and make sure everything was still running smoothly. Other than our connection on the center camera platform being mysteriously disconnected– it was working just fine on Friday when I tested it– everything was groovy. Jim got the connection corrected in short order. Off to find some fun.

So on our day off, Jim, Tony and I headed over to the Minnesota State Fair. The Minnesota State Fair may be one of the largest state fairs in the United States. Measured in terms of daily attendance, it probably is the largest state fair. The Texas State Fair is arguably the largest in terms of yearly attendance but it also runs for twice as long. So who’s to say. It was big. This was certainly the largest fair– county, state or otherwise– I have ever attended.

The three of us meandered around the fairgrounds and sampled a number of different treats. Bavarian weisswurst, elephant ears, cheese curds, beer. We rode the skyride tram over the fairgrounds from one end to the other, visited the horse paddock, listened to some live music, learned a bit about state history and met Princess Kay of the Milky Way. There was no rush. No place to be. No obligations to meet. No deadlines. We walked and talked and ate and drank and enjoyed a gorgeous, sunny day at the end of summer.

I do want to say something about food on-a-stick. Food on a stick is a standard at every Midwestern summer event I have attended. Why this is, I don’t know. It just is. Go to a fair sometime in the Midwest. You will find food on a stick. I guarantee it. Pie on-a-stick, frozen bananas on-a-stick, pizza on-a-stick, cheese on-a-stick.

Today I ran into a variation I had not thought possible: fresh fried fruit on-a-stick. I am not the only one that has noticed the food on-a-stick phenomenon. Over at the Heritage Tent they were celebrating Minnesota’s 150 years of statehood with a musical history tour, “Old Minnesota, Song of the North Star”. The show takes the audience through the state’s history with short reenactments, musical numbers and general good fun. I saw one particularly appropriate description of the show on my way out: a state on a schtick.

I thought that was great. I admit that I have always been attracted to people, places and events of Americana. I’ve been to the Covered Bridge Festival in Rockville, Indiana. County fairs in several midwestern states. Countless roadside attractions from Death Valley to Wall Drug to Sleeping Bear Dunes. I take simple pleasure from them. They help to put large swaths of my life into greater perspective. Today I added the Minnesota State Fair to the list for no particular reason than to just go and enjoy.

Besides, who can say no to elephant ears? I mean, really.

I’ve turned the corner and am heading into the home stretch now. Work today consisted of tidying up the few remaining loose ends with the setup. A couple photographers came in today and a couple people from broadcasting. All in all, it was a much more comfortable pace today than it has been for the past two weeks. With any luck, we will have tomorrow off completely. We’re thinking about going to the Minnesota State Fair in the afternoon and then to the media reception hosted by the GOP tomorrow night.

So I took the opportunity of the little bit of down time to take some pictures. I had noticed a collection of statues of Peanuts characters in Rice Park near the convention site. Charles Schultz grew up in the Twin Cities. He was born in Minneapolis and spent most of his formative years in St. Paul. The statues are life-sized and taken from classic poses found in his fifty years of Peanuts strips. I also got what I hope you will find a humorous picture of the Herb Brooks statue on the east side of the Rivercentre. He looks so excited, and with the backdrop of the RNC decorations, I could not pass up the opportunity to shoot him, too.

Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger from CNN arrived on site today and began doing live shots for “The Situation Room”. Anderson Cooper had been with the two of them in Denver, but he has headed to New Orleans with James Carville to monitor the developments with Hurricane Gustav. I guess it’s easier to see the satellite images and make vague, emotional comparisons to Hurricane Katrina when you’re actually in Louisiana. I don’t know. I’m the new guy.

On a more serious note, hurricanes are no laughing matter. Hurricanes are the most powerful weather phenomenon on the planet. A hurricane cannot be stopped, dissuaded or redirected. And while I agree that there is a story in covering this storm as it moves out of the the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico I am troubled by the repetition of comparisons. Rumors have been circulating the Xcel center most of the day concerning the possibility the Republican National Committee may postpone the convention due to the possibility of Hurricane Gustav making landfall in Texas or Louisiana on Tuesday or Wednesday. I do not know when they committee might make that call. I suspect they will want to delay as long as possible before they do. Given the amount of planning and coordination that went into this convention– I am not just speaking for me, but for the party, the delegates, the media in general– a delay would mean a massive disruption. I will keep you posted as I learn something.

