My friend Jay Rosen noticed a tweet from me earlier where I said I wasn't going to the conventions this year, and instead planned to "watch the web watch the conventions." He wrote back asking how I planned "to add value to and interact with the convention?" Here's an extended version of what I wrote back to him in response.

I'm not sure how or if I can add any value to, or interact with the convention. Frankly, I don't think the official convention is much interested in interaction with its audience, unfortunately, as I noted in a post a few days ago. And having been to party conventions going back to 1984, I don't particularly have a need to witness yet another one in person. I'm sure Nancy Scola is going to do a fabulous job covering the conventions for techPresident on the ground, along with our other contributing bloggers who are going to be on the scene.

That said, I do think there's something new and interesting developing around these big political events, a kind of community experience that coalesces and takes shape via the web when many of us are either at, or paying attention to, something important all at the same time. So when I say I'm interested in "watching the web watch the convention," what I think I mean is I want to see how the world live web works during an event of this magnitude. And by NOT going and being in the center of the storm and instead watching and participating from a distance, I am betting that it may be easier to see some of the larger patterns at work.

As I wrote to Jay, I'm starting with a few hunches and/or judgments:

1. In terms of the official goings-on of the convention (i.e., the nightly speeches), it makes as much sense, or more, to watch those on TV (to see what 20 million TV watchers will see) as it does to try to watch them live from inside the arena. If anything, you have a better view from your couch--not just of the speakers, but also of the Chris Mathews of the world as they immediately put their frames on each speech.

2. I'm not very interested in running around and trying to "see and be seen" at all the parties and confabs that happen each day around the official proceedings. I can see some value in trying to glean the current state of the shifting forces within each party by attending these...and I can see some value in trying to expose the wheeling-dealing atmosphere of all the money-driven events. But it feels to me like other people will have those scenes well covered. And I'm pretty turned off by the Vanity Fair-Oscar party-A-listness thing, which pervades the nightly rush around the conventions. Everyone should go at least once to a national party convention, because it is an amazing thing to see the American political-industrial complex in the flesh. But after a while, it just gets depressing. My friend Marc Cooper spells out the reasons for that pretty well on his blog, here.

3. It's pretty cool how many people are going to blog and vlog the conventions, and I'm looking forward to trying to keep up with their work each day. Again, methinks you can do this more easily from home/office than from the floor of the convention or by milling around the hallways. We shall see...

4. I have a hunch that there's a big disconnect, however, between all the people talking. That is, there are the official speeches to the TV audience, and there are all the blogger/journalist/documentarians/vloggers who will be posting their reports and observations to the web. But while the latter group is listening to the former, who is really listening to the latter? We all believe in the possibility that many eyes watching from below + networked filtering systems = catching and spreading important information. But will that happen in Denver and/or Minneapolis? I don't know, but I suspect that watching the web watch the conventions may be more telling, than actually being there and being one more voice from within the din, speaking out.