Lessons from Day 2 1/2 of the moblog

Quick post:
-- We showed it is possible to do fairly decent short essays on what is happening with context beyond just the captions. See my earlier post on that. It took a bit for folks to get their minds wrapped around the idea, but now we have the students generating some dynamite ideas for tomorrow. This has been a great teaching moment. So have all those times of hearing "oops, I guess I should have gotten that" detail. I think it makes everyone realize how important -- even more important sometimes -- those can be to lend context to the picture.

-- Our strength is in the coverage leading up to the night sessions. After that, no way we can, or want to, keep up with TV or the wires in covering the speeches. The reaction shots are pretty good, though how many times can you shoot people clapping, or holding "We love (fill in blank here)" signs? The strength in the next two days will be in nailing people down to define specific issues (the thread on that has begun to build) and on exactly what they'll do when they get home Friday to try to get Kerry elected. Conventions are nice, but the battle's fought on the ground, and we need to determine -- piece by individual piece -- how that will be done.

-- Started the day with coordination problems again. But now have a system in, we hope, where reporters call when they arrive on a scene ... let us know what the thread appears it will be ... then call before filing. That ensures that with a limited number of storybuilders we can have one available for the thread. Nothing revolutionary in this, but again a learning moment for those who have not worked news events like this regularly.

And happy for the write-ups on CNN and on several newspaper and TV sites.