The other big story around “The X”– I learned that is the local nickname for the Xcel Energy Center– is John McCain‘s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. It came as quite a surprise to most everyone, and there was a mad scramble for information on her. I provided a very small amount of assistance to a member of the Los Angeles Times western bureau trying to get some sort of Internet connectivity to file a story from Alaska concerning background information on Palin.

We ended the night over on Grand Avenue, an older St. Paul neighborhood that lives up to the name. Large Victorian homes overlook the Mississippi River, upscale restaurants and nightlife along broad tree-lined streets. But the highlight of the evening was visiting the Grand Ole Creamery. Ice cream heaven on a gorgeous summer evening. It was the perfect way to relax after twelve straight days on the road.

I am struck by the difference in tone between the two conventions– at least as it appears during setup week. I noticed the difference when I arrived in St. Paul on Tuesday. The amount of activity in and around the Xcel Center appeared to be significantly less. The scale of the preparations– both by the party and by the media outlets– seems smaller. Today as I was leaving the site I commented that it was almost as if the St. Paul schedule was a day or more behind the schedule in Denver. From our point of view, we began a day later in St. Paul than we did in Denver and are finding ourselves ahead of schedule. We have a light day of work ahead of us tomorrow, and barring catastrophe should be good to start production any time after that. Complications have been minimal and efficiently remediated.

We took the opportunity of being ahead of schedule to enjoy a bit of the city. We learned, by way of the Los Angeles Times Atlanta bureau chief that St. Paul has a thriving Vietnamese population. And not long thereafter I found a highly recommended place for phở, a traditional Vietnamese rice noodle soup that I have grown to love since my colleagues at Midway introduced me to it three years ago. With a bit of assistance from Jim, we coaxed the team to come with us and try Vietnamese cooking. This began our short tour of Frogtown. Frogtown is the heart of St. Paul’s Asian community. The phở was authentic and delicious.

After lunch we ran an errand that took us to the old money historic section of St. Paul that lines the appropriately-named Grand Avenue. Large Victorian homes line the streets. Eclectic and upscale shops lined the streets and some signs of potential nightlife put this section of town on our collective radar. The downtown of St. Paul has been surprisingly quiet in that respect, so far.

After spending the afternoon finishing up the installations in the writing press stands, Tony and I took a tour of the Xcel Center to get a few pictures, and then went back to the hotel to drop off our computers and other non-essentials before heading back out into the city of St. Paul to get some photographs. I had wanted to take a picture of the historic Fitzgerald Theater. The Fitzgerald Theater is the oldest existing stage venue in the city of St. Paul, and the home of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. The dusk light was quickly disappearing as we made our way up to the Minnesota State Capitol building and then over to the Cathedral of Saint Paul. I got a few shots of each location before the light failed us entirely. I did not bring my tripod with me to do some long exposures. And more than that I did not have a lot of time for photography as I wanted to get back to the hotel in time to see Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium.

With the Democratic Convention concluded, and just three days remaining before the Republican Convention begins, I will be curious to see if the pace in St. Paul picks up as dramatically as it did in Denver.

Until then, good night!

Today I crossed the aisle. Today marked the first day I had nothing to do with the Democratic National Convention in Denver and the first day that I focussed exclusively on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Today was a quiet, productive day. I got a lot of prepratory work completed. I finished building out our wide-area network back to Chicago. I started and finished building out the local-area network to support the RNC media workspace. I got one of our several Internet access locations working and confirmed that the others would be ready tomorrow– in plenty of time before the convention begins on Monday. Today was an uneventful, productive day.

At one point I wrote to the operations crew back in Denver to see how things were going there, and received word that the setup was operating smoothly and without problems. That was good. That made me happy.

