It's amazing to see many of the 15,000 members of the news media who have descended on Denver, including some of your favorite TV news anchors schlepping their cameras, tripods and gear for blocks in the 90 degree heat only to wait in a long line with the rest of us to get through security at the Pepsi Center.

In addition to the media, Denver is packed with delegates, protesters, police and swat teams, Secret Service, and other fun seekers hoping to get a glimpse of the movie stars, political celebrities and beautiful people that we never get to see here. We are not exactly Aspen, you know. My most exciting encounters so far have been Al Franken and Biff Henderson from the Letterman Show.

Studio 08, the place where I am working, is a flurry of activity from 3am to 11pm each day. Dozens of PR volunteers are booking satellite TV and radio interviews with media around the country for Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors, DNC and Obama spokespeople and "real people" who are speaking at the convention. At any one time there could be three TV interviews, five radio interviews and a You Tube interview going on at the same time. It is noisy, hectic and sometimes wildly insane. But it is exciting to be on the scene at the biggest thing to hit Denver maybe ever.

I stand in awe of the the people who organized this. They have somehow managed to construct an entire city of tents and pavilions on the grounds of the Pepsi Center with an extremely high tech communications and entertainment system inside. They are coordinating thousands of volunteers and everyone is managing to communicate effectively. The security is mind boggling and the sheer scope of this event is unbelievable. Then they are moving it all to Invesco Field at Mile High tomorrow. Amazing.

Two more days and the city will start getting back to normal. Me too.

You're either on the bus or off the bus. It's not exactly Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, but that famous sixties mantra is a good way to describe how people in Denver, regardless of their politics, are feeling about the Democratic National Convention.

Denver public relations pros are definitely "on the bus". PRSA Colorado volunteers will be escorting visiting media around and basically making sure they have a good time. They will join hundreds of other volunteers in cowboy hats and Crocs putting on a good show for all of the out of town visitors. It is Denver's chance to shine and no one wants to blow it.

Not wanting to miss the fun, I'll be working the DNC media studio where visiting politicians and delegates can do TV and radio interviews with their local media back home. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how it all works and be on the scene when history is made. The downside is that during the convention week I need to be there at 3am every day so we can coordinate East Coast interviews on the 5am newscasts. I am not exactly a morning person, so looking my best at 3am will be a real challenge. But as we say in show biz, the show must go on and luckily, I won't be the one being interviewed.

Despite all the excitement there are lots of people in Denver who are decidedly "off the bus". They get more and more grumpy with every new announcement about road closures, detours and other disruptions. Some are heading to the mountains. Some are making a killing renting out their own homes. But most of them will simply ride out the storm by avoiding downtown.

Personally, I am glad the DNC is coming to Denver. It is the biggest thing around here since the last time the Democratic Nation Convention came to town 100 years ago. Some people still think of us as a cow town, but a lot has changed since then. We can't hide all our blemishes, but when the lights are on and the cameras are rolling, I expect that Denver will look pretty good. Even to those folks who didn't get a seat on the bus.

To protect or not to protect, that is the question. Hasbro, the maker of the popular word game Scrabble, answered that question definitively when it slapped a lawsuit on the Agarwalla brothers from India. The suit accused the brothers of pirating Hasbro's intellectual property when they created Scrabulous, a popular game application that's attracted half a million users on Facebook.

Scrabulous was one of Facebook's most popular applications, attracting more than 500,00 users a day. It was also an obvious rip off.

Nevertheless, the blogosphere has been up in arms about what many perceive to be a bad PR move by Hasbro. Shouldn't they be thanking the brothers for generating so much fuss abut Scrabble? The company reportedly made a huge offer for the software but the Agarwalla brothers turned it down, confident they could get more money. So was this a good business decision or bad PR for a big company to pick on two punks from Calcutta? It is better business for Hasbro to protect its intellectual property or to look at it as free advertising that builds its brand?

Trademark and copyright infringement is serious business. It is also illegal. That's because there is great value in intellectual property. Many of today's most iconic brands, from Microsoft and Apple to Coke and Starbuck's, owe more of their worth to intangible assets like intellectual property than they do to fixed assets like property and equipment. If you don't protect your brand, it's like leaving the keys in the door when you leave home. Everyone and his brother can just help themselves.

