Inside the Pepsi Center
Prior to his Mideast trip, Barack Obama made news by announcing his plan to accept the Democratic nomination at an open-air event to be staged at Denver's INVESCO Field at Mile High. On Aug. 28, Obama will give his acceptance speech before a crowd expected to exceed 75,000.
(Historical note: In a similar manner, John F. Kennedy stood before an open-air audience at the Los Angeles Coliseum while delivering his "New Frontier" speech in acceptance of the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.)
Primetime convention activities will take place Aug. 25-27 at Denver's Pepsi Center. Here's an update, courtesy of the Democratic National Convention Committee, on preparations inside the venue with roughly a month to go before the convention:
- Approximately 5,000 seats have been removed from the arena to make room for the stage, podium and television camera stands.
- 3,300 miles of fiber, other cabling and supporting structures have been installed to support the technology infrastructure of the media and other convention operations.
- The convention’s data center has been built. It will house 20 servers supporting nearly 1,000 phone lines and other communications operations for more than 1,500 people working in and around the Pepsi Center and the live, HD streaming of the convention on DemConvention.com.