I just typed a 500 word post about yesterday that I lost because of our hotel's Internet access. This is my attempt to recreate it.

Much of the media attention at a national convention is necessarily devoted to the party's elite. It's easy to watch the news and see nothing beyond the speeches at night and the interviews throughout the day.

But that big picture ignores a lot of good work at the grassroots that is happening this week in Denver.

There have been panels on campaign strategy and round tables to consider public policy. I managed to sit in one one discussion that had been organized by Matt Glazer -- from Burnt Orange Report -- and Jim Walsh -- from Wired for Change -- about wiring local candidates.

With Jim and I sitting in the room, much of the conversation turned on DLCCWeb, and the feedback we received was very, very positive.

This is what Matt wrote about the discussion afterward:

Florida, Alabama, Michigan, D.C. California, Texas, and other states were all represented well represented. ActBlue was there along with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and Wired for Change.

We talked about the $40 a month package for state legislative candidates for unlimited e-mail and a new web site. We talked about how ActBlue can be used to raise tens of thousand of dollars for state and federal candidates. We talked about how we can win today and be ready for redistricting in the future.

I began this job believing that future success would depend on working with passionate, plugged-in activists. I'm even more convinced of that today.

Once that panel wrapped up, I headed to a couple meetings before heading over to the Pepsi Center. That was probably a mistake. As you might have heard from the news reports, the convention was packed last night. Eventually, the fire marshals decided that there simply was not room for any more people. Those standing in line were turned away, and those who were in their seats were told that they could not return if they decided to leave.

I made it through security and into the Pepsi Center, but not without waiting in line for an hour.

I'll be headed over MUCH earlier today.

We only have so many chances each year to see our lawmakers in person. The National Conference of State Legislatures organizes a week of policy discussions at their annual meeting, and obviously, that's one opportunity. We also try to set up our own events -- chances for our elected officials to meet with each other and our staff.

This week gives us a chance to do that on a scale that is hard to match.

Yesterday afternoon, we held our first event of the National Convention -- a luncheon to celebrate our majorities. For two hours, several hundred legislators joined us as the Downtown Aquarium in Denver for a tour of the exhibits and an opportunity to connect with each other. Some people brought their families, others brought friends, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

After we packed up, we almost immediately headed to the Pepsi Center. Given that this was the first day, no one knew how long it would take to walk there or get through security. We knew that we had been given a cloakroom for meetings during the convention but not where it was or how the room was laid out.

As it turned out, many of our fears weren't necessary. The walk was easy (and there were many transportation for those who needed it). The security process was efficient and quick (and kind of fascinating -- convention staffers had some sort of hand-held scanners to test the authenticity of the credentials worn by all of those headed inside). And our room was great -- a perfect place for legislators to pop inside for a snack and a couple moments of conversation.

The convention opened with an invocation from former Colorado state Sen. Polly Baca. The Pepsi Center was full and energetic, and the stage looked great.

I'll be back with Tuesday highlights tomorrow.

We're here in Colorado for the Democratic National Convention. So far, the weather has been lovely, folks have been excited, and the atmosphere has been great.

I want to try to give you as much flavor for this week as possible. My plan is to recap, briefly, the previous day's activities each morning.

If there's anything in particular that you want to hear about, or if you're in Denver and want to say hello, I hope you'll shoot me an email or leave a comment here on the blog.

So, we noticed a little spike in traffic over the weekend. If you are one of our new first time visitors, we would like to say, "Welcome."

Because of a technical oversight by the consultant who built and hosts our website, the metadata for DLCC.org (the information describing our website) wound up repeated on the site for another organization -- Accountable America, Inc. We noticed the error on Saturday, and our consultant fixed the issue immediately.

While you are here, however, I want to tell you a little bit more about the DLCC.

As our name would suggest, we are a campaign committee. We work to elect Democrats to the nation's state legislatures.

We do that in a couple fundamental ways.

First, in conjunction with legislative leaders and supporters in the states, we organize and maintain winning, state-of-the-art, local campaign committees. Our political directors work with these local partners and national allies to help our candidates win in all regions of the country.

