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DNC 2012: After the Rain

One of the big stories at DNC 2012 was convention organizers' decision -- announced Wednesday morning -- to move last night's much anticipated acceptance speech by President Obama indoors.

The talk will be relocated from open-air Bank of America Stadium to Time Warner Cable Arena. (It turns out to have been the right call — sporadic rainstorms crashed through downtown Charlotte late yesterday afternoon.) But while most everyone talked about the move in terms of politics and policy — what kind of message does it send to the many campaign volunteers who were promised seats at Bank of America, etc. — as always, I was more interested in the operations side of things. How do you downsize an event, from a 74,000-seat outdoor stadium to a 20,000-seat indoor arena, in 36 hours?

To find out, I talked to Ron Bracco, executive director of business development for events for Hargrove Inc., the DNC’s general contractor. Interestingly, he said that the big venue switch wasn’t all that hard — at least when it came to staging and other production issues. Click on the video above to find out why.

Christopher Durso

Christopher Durso formerly was executive editor of Convene.