Today also saw one more member of our team arrive. Tony came in late this afternoon from Chicago and joined us for the last couple hours of setup before we headed off to dinner together. Tony does desktop and application support for the editorial staff at Tribune Tower and is here through the duration of the RNC to provide that support to the remote bureau. I did not have any opportunity to walk around and shoot pictures other than one of him, so here it is.

The only other excitement to report in St. Paul is the weather. We had violent thunderstorms last night. One lightning strike hit within a block of my hotel and disrupted my otherwise restful sleep. Tonight the heavens opened up again while the setup team was out to dinner and provided a much-needed rainstorm. We tried to wait things out by watching baseball games and drinking beer but after three hours and no let-up in sight, we called it quits and grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

I have made a list of some places around St. Paul I would like to shoot. And if I get a chance tomorrow I’ll see if I can’t capture some frames of some of them.

Today marks the halfway point in this trip. So far the stress has been manageable, the work fulfilling, and the experience very worthwhile. If the second half continues with that trend, I will be a very happy man.

Today I started over. Today I said goodbye to Denver and flew on to St. Paul to begin anew. The Democratic National Convention is well underway. We have seen two days of full production run through the design we created– last night being the first full night of production while the actual convention was running. Things went very smoothly. So smoothly, in fact that as I was packing up my gear to leave for the night a number of journalists, editors and photographers took the time to thank me for the work I had done. One editor from the Los Angeles Times went on to specifically mention the seamlessness of the network. He appreciated that he was able to work as if he were in the newsroom in Los Angeles, but was also in Denver at the same time– where the news was happening.

This small moment made everything worthwhile for me. This quiet thank you told me that everything I had wanted to accomplish: too keep it simple, to keep it flexible, and to keep it unobtrusive. All of these things I had been able to do. So it is with that confidence– and no small amount of accompanying fatigue– that I boarded a jet at oh-God-thirty in the morning for St. Paul for our first day of setup at the Republican National Convention.

Jim and I were both very tired. We had not gotten to bed until after midnight, and had to be up at 5:00 to get to the airport. So with a few hours sleep, we made our way through the Xcel Center to check on the status of our bureau build-out and service orders throughout the hall. Turns out we are in good shape. I was able to get the wide-area network connections back to Chicago to come up and pass traffic with little effort. Our other access orders had been confused here and there– we’d come to expect this since Denver– but we were able to straighten it out with just a couple hours of careful conversations with the correct people.

So after that had been accomplished we called it a day and took a quick tour around the facilities. We’re nosy that way. I wanted to see how far along the RNC was in comparison to the DNC at this same time last week. I thought that the RNC was about the same way along toward completion as the DNC had been last Tuesday. Roger thought that the RNC was much further along in comparison. The setup is considerably less dramatic than the stage for the DNC. At least at this point in the construction. That may change. At the end of the day we looked around the media workspaces and poked our nose into the quite large workspace set aside for CBS. Their network and video setup is of a considerably greater complexity than what I must contend with.

We went out together for a nice dinner and then retired to our rooms to watch the evening’s coverage of the DNC, get a good night’s sleep and prepare for a full day’s work, tomorrow.

Round Two starts in just a few hours.

Today the Democratic National Convention officially began. The media focus– including more than a few of our very own reporters’ and editors’ attentions– has been firmly placed on the perception of dissension within the Democratic Party. I sat next to a reporter for the Los Angeles Times through the afternoon and early evening production cycle. He called a number key personnel in the Clinton and Obama campaigns looking for quotes about this perception of dissension. It was fascinating to listen in as he asked his questions, listened to their answers, and then reworked his approach with new information. The level of activity on site has undergone a significant increase each of the last few days. Sound levels are up. Activity levels are up. Things are in motion. The volume of noise, in particular, could approach levels that made telephone conversations difficult. And when your editor is counting on you to get the quote and get it right, there’s a particular amount of stress that permeates the air.

I fully expect Hillary Clinton to spike this discussion of dissension when she takes the stage tomorrow night. We’ll see.

