The War Room
The work has begun. Above is a picture of the AP nerve center. The guts of the operation, this is what I have to protect. This basically means I am a glorified steward who has to make sure nobody walks in accidently steals a plasma TV. During the convention, this room will be nothing short of a chaotic mess. There is sure to be fighting in this war room. I can’t wait.
To update how I actually got in: It was just about as bad as I anticipated. It took two hours to finally get my credential, but I got it. This involved anywhere between 5 and 25 phone calls to people who may or may not have been in the same time zone, all in an effort to work my way up (in most cases sideways) the phone tree. Once in communication with people who actually knew what was going on and vaguely understood who I was, or at least pretended to know, I got my credential. Hard fought battle. Joe-1 AP-0.
Inside the Xcel Center
This is currently what the inside of the Xcel Center looks like. Still very rough around the edges, but most of the infrastructure is up and running. It is the weekend so there is much less activity than usual. I’m told during the week you can’t even count the people working inside.
More updates to come today, including possible interviews. I have an outside internet connection. Yesterday, I couldn’t access the web because I would be using the AP hard line. Supposedly they don’t want non-reporter intern-types to be able to access the inner-workings of the Associated Press network.
Weird.
