or grab the feed
photo credits: Matthew Tyndall & Justin Ritchie
We got a ton of photos tonight, but here are 15 of the better ones real quick while we get the rest uploaded. If you can’t see the slideshow above, or just would prefer not to use it, you can view these photos directly on Flickr.
All in all the event was a lot of fun, very energetic. A little rain threatened the crowds at first, causing the media to scurry and find cover to protect their gear. Luckily the rain was brief, and we were able to patch into the main audio feed in time to get a full recording of Obama’s speech. We’ll be using this to sync up with the video we took, but in the meantime here’s a 192kbps MP3 of the recording, free to use for whatever you like (Creative Commons Attribution please). This is the raw recording, so there’s some excess audio at the end. I’ll get around to editing it out and replace the file soon. Audio edited. –Ed.
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One interesting story:
I gave one of our small video cameras to a friend of mine at the very front of the crowd, Justin Aswell. He had a great spot as close to Obama as you could get, but off to the side.
Then Jonanthan Winn, one of our new contributers, spotted us in the press risers. He was also at the very front, but dead center in front of the podium.
I called his phone, then Justin Aswell, and we managed to crowd-surf the camera halfway across the audience without any damage. When Jonathan had the camera in hand, the people up front broke into a round of applause and cheers.
Citizen journalism at its best.
And for the record, Obama opened his speech thanking “UNC Charlotte”. Not “UNCC”, or even worse, “UNC”. Good times for the university, for sure.