Tonight the big speeches were Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama. I am not going to go over the contents of the speeches or their effects on the site other than to comment that I did get the opportunity to borrow an editorial press credential long enough to get into the hall and watch Michelle Obama speak. The hall was filled beyond capacity for Michelle Obama’s speech. I made my way up into the writing press stands. I thought I might be able to kneel behind the journalists in our set of seats and watch from there. The press stands– like the rest of the hall– were jammed with other onlookers, and once I got up there, I could not move anywhere else. So I took it in like many others did: standing room only. I chose to bring two lenses with me on this trip. My 50mm prime and the 24-70mm zoom lens that Whirl bought for my birthday. That is my longest lens, and the fact of the matter is, that it is just far too short for where I was standing to get a good shot of the speaker. I really required a 400mm lens or longer. So I tried to design my shots to put Michelle Obama inside the greater context of the entirety of the crowd and the hall. A wide shot to take in the scope.

Before Ted Kennedy took the stage, Milbert Brown of the Chicago Tribune asked if I had a photo stand credential. If I did, he was going to invite me to come with him and serve as his backup shooter. I was flattered by the offer. Unfortunately, photo stand credentials are gold and there were none available for me to “borrow”– not for that speech, anyway. I did get a picture of Milbert in the workspace as he contemplated what equipment he wanted to bring to the shoot. I’m happy about that portrait.

I walked through the hall about an hour before the convention opened and felt this quiet air of anticipation. Small clusters of activity would bubble and burst in various areas of the floor. The room was mostly empty. The contrast between this hour before the dawn and the breaking waves of emotion during the night speeches was intense, visceral.

I am glad I could be there.

Tomorrow morning, I leave Denver and the temporary news bureau I have helped to construct. I fly on to St. Paul, Minnesota to begin anew, this time for the Republican National Convention. I wish I could stay. The logistics of the project force me to move on to the next phase, but I know I will retain the memories and contacts of these few days for years to come.

The journalists have arrived. We are now a news room. Production started in earnest. The rest of the technology team came in today, and all our planning has come together. To celebrate, I slept in late. I arrived on-site around 10:00 AM, this morning, still well ahead of the bulk of journalists, photographers, columnists, editors and bloggers we are supporting.

Most of the day consisted of bringing the operational staff up to speed on what we have built, putting in some extra monitoring, and double-checking everything to make sure it was working as expected. After tomorrow, I am headed off to St. Paul to begin setup all over again for the Republican National Convention. So I want to make sure that I leave things in good hands.

The entire convention technology team went out to lunch today, passing a demonstration march as we did so. I have been interested in the demonstrations and protests that have peppered the setup week before the convention. The most visible protesters have been anti-abortionists. They have brought out loudspeakers and camped on strategic corners and rented a fleet of trucks. The trucks carry large banners with graphics of their message and have circled the convention site for several days. This sort of presence I expected. The demonstration march was from the other side of the political fence: the far left. They were perhaps a thousand people, with their primary message one of demilitarization across the globe with particular attention to Iran and Iraq. While we ate lunch, the march moved down Auraria Parkway and camped out in front of the single pedestrian security checkpoint into the convention site. This had the delightful effect of shutting down the security checkpoint entirely. No one in; no one out.

So when we finished lunch, we climbed right back into an 90-minute queue to get back to work. This time the sun was up and I finally got sunburned. But that’s alright. I get sunburned pretty much every day I step outside. So that’s not really news.

It is with quiet anticipation that I got a chance to actually meet some of our editorial staff. I talked White Sox baseball with John Kass from the Chicago Tribune. Los Angeles Times photo editor, Jay Clendenin, showed me some some post-processing techniques. And I stopped by the Tribune Broadcasting suite to observe the production of some live shots for WGN-TV, WPIX and several news shows affiliated with our Washington DC bureau.

It was interesting to me to compare the differences in approaches between publishing and broadcasting. I looked on as Mark Suppelsa and Allison Payne first went over the rundown of their pieces and then practiced their ad libs. Marvin Scott from WPIX really wanted to get his cameraman to push in on the seats of the New York delegations. The logistics of the space was making that request difficult– if not impossible– to adequately fulfill. Grant Rampy played the chameleon as he went over the headline speeches at the convention. He did this almost thirty times, at least once for each of our broadcast stations. I had to admire his discipline as he hit the same notes and emphasis time and time again.

