Powering the US 2008 Democratic National Convention
Site Purpose
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) site was the web-based focal point for the entire Democratic Party during their 2008 Convention in Denver, Colorado. The site needed to scale massively, as well as integrate with a number of leading-edge technologies from other companies. It was aimed at people who wanted to keep track of what was going on at the Convention, including watching the many speeches given by prominent Democrats in addition to Barack Obama's speech.
What We Did
- Applied our deep understanding of complex projects to manage a large number of parties and a challenging design and development project.
- Worked with a communications agency in the United States, who in turn liaised with the client.
- Coordinated with separate entities in the US for specific services such as visual design, ticketing, hosting, caching, and video streaming.
- Created a bi-lingual site that operates in both English and Spanish.
- Ensured the site could scale to handle the massive amound of traffic it received.
- Provided 24/7 support during the critical time of the event.
What Users Can Do Now
People interested in the Convention are enticed with a plethora of content: interactive maps, photos, High-Definition video, Frequently Asked Questions, blogs, contests, and background information on the Convention itself. Anyone can view a wide variety of speeches from the convention floor as well as Barack Obama's presidential nomination acceptance speech given at Denver's Mile High Stadium.
Measures of Success
- From the official press release from the Democratic National Committee: "DemConvention.com received more than 3.2 million visits totaling more than 2.6 billion hits during Convention week. More than 350,000 hours of video were watched by DemConvention.com visitors as the DNC site offered live gavel-to-gavel coverage in High-Definition (HD) in both English and Spanish for the first time in Convention history."
- The site handled the load with flair, not breaking a sweat even during the heaviest load times such as during Barack Obama's live-streamed acceptance speech.
- SilverStripe was chosen to power the DNC site after an extensive search and evaluation of appropriate technology platforms. Part of the reason why we were chosen was because we as a company could create and maintain the site in addition to our providing the technology platform.
