I can remember watching political conventions from gavel-to-gavel as a child. In hindsight, I’m sure that wasn’t a common behavior for someone in elementary school. But, I must admit, it has provide me with a tremendous backlog of political trivia I carry around in my brain.

At Hammock, we’ve got plenty of political junkies who watch debates and channel surf during the conventions. And while we have supporters of both parties on our staff, we tend to be equal-time observers when it comes to learning how the different campaigns reach out and embrace their supporters.

I recommend to anyone who is in a field involving relationship marketing to sign up for e-mail from both the Obama and McCain campaigns. It is fascinating to observe their use of e-mail, video and a wide array of online conversational tools. In 2004, the Presidential campaigns online were all about the introduction of blogging and the organization of meetup types of events. This year, it is fascinating to see how willing the campaigns are to try new tools and approaches.

This year, the way the Internet is being used is as historic as some of those conventions I saw when I was a youngster.