There were other breakthroughs during the convention. On the sponsorship side the new media companies has a HUGE presence, brought on by that fact that the last national convention (the RNC in 2004) credentialed a toal of 20 bloggers.
This time, Google and Digg.com’s Big Tent and the MySpace cafe hosted more than 500 bloggers, while Microsoft, in its Specialty Media Lounge, hosted nearly 300 minority media companies in their room in the Denver Convention Center, where people got to drink coffee, eat free lunch and use the good graces of Microsoft to plug in their Macs.
But this was also the very first convention where there was significant and visible sponsorship by Black-owned companies, most prominently a company little known outside of political circles - The Perennial Strategy Group, a lobbying firm based in Washington that represents Major League Baseball’s umpires among others.
The firm presented a series of parties/performances each night of the week, all under a theme of “Party with a Purpose”. From Sunday thru Wednesday night, those parties were decidely majority African American, with small pockets of diversity, small enough to be noticed as standouts.
On Thursday after the speech, however, in a large tent across from the Denver Hyatt, Perennial party featuring DC Biz Markie and performances by the Black Eyed Peas (with a drop-in from Herbie Hancock) and John Legend, was dramatically different from the rest.
Maybe it was the central location, maybe it was the free Ciroq vodka, but this time the party was wildly diverse. not only in the makeup of the audience, but in the attitude of the crowd as well. This was not just co-mingling in segregated clumps, there were real active attempts by everyone to introduce themselves to people who looked different, to start conversations, to trade contact information.
If only for the length of the show, people were taking a lesson and making change happen themselves.