And at the end of the day I got an assignment. My colleague, Jim Robinson, who has been the primary overseer for technology for the conventions knew I had headed into the bowl with my camera to just look around and play tourist. He got a call from the Los Angeles Times desk looking for some explanation on the layout of the floor. They were putting together a diagram of the space for tomorrow’s paper and wanted a bit more context. Jim called me with the request and I took some shots. I went on assignment. — Granted, not a very sexy assignment, and at the end of the day, they did not need the shots at all. Still, it was kind of cool to be asked.

And I suppose that sums up a lot of what I’ve been going through this past week. Odd requests, some of which get fulfilled, some get called off, some are successes, some are failures. But at the end of the day, it was cool just to be asked.

Michelle Obama is the headline speaker tomorrow, opening night. Stay tuned!

Today was not quite a setup day and it was not quite an full operations day. The convention officially begins on Monday, but the setup part is mostly over. Yesterday was shortened due to the impending security sweep so we hurried to get everything done before 5:00 PM that we possibly could. We’d been told that the site would be open again at noon today. So I relaxed and took a lazy approach to the morning. We headed over to the site a little after noon to see how things stood after the sweep. Things stood in line. A long line. Everyone– DNC personnel, media personnel, vendors, contractors– was funneled through a single checkpoint, and security was unprepared for the volume of people and equipment that needed to move through. So we encountered delays. It took a little longer than an hour for me to get through the security checkpoint. Once inside, the activity level continued to rise.

I spent most of the afternoon working with the photographers that arrived on site. Our one outstanding issue from yesterday was power on the central camera platform, so that was a concern to not just our photographers but all the photographers who had positions there. The rest was primarily familiarizing them with what we had set up and how they could expect it to work: in our workspace, in the digital darkroom, on the photo platform. I took Tom Ferrara of Newsday on a tour of the photography facilities in the bowl. Talked at some length with Milbert Brown of the Chicago Tribune about possible ways to mount cameras on the central photo platform.

And after all of that I turned into a paparazzi, myself, as CNN started doing live shots from the convention floor. I got a couple photographs of Gloria Borger, Wolf Blitzer, and Anderson Cooper setting up for their evening show. The extent of CNN’s presence at this convention is impressive. I’ve already talked about their takeover of Brooklyn’s and conversion to the CNN Grill. Yesterday they were doing shots from the roof, patio and interior of that building, from their two suites in the bowl, and from the convention floor. While the breadth of their coverage is impressive, I wonder about the depth of the coverage. This may be my prejudice toward print journalism and the written word. I do wonder if universal access– meaning cameras everywhere– adds significantly to the quality of the news being reported.

The night ended with a party for the media at Elitch Gardens. The Democratic National Party has bought out Elitch’s for two weeks: the week preceding and the week of the convention. We got a chance to go inside. Most of the rides were running. They had food and drink catered. One of the treats my parents gave me growing up was to take us to Elitch Gardens at the end of the summer. It has been a long time since I have been back. A lot has changed, including the location, but much of it remains the same. I wandered around the grounds thinking I was twelve-years old again.

Tomorrow will be a big day as almost all of our editorial staff arrives and looks to get set up.

It’s all happening. It’s all happening!

Today was our last major day of setup and the energy of the approaching convention was palpable. The Democratic National Convention Committee promised the people of Denver an opportunity to see the convention site. They had vowed to make this convention the most transparent, open and approachable convention ever. So they held an Open House today. This was the moment for the Big Reveal of the speaker’s platform and stage design to the public. So those pictures I took of construction and setup back on Monday are now fair game, as the secret is out. Thousands of people queued up outside the Pepsi Center to get a look at the bowl and to find out how national party conventions fit into the American political system.

I worked.

We fulfilled the final technology setup obligations today. The last piece being securing positions on the central camera platform for our still photographers and fitting them with adequate network connectivity. In working on this element, I got the chance to sit in the middle of the bowl and take it all in. — Fortunately, some previous connectivity problems had required me to bring my backpack into the bowl to troubleshoot what was going on. Which meant I had my camera with me as well. So when we proved everything was working correctly, I was able to take out the camera and pretend to be a big time photojournalist.

