Reply #16: This is on SMARTech's web site:

[seafan]

See the bolded section:

Local company hosts GOP Internet sites

posted: 08-22-2004

By Andy Sher Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — It’s more than 700 miles from Madison Square Garden, but that won’t stop Chattanooga from "hosting" next week’s Republican National Convention in New York City.

Chattanooga based Smartech Corp. is serving as Web host for the convention, bringing the event to computer screens across the globe. The company will provide convention speeches, video-on-demand "streams" and live shots of events through powerful Web servers, most of which are at Smartech’s headquarters in downtown Chattanooga.

"The world will view everything from Chattanooga; that’s the best way to think about it," said Smartech founder and President Jeff Averbeck. "We’ll have one camera (in New York) that looks down from the ceiling on the podium, and then we’ll have several others placed around in strategic locations."

He said Smartech will put together a daily montage of video activities for viewing at www.2004nycgop.com. Lee Rainie, executive direc- tor of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, said Smartech’s coverage of speeches will be important because television networks have reduced convention coverage from pervious years.

"If I’m John Q. Voter and I just want to watch the speeches, the online universe or C-Span is the best way to go," Mr. Rainie said. Democratic Party officials estimated they received more than 16 million hits on their convention Web site during the first 24 hours of the event last month in Boston.

Mr. Averbeck said his company also is creating an Intranet service to provide transcripts and other material to news organizations at the New York convention site.

Max Everett, the Republican National Convention’s director of information technology, said in a statement that "Smartech has been great for us so far."

"They’ve got a tight group that does their support, and they know how to do some coding of their own, so they are able to respond and customize more than your average Web host," he said.

In addition to its work at the convention, Smartech also sends out several million e-mail messages a day under contracts with both President Bush’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

The company also hosts the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site, at www.georgewbush.com, and the national committee’s site, www.GOP.com. In the past year, the company has added six employees, bringing its total to 12. Smartech does not release revenue figures, but political work accounts for 25 percent to 35 percent of the company’s total business, Mr. Averbeck said.

Mr. Rainie said Web sites have become increasingly important as a means of communications in political campaigns. Online fund-raising really began with Republican John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign but skyrocketed in 2003 and 2004 as a result of efforts by Democratic hopeful Howard Dean, he said.

According to Pew figures, 63 percent of Americans are going online, and 49 percent have searched for news or information about politics or campaigns.

"I’m not sure that the Internet will ever quite hold the same kind of audience that TV does," Mr. Rainie said. "But it’s still important to say that for the way we talk about politics and for the way we perform politics in this country, the Internet is already well established as a vehicle."

http://www.smartechcorp.net/index.php?page=news⊂=story&id=68



Edit: Very odd, this link doesn't work after uploading this post. (It worked in preview pane, though.)

Try here and scroll down to the news story title, "Local company hosts GOP Internet sites" to get to the story.