America's Hope, America's Promise

Tonight I was at Invesco Stadium where Barack Obama accepted the Democratic party's nomination for President of the United States!

It was amazing to be there in person to be part of history, and it was unbelievable to be one of a sea of people (84,000+ in the stadium and millions of viewers at home) supporting this phenomenal team for President and Vice-President!!

Here is a short video of the crowd going wild when Obama took the stage, so you can get a sense of what it was like to be there tonight!



Here is Barack's powerful speech, in which he outlined his platform and addressed the criticisms that the Republicans have used against him and other Democrats in the past. He did not invoke people's emotions--he spoke to our intellect and respectfully outlined the problems that Americans are facing and called for the Republicans to "own their failures" so that we can move forward together, united by a vision for an American future based on the American dream and the values this country was founded on:



I was awed and honored to be part of history tonight--it was definitely one of the highlights of my life so far. It is something I will tell my children and grandchildren about, and I feel so incredibly blessed to have been there to witness this moment in American history along with 84,000 of my closest friends!

I hope you all had the chance to watch Barack's speech live, and here's a whole new way to see it, courtesy of "Wordle" which creates these awesome collages of words (you can enter in any words and it will create a unique constellation with the biggest words being the most frequent):

It was very interesting to be there in person and then watch it on TV later--actually we watched it twice on CNN after we got home from Invesco (Toshi kept pointing to the screen during crowd shots--exclaiming, "There we are, those two little dots up there!). Some things looked better in person (the backdrop looked boring on TV but very beautiful in person; the exploding streamers looked kind of funny in person--they fell on the backdrop, the camera rigging, and obscured the view from the crowd cam--but they looked amazing on TV in the close-up shots). It was truly mind-boggling to watch the speech from our hotel room that night. We just kept looking at each other with eyes wide and mouths hanging open, "We were THERE!"

We are all part of this American moment and we all own a piece of our democracy for which we must take responsibility. As Barack Obama so eloquently stated:

"This has never been about me.
This is about YOU!"