And just to demonstrate how much I am not a big time photojournalist, I took a couple pictures of the camera rigs of real big time photojournalists while I eavesdropped on the conversations the real journalists were having amongst themselves– and with their editors– regarding platform position allocations, shooting strategies and editorial obligations.

Tonight is the primary security sweep through the entire convention area. Everyone was to be out of the site by 5:00 pm tonight so that security– Secret Service security, among others– could make their inspection. We should be allowed back into the site sometime tomorrow afternoon. The big convention news was the speculation surrounding Barack Obama‘s selection of his running mate. There were also a number of related stories regarding a variety of hoaxes involving the selection being perpetrated against both party supporters and the Washington press corp.

I have a couple minor points to finish up tomorrow afternoon. Our editorial staff is starting to trickle in. Paul West, the Washington bureau chief for the Baltimore Sun was the first to arrive in our workspace. I expect more people to arrive tomorrow and almost everyone to be here by Sunday. At that point we will shift into operational support for Sunday and Monday and I will get to see firsthand whether the time and effort I’ve put into this project will pay off.

Yesterday I promised I would get a picture of the building CNN has taken over for their convention coverage. Here it is. I took a few different shots because I wanted to capture just how dramatically the cable news network had seized the space. The entire building is theirs. They have painted the bricks on all four sides. They have flown in top chefs from New York to cater for them. They have created a back porch looking on at the Pepsi Center: the CNN Grill. I do wonder what prude made them drop the bar. I also noted that on tonight’s CNN broadcast they had begun inserting establishing shots of the exterior of the Pepsi Center taken from the CNN Grill between segments.

Work proceeded apace today. The energy around the Pepsi Center is growing as Monday looms nearer. More people, more activity, more manic phone calls and vendors more harried than ever. I got a chance to spend a bit of time with Joe Keenan, Director of the Senate Press Gallery. We needed to work out some confusing logistical details regarding seating arrangements in the press stands in the bowl. I would have liked to have taken some pictures as we walked around the press stands, but sadly the no photography rule is still in effect.

What I did appreciate was the sense that these seemingly anonymous elements of the government are actually run by real people, who laugh and joke and get serious or crabby just like the rest of us. It was a simple thing, really, moving some seats from one section of the press stands to another, but it also reminded me in some ways that government is– despite what we may say from time to time– an essentially human enterprise.

After we called it a day in the media workspace, I decided to forgo the fancy dinner with my colleagues and headed out into lower downtown Denver with a couple bucks and my camera. I just wanted a little time for myself and to explore a little bit. I’m staying at a hotel just a couple blocks from the 16th Street Mall, so I headed over that way to walk around and got a couple pictures that I’m particularly happy with.

Street performing has been popular on the mall for a long time. I headed over there thinking I might add one or more of the performers to my 100 Strangers project. The sun was going down and it was getting somewhat dark by the time I came across a man I thought would make an excellent candidate for the project. He was playing music on a large collection of glasses filled with various levels of water. While I watched, he played classical pieces from Mozart as well as some Beatles and some traditionals. Every time the performer took a break between songs and I thought I had an opportunity to approach him a woman off to his left would begin explosively describing a vast litany of conspiracies and unreflected political theories. — This is also part of the character of the mall. So I snapped a few pictures and moved on.

I did get a chance to approach a clown named Calvo who was barking up interest in “Burlesque As It Was” at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret. He claimed that Barack Obama had already made his reservations for both of the special Monday and Tuesday night shows they are putting on to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. I think this was just an attempt to be relevant. It is very difficult to escape the notion that Denver is the host city for the convention. It is everywhere. But now that I think about it, Calvo made no mention of whether Michelle would be accompanying Barack. It makes me wonder.

In convention news, Obama has stated that he’s decided on his running mate and will announce that decision on Saturday in Springfield, Illinois. Also, rumors continue to circulate the Pepsi Center that the stage will be revealed to the public tomorrow. I hope that means that the restrictions on photography inside the bowl will be lifted.

Tune in tomorrow and find out!