Maybe it was all fun and games at first, and these guys were just benevolent, open source Robin Hoods who wanted to improve something you own and then give it away for free. But at some point greed took over and it became a case of theft for profit, clear and simple.

So Hasbro weighed the bad PR it might get from some bloggers against the bad PR it might get from its stakeholders by giving away the Scrabble brand. And it made a business decision. It decided to launch its own Scrabble application on Facebook. Facebook users now have the option to play Hasbro Scrabble application or simply go directly to the Scrabulous website.

So for the two brothers from India, the game comes down to this. What's a four-letter word for bummer?

When I was a working musician, I always looked for opportunities to soak up a lesson or some words of wisdom from musicians whose talent just blew me away. It did not take me long to figure out that the one thing that separates the good musicians from the great ones is that great musicians never stop practicing. They know that they can always get better and that there is always something they can learn. They know that the day they stop being creative is the day some young hotshot passes them by.

Now that I own a Denver, Colorado public relations firm, I know that the same rule applies for PR pros. If you ever get to that point where you think you are smart enough, that is the time to get out of the business. There is always something you can learn to help you provide better service to your clients.

These days technology is changing so fast that it is hard to keep up. It is not just learning how to use new media tools like social marketing, SEO, podcasts or blogs. It is researching which tools are most relevant for your clients and learning how to use them to communicate in a relevant way to the audiences you are trying to reach.

Whether it is new media, old media, business basics or economic fundamentals, the best way to keep learning is to surround yourself with people who know something that you do not. We can all use a mentor. That person could be someone with more experience or an intern who looks at the world with a fresh perspective that opens your eyes. It could be someone in your immediate network or someone you meet by joining a new social or business networking community. It could even be the person you are mentoring yourself, who just might be able to teach you as much as you are trying to teach them.

Now some people do not like to practice, they just want to play the game. Remember when basketball star Allen Iverson famously defended himself after he was fined for missing practice?

Practice? We are talking about practice?

But basically, it boils down to this. No matter what business you are in, there is always something to learn. And whenever you think you know it all you are about to learn a valuable lesson. The rest is just practice.

Denver is putting on its dancing shoes and gearing up for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Unless you have been living under a rock you know that it is coming to the Pepsi Center in August. And now that the DNC has announced that Senator Obama will deliver his acceptance speech to a crowd of 75,000 strong at INVESCO Field at Mile High, Denver PR firms are definitely stressing out. We all have our hands full figuring out how we can get our clients and ourselves a seat at the history table!

Along with the obvious historical implications of the Obama presidential campaign, this convention will make history in another very important way: the role that new media will play in instantly delivering the up-to-the-minute news on every speech, meeting, meal, deal and party taking place in every corner of town. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and Digg, we can expect constant updates on what is going on and who is saying what, right down to what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And with the help of laptops and mobile phones, we can expect every gaff and screw-up to be uploaded to YouTube within seconds.

To leverage all the capabilities that this new technology provides for those of us savvy enough to grok it, a new media Big Tent is going up: http://www.demconwatchblog.com/2008/06/big-tent_27.html.

Hosted by Daily Kos and sponsored by Google, this is a 9,000 square-foot, two-story showcase for bloggers and new media journalists complete with a stage for political discussions and a kiosk to make You Tube videos. A lounge will provide workspace, WiFi and refreshments, and the public can come to mingle with influential bloggers, journalists and community leaders. It sounds like heaven for people who get their news from the Internet and blogosphere rather than TV, newspapers and radio.

The most historic thing about all this is not really the technology. It is how the technology will be used to give even the little guy a voice. Under the Big Tent, the public can listen in on experts debating every hot topic and participate in the conversation through social marketing networks that actually make democracy democratic. For the first time in a long time, people can feel that their opinions matter and that their voices will be heard. Imagine the possibilities.

Denver public relations pros would be wise to consider how their companies or clients can participate in this truly American conversation. Even if they have nothing to say, they can still listen. Even if they can not sing, they can still dance to the music.

The other day I took my puppy swimming for the first time. She's a lab so she dove right in, followed my other lab and pretty soon she was swimming. Nothing to it. She was having a blast with the other dogs like she'd been doing it all her life.