The Democratic National Convention Committee is preparing for a crush of traffic on its Web site in August.
And that’s what the committee wants, with plans to offer gavel-to-gavel coverage, including live speeches, caucus meetings, video highlights and archived material that can be accessed on demand.
“The real goal online is to bring down the walls of the Pepsi Center so as many people as possible can experience what’s inside,” said Aaron Myers, the DNCC’s director of online communications.
Microsoft and Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications, which operates an international fiber-optic network, are the official Web-streaming providers.
The convention Web site, demconvention.com, will employ Microsoft’s relatively new Silverlight technology.
Officials won’t disclose details yet, but Silverlight enables such applications as information bubbles over a video screen, multiple video windows, and zoom-in and zoom-out features.
For example, let’s say someone is watching a live speech from the convention floor on the Internet.
You might be able to click a portion of the screen and look at a biography of the speaker and career highlights. Or there might be a separate video featuring the speaker in the corner of the screen. Or you may be able to zoom in on the speaker.
“There’s a lot of ideas on the table,” said Joel Cherkis, Microsoft general manager of government solutions. “It comes down to the information that people will want to consume, and then the staffing behind the scenes” to assemble the material.
The Internet has been around for a while now, but the Democratic National Convention in 2004 in Boston offers little in the way of a model.
That’s because, in the life of the Internet, “four years is an absolute eternity,” said Grant van Rooyen, president of Level 3’s content markets group.
The consumer appetite for online content, especially video, has grown. Witness the popularity of YouTube, the dramatic increase in the number…