Second, we work to build economies of scale for basic political tools like polling, communications, research, and online fundraising in order to make them accessible for candidates at the state legislative level.

While you're here, why don't you take a minute to read more about us. And if you support our mission, we'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or send me an email (compton[at]dlcc[dot]org).

And if you feel like making a contribution, we promise that your donation will go to help Democratic candidates at the local level win important races.

I'm in New Orleans for the National Conference of State Legislatures. If you're around and you'd like to chat, shoot me a line.

We'll be back with plenty of new content on Monday.

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I will be heading to Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas with the DLCC's Executive Director Michael Sargeant. We would love to connect with anyone who is interested in chatting (particularly those who want to talk about state legislatures). Just shoot me a line at compton [at] dlcc.org and let me know if you want meet up.

Our office is closed in celebration of Independence Day, so I've got no legislative news to share. But I do want to relate a different kind of story altogether that I enjoyed today:

After years of searching, archaeologists have identified and excavated the boyhood home of George Washington, site of such legendary -- if perhaps apocryphal -- events as chopping down the cherry tree and throwing a coin across the Rappahannock River.

That's a fantastic piece of news for American cultural heritage on the 232nd anniversary of our birth as a nation.

God save our American states.

The guys at Wired for Change have put together a little introductory video for DLCCWeb. I'm a fan:

It occurs to me that I've never done a formal introduction of DLCCWeb. Allow me to remedy that.

As you may have figured out already from some of our previous posts, DLCCWeb is a resource that we have developed with Wired for Change that makes it easy and affordable to campaign online. Democratic legislative candidates can use it to create a professionally designed web site and access powerful online advocacy tools.

We've made it easy for individual candidates to customize and edit their own web sites no matter how comfortable they are with technology and the Internet. We provide a full selection of website templates, headers, and color schemes. Campaigns can publish a blog, set up photo gallery, or publish an issue survey with the click of a mouse. All the content can be altered online using a very simple editor tool, so no additional software or technical expertise of HTML is required.

Again, as I've said before, more than 200 of our candidates in races in 30 states are using DLCCWeb to power their campaigns.

As this election cycle unfolds, we'll have a lot more to say about this resource and the candidates who are using it.

If you have a minute, check it out, and let us know what you think.

Matt Yglesias, a blogger for The Atlantic, wrote a post today that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

He attended a presentation on new media given by Rep. Steve Harrelson, the House Majority Leader in Arkansas, at the DLC National Conversation. Harrelson writes a blog called Under the Dome, which just for the record, it is pretty incredible. Matt agrees, calling it (and other blogs like it):

[A] kind of fascinating development that potentially has a lot of promise for state and local officials who don't necessarily have big staffs.

Harrelson is not alone in writing online -- in Virginia, Dels. Kris Amundson and Bob Brink write a really good blog called 7 West; in Idaho, Rep. Nicole LeFavour writes a fantastic blog, which is authentic and honest in a way that I really love; and there are many others.

But often, these leaders are the exception and not the rule.

In his post, Matt describes how the state and local officials in the room were scared about the consequences of being involved online:

All anyone wanted to talk about was fear about what might go wrong on the internet. Could one of my kids write something on their Facebook page that embarrasses me? What if I become the victim of unfair attacks from anonymous people writing online? What about journalistic standards? Wither truth? The whole litany of internet-related fears.

I’d love to say that this is the reason that we developed the DLCCWeb. But in truth, we built it to counter a second set of problems -- making the Internet simple and affordable enough that all of our legislative candidates can build and update their own websites.

Encouraging the mentality to engage in online democracy is a different proposition. But we’re trying. Blog publishing is built right into DLCCWeb, along with volunteer tools, online fundraising, and social network integration. This cycle, several hundred candidates (with a whole range of technology comfort levels) are using the Internet in a way that they haven't before because of this service.

And we're doing our best to take the lessons of the Internet to heart in house and to practice what we preach on this blog.

I’d love to hear some feedback from the people who are reading this. Are we succeeding? What can we do better? Submit a comment or send me an email -- compton[at]dlcc.org.