So I didn't get as much time as I had hoped to blog during the conventions (mainly due to temporary insanity from an overdose of Republicans), but here are a few quick things I observed:

New Media: I expected some differences here, but the Republicans were far more hostile to new media and citizen journalism then the Democrats.  In Denver, the Obama campaign encouraged attendees to text "SCHED" to OBAMA to get the schedule for the day, and a big part of their Thursday program at Invesco was collecting text message signups.  Throughout the day on Thursday, they'd ask the crowd to text the reason they were there, why they support Obama, what issue matters most to them, etc. and have it displayed on the screens around the stadium, basically turning the event into a database building exercise.  All week, attendees were encouraged to visit BarackObama.com and it was a common sight to see delegates and guests using cheap video cameras to record the events and the reactions of the crowd.

In St. Paul, the words "text message" were never heard.  The McCain website was on their signs but never mentioned.  The security policy for the event explicitly banned anyone but credentialed press from bringing in a video camera.  Had I not been using the press credentials one of the people with the IOP bummed off a drunk ABC News producer on Saturday night, none of the videos I did with Campus Voices would have been possible.  Even with those credentials, when I tried to bring in multiple cameras one day, I was stopped by a campaign staffer, who told me the Secret Service had decided that I only had need for one video camera.  When I told her I was bringing in multiple cameras to allow young delegates to videotape their experiences, she said "delegates aren't allowed to do that."  The McCain campaign was so worried about only allowing their officially sanctioned images and stories from the convention to get out that they had the United States Secret Service declare it a security risk for anyone other than credentialed media to bring in a video camera, and from there decide what tools the media needed to do their jobs.  Ignoring the blatant political use of Secret Service protection, this is probably the best example I saw of just how out of touch the Republican party is.

Diversity: I figured the Republican convention would be less diverse than the DNC.  But I couldn't have imagined just how much that was true.  The Democrats have policies requiring diversity in delegations, but the delegates themselves were only 4,000 out of the 40,000 people in Denver for the convention, and the people I saw, delegates, guests, and others, were a diverse representation of the American people.  Not so much in St. Paul.  You could walk around the entire outer hall of the Xcel Center and see maybe one African American and one Hispanic American among the hundreds.  And that doesn't even go into age.  Our goal with Campus Voices was to interview young delegates, and I can't begin to describe how much more difficult that was in St. Paul than in Denver.  The statistic I heard was that 16% of the DNC delegates were under 30, compared with 1.6% of the RNC delegates.

Excitement: At each convention, there was one crucial event that everyone said would define the tone of the week - Hillary Clinton's speech in Denver and Sarah Palin's in St. Paul.  The key difference, though, was that Hillary's speech was only important to really rallying half of the DNC delegates, while every single person at the RNC (except for maybe the Alaska delegation) had some degree of hesitation about the ticket until Palin spoke.  This meant that the Republicans didn't really get going until the very end of the session Wednesday night (Gustav certainly contributed to that as well), while the Democrats were able to take advantage of the full four days.  (One note on the RNC - after Palin proved herself to the delegates to be a conservative standard-bearer, she was by far the star of the convention.  All day Thursday, Palin would get cheers consistently louder than those for McCain.  The only thing cheered louder than Palin was whenever some speaker or video mentioned Ronald Reagan.)

Goals: Interestingly, the goals each campaign had for their conventions were nearly complete opposites.  The Obama campaign used the convention to try and expand the base of the party, prominently featuring Republicans for Obama on both Monday and Thursday nights and making a huge showing of support for Obama in the military.  With his VP pick, Obama chose someone to address his biggest perceived weakness, hopefully reassuring independents and moderate Republicans who were thinking of voting for him that he'd be a strong commander in chief.  The McCain campaign, on the other hand, used their convention entirely to rally their base and unite conservatives behind the ticket.  Nearly every speech (with Joe Lieberman's as the notable exception) was about attacking liberals and the media and reiterating old Republican principles.  The number of times abortion was mentioned was surprisingly high for an issue that so bitterly divides the country.  And with his VP choice, McCain picked someone who initially seemed like she could appeal to Clinton voters, but later revealed herself to be, as one person told me, "Pat Buchanan in a dress."  This really convinces me that McCain's strategy from here out is to try and win exactly the states Bush won in 2004, and maintain a bare majority, while Obama seeks to redraw the map and compete in Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and even North Carolina.  If the McCain camp really wanted to compete in, say, Michigan, which they describe as a highly targeted swing state, they wouldn't pick one of the most conservative running mates in recent years and spend considerable time at the convention mocking the efforts of inner city residents to organize themselves.