Republican National Convention 2012

My first time being part of the Republican National Convention,  which is one if not the biggest event that come thru Tampa Bay area and I'm in the middle of it all. There's a lot of preparations to do a live show on location specially when it involved politicians cause one of the most important thing is security. There is the usual security at the entrance and then there is the background check done by the secret service.  The security at the entrance is not that bad,  just like I'm at the airport it didn't take that long then again it was 2:30AM, the crowd doesn't start till probably 9AM. As the week goes on, the security get a bit tighter everyday. I would dissect the RNC week day by day, but I cannot remember what happened on which day! I met a lot of people that works in the media locally and some national journalist. Some I didn't get a chance to meet in person but admired from afar while they were doing their shows. I watched crew clear parts of the delegate floor and set up news set to be used for a national news show like The Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning just to name a few; the news set was set up with in hour of clearing the space. I also watched the stage being changed by extending it to be used by no other than Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate.  The 10 News morning crew got to meet and know morning crew from other local station. Since one of the local station is right next door to us, we became close with one another and even became friends on Facebook. After our morning show, we had a chance to go down on the floor and watch national tv networks do their show, take pictures and just watch them work behind the scenes. We watched them do interviews with politicians. I'd say all of us were star struck some more than others. Just being in the same room with nationally known journalists and politicians were exciting enough for us.  The food situation was something I/we didn't really expect. We were told that there will be vendors so plenty of food to buy, but then we found out the hard and expensive way that they don't have a lot of vendors open around the time that we need food. The vendors that were open. (there were 2 to be exact) didn't have much food to choose from. At night is a different story, they more vendors and different food to choose from and they also have a lot of people, way more people than in the early morning. We basically loaded up on coffee, energy drinks, and water till we came back the next day and there's no water at all; that's when we mostly drank energy drinks and coffee. Other than the food problem, the whole experience was awesome! In fact, the last day at the convention was bitter sweet, we glad it's over but we had fun and our suite was great specially where we were located perfect view of the stage we didn't want to leave. It's was one of the best experiences I've had in this business so far. It was an awesome learning experience specially since I don't go on location that often for a show and it also allows me to meet other people in the business since I'm always in the studio.