interview from the convention floor at the Forum after the RNC, as his crew worked to dismantle everything by the Sept. 15 exit date. “It’s just there’s so much more of it.”
WIRED FOR SOUND The most noticeable change from past convention prep, according to Lane, was the focus on technology, and the sub- sequent need to increase the bandwidth and wireless capa- bilities at both the Forum and the convention center. To meet the demands of the 15,000 media and 35,000 smartphone- toting, tweeting, and texting attendees, the Forum underwent an estimated $20-million technology overhaul, including an electrical-power upgrade and new fiber-optic infrastructure. Bright House Networks, the RNC’s official provider of
video, high-speed data, and wireline voice services, installed 48 miles of data cabling at the Forum and the convention center, and also added 90 miles of fiber optics to the existing cable network in downtown Tampa. The beefed-up down- town network is now capable of sending 250,000 emails or 37.5 million tweets per second, according to Bright House. Meanwhile, AT&T, the official “mobility provider” for both
the Republican and Democratic conventions, invested an estimated $15 million in technology infrastructure for the 2012 RNC, including the launch of 4G LTE mobile Internet service, new cell towers, and more than 200 “hot spots” for expanded network capacity. Verizon Wireless also expanded its 4G LTE network throughout Tampa, and installed cellular base stations at the Forum and the convention center. With the exception of a few portable cell towers, all of the
technology upgrades will remain in place — a welcome leave- behind for Tampa’s meetings and tourism industry, which now can boast free Wi-Fi and expanded cellular coverage throughout its venues. “We don’t anticipate having a need for expanded wireless in this building ever,” said Bill Wickett, the Forum’s senior vice president of communications.
THE CONVENTION WITHOUT WALLS All those upgrades reflect the increasing influence of mobile technology and social media on both convention-goers and political campaigns. Davis refers to the 2012 RNC as the first political convention in the “mature social-networking era.” Early on, the GOP deter- mined to capture the mobile momentum, herald- ing this year’s fete as the “Convention Without Walls.” “Only so many people can be here during the actual convention, but this is a national conversation that guides the direction of our country,” Davis said. “We wanted to provide an engaging experience so people everywhere could be a part of the action.” The COA had a dedicated digital staff that pushed content via a variety of social-media
44 PCMA CONVENE NOVEMBER 2012
platforms, including Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. In addition, a “digital green room” located directly off the stage at the Forum provided a space for speakers to update their social-media channels, conduct interviews via Skype, or hold a Google Hangout with constituents. “We did more than 30 Google Hangouts,” Davis said, “and that’s something that liter- ally wasn’t possible four years ago.” The COA and the Host Committee also jointly released a
mobile app that gave users the ability to watch live conven- tion coverage and share their experiences via social-media networks. The app also contained maps, weather updates (especially relevant as Hurricane Isaac approached Florida), and tourist information about Tampa. At the heart of the COA’s digital strategy was a customized
YouTube channel that live-streamed (and cataloged) all the convention speeches. It also hosted the video pieces and non- primetime speakers the TV audience didn’t see, as well as a number of “Convention Insider” videos. From the YouTube channel, viewers could share videos to other social-media plat- forms, and post comments to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. “In the past, people have focused on driving numbers and
viewers to their website, but the people consumed the infor- mation and left,” Davis said. “We said, ‘What if we used that same information, but we made it dynamic and incorporated it into a very social platform?’ We created this YouTube page that houses all this information, there’s a lot of video, a lot of images that support the message, and it’s a place to bring conversations all into one place.” With more than 300,000 hours of streaming video viewed
over the course of the three-day convention, more than five million total video views (at last count), and more than four million tweets, Davis said the digital strategy proved to be more than successful.
PACKAGING THE MESSAGE In addition to exploring new distribution channels for its convention message, the COA invested heavily in the packag- ing of that message. For that, it turned to former network news executive Phil Alongi, who was brought on in 2011 as executive producer of the 2012 RNC. Alongi, who spoke with Convene while en route to his
home in New Jersey after eight months in Tampa, said that the COA was seeking someone who could craft a compelling program with an insider’s eye. “When I was approached by the COA about coming to work on the project, they visualized that I would bring the perspec- tive of someone who’s been on the other side,” he said. “Having covered every convention going back to 1980, they wanted me to think about what I would like and what would appeal to me as a producer of the nightly news.” Wearing those two hats — insider and outsider —
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