Democrats score high-tech firsts Political convention seeks to look beyond its Windy City past

The whole world is watching. This time, the Establishment is glad. The Democratic National Convention opens today in Chicago at the United Center, 28 years after tumultuous crowds made famous the chant, "The whole world is watching."

A Daley is still mayor, but much has changed. No divisive war, political assassinations or riots in the streets threaten this convention with a bitter legacy. No grainy TV images will confront the world with Yippie protesters and club-swinging police.

This year, delegates are set to nominate an incumbent president who protested the Vietnam War, and they are taking every advantage of technology that didn't exist in 1968 to transmit upbeat messages to the folks back home.

Joe Luby, Ameritech's general manager in charge of installing the equivalent of a small city network for the convention, was a division switching manager when the Democrats last visited. "There was no Internet-no laptops, modems, LANs, ISDN service, Centrex, paging or cellular," he recalled.

The electronic key and PBX systems of old have given way to a multimedia network within a network in and around the United Center. The biggest challenge, Luby said, was positioning the communications infrastructure so it could be removed efficiently with minimal impact on the environment.

Ameritech workers coordinated their efforts from rented quarters at nearby Cregier School. They added a new digital switch to carry telephone and data traffic with the prefix 336 dedicated to the convention phones (336 spells DEM on the phone keypad); installed 8000 telephones in the United Center and at other places throughout the city; laid more than 4000 miles of fiber optic cable and copper wire, including cable to carry voice and data traffic from the convention to the downtown switch; and installed about 1500 ISDN lines. Working alongside the Ameritech crew were 25 students from Malcolm X College who benefited from the hands-on experience.

The cavernous United Center arena glistened last week under a giant party banner and red, white and blue bunting, brightening the dark corridors ringed by strings of multicolored cables and phone lines. Because no one knew where phones would be needed until shortly before the convention, the trunk cables were brought as close as possible to the users to expedite the installation of phone drops, said Mike Kuppinger, senior associate with Environmental Systems Design, which coordinated the project's infrastructure.

As the convention kicks off, 400 Ameritech employees are assigned to ensure things run smoothly.

The telco also took care of a more glamorous chore by building a World Wide Web site on the Internet for Chicago '96, the bipartisan host committee that raised money to support the convention. Richard Notebaert, Ameritech's chairman and chief executive officer, served as co-chairman.

AT&T and Lucent Technologies play a prominent role this week, as well. They developed the Delegate Communications System, a lectern equipped with a touch-screen terminal for electronic voting, one ISDN phone and two analog sets that provide voice, Internet and intranet access. Each of the 56 stations-one for each delegation-is linked to an NCR Globalyst 730 server that houses the convention software and runs on Lucent's Definity G3i communications system.

The Democratic National Convention Committee also unveiled a World Wide Web site designed for the convention that enables anyone who can access it to participate in the proceedings. "This is the first Democratic convention to take advantage of the Internet," said Stan Gorski, AT&T/Lucent Technologies' director of the convention.

Each state delegation will continue the tradition of shouting out its roll call vote for the cameras, but the electronic voting system will provide the official tally, said Convention Chairman Don Fowler, during a press tour last week.

After all, the whole world is watching.