Perhaps i can contact you via Twitter? @CTVBC to discuss “Social media breaks the wall around the Games” http://ow.ly/rKMH Do you share?
Tag Archives: van2010
daveo: Hi @ctvolympics let’s discuss “Social media breaks the wall around the Games”
Oh there you are! Hi @ctvolympics let’s discuss “Social media breaks the wall around the Games” Got some love for local social media makers?
daveo: Oh wait, no commenting – i guess social means “You can print or email this” #CTVOlympics
You should add a comment on the article @gregeh Oh wait, no commenting – i guess social means “You can print or email this” @ctvolympics
“The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows?” Wes/thirdi
2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows? [archived link] Inspiring reportage by @thirdi – not sure how to feel yet
##
Archived Link: The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows?
By Wes | September 27th, 2009
Yesterday in my RSS feeds was a little tidbit from the Canadian Press regarding social media and coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The article describes an IOC pretty much acquiescing to the uncontrollable forces of social media nature, quoting head of communications Mark Adams as saying “We can’t ignore them. They are there and people are going to talk with you or about you, you might as well talk with them.” essentially what sounds to me like a classic -if you can’t beat’em join’em- approach. Because it seemed like the IOC was trying to beat them for a while (and by them I mean us, the public).
Late last year Dave Olson, formerly of Raincity Studios in Vancouver and now with MovieSet, wrote an open letter to VANOC laying out quite eloquently the need for the Olympics to recognize the utility and inevitability of social media, blogging, and other modes of communication now prevalent in media. It was amicable, proactive, and totally necessary in my opinion; simply asking for inclusion and cooperation between the IOC machine and multitude of bloggers in Vancouver. Up until earlier this year the IOC had serious reservations about blogs and social media in regards to the Olympics, and many in the blogging and internet community had to push for inclusion and for recognition of our legitimacy. The IOC still does not recognize blogging as a legitimate form of journalism and rather paints it as a form of personal expression. So we’re akin to those crazy guys standing at speakers corner in London. Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter states that, “Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity.” Bloggers, we’re just a bunch of punks I guess. But the IOC has been loosening up, or maybe giving in would be a better expression.
According to www.sportsjournalists.co.uk there are new media guidelines being implemented for the Vancouver Games “The guidelines are the latest development in IOC rules which have had to evolve rapidly, reflecting the growing appetite for first-hand accounts from Olympic competitors, and they mark a sea-change from the rules issued from Lausanne ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where athletes were banned from blogging altogether.” People really want to hear firsthand accounts of the athletes as soon as they can have it. And sorry to say, Twitter and Facebook are a more efficient way than a room full of clamoring reporters, to get the real emotional content inside athletes out into the world after a victory or defeat. Yes, it might not be objective journalism- by definition a personal expression of experience won’t be objective, but it will be honest and real; and it’s what people want to read and hear. SO I’m glad that athletes are now able to blog about their experiences- it was ridiculous that they weren’t allowed before. But the IOC also has other issues to consider beyond the athletes, and that’s guys like me.
The relationship between journalists and the Olympics and the Olympics and bloggers is directly related (or how about inversely proportional) to the relationship between networks, advertising revenue and the Olympics. And while I could go on some Marxist rant about the risks and damages of the Olympic games and all about how it’s an elitist money making scheme I won’t; not because I’m not a Marxist but because this is about blogging, control of content, legitimization of our medium and the old way of thinking that is crystallized in the IOC and its great reluctance to welcome social media, or fear that it will run amok throughout the games. (So maybe I’ll go on a Marshall McLuhan-esque rant instead) The fact of the matter is that the Olympics also has positive benefits too.
the Olympic Village has gone insanely over-budget and in fact the entire Olympics are over budget. So of course the IOC, Vancouver, BC, and Canada all need to make some dough off this fiasco. So shouldn’t blogging and social media be viewed as a revenue stream to them- a huge one? And not just a bunch of hacks with laptops posting useless drivel; which is what the rhetoric tends to make me feel they view it as. Where other large events like the Academy Awards and Grammies welcomed bloggers into the fold, the IOC has been unwilling to welcome the public observer into their mix. And I truly believe it comes down to advertising revenue, licensing, and control of the Olympic image. But I’ll end it there. I look forward to blogging extensively throughout the Olympics and reading the other Senses posters as we proudly watch a piece of history unfold in our sleepy little logging town.
##
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm.
Comments:
DaveO
My colleagues & I have covered several Olympics as social media-makers plus reached out to VANOC, IOC and other acronyms for 4+ years and spoke to numerous groups and trad. media but not been included in any manner by the official orgs. We received a meaningless response from VANOC from the open letters but moved ahead anyhow because we know the way people get news has changed.
As such, we are rallying up the TrueNorthMediaHouse.com project to provide a “home” for alternative coverage so I’m a little bit surprised that *finally* less than 6 months to the Games, they sorta jump on board and say all the right things. Uhh welcome to the 21st century, pull up a chair.
DaveO
Wes, thanks for this great piece of reporting. It’s been a long road and frankly i am exhausted, disappointed and frustrated by the slow adoption of new media by IOC and the non-inclusion by VANOC. This is good news – i guess – but the timing is odd. At this point, i am more concerned about finding Latvian hockey fans to party with ;-).
DaveO
PS, not a huuuge deal but i spell my family name Ols”o”n rather than “e”
wesregan
Hey Dave, I’d love some more information on True North Media House. Is there space available for other bloggers still? How is it going to be set up? Where? When?
Wes
daveo: Yup the buzz-word laden cheese is borderline offensive and certainly reflects abundant cluelessness
Yup the buzz-word laden cheese is borderline offensive and certainly reflects abundant cluelessness @unconed #IOC #VANOC #CTV #2010 #TNMH
The Canadian Press: Social media bringing down the walled garden of the Olympic Games
The Canadian Press: Social media bringing down the walled garden of the Olympic Games
Article shared in full for historical record as original article no longer posted. Accessed from Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Feb. 2017.
##
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Social media lets people eavesdrop on the conversations between celebrities or be eyewitnesses to revolutions around the world. It’s also bringing down the walls around another secret garden: the Olympics.
Technologies that allow regular citizens to connect to the Games are slowly being adopted by international and local Olympic organizers.
It’s a major step forward for the movement, which has often been criticized for a top-down approach to communication – the IOC once spoke and expected people to listen.
But the explosion of blogs, Facebook and message boards is beginning to force them to listen a little more themselves.
“Clearly if you want to talk to people you have to use the channels that are available,” said Mark Adams, the director of communications for the IOC.
“We can’t ignore them. They are there and people are going to talk with you or about you, you might as well talk with them.”
When the IOC gathers in Copenhagen in October for a conference on the future of the Games, they’ll hear from the public as well via a series of videos submitted online through YouTube.
They committee used the online video site for the Beijing Games so countries that didn’t have broadcasters with digital rights to the Games could get access to footage.
The Internet has also been a major boon for Games broadcasters, allowing them to show thousands more hours of coverage than they would have otherwise.
But social media allows them to go a step further, said Alon Marcovici, the vice-president of digital media and research for the CTV/Rogers consortium that owns the broadcast rights to the 2010 Winter Games in Canada.
“The reality is, outside of video, on these new social platforms, there is no rights-holding broadcaster, so to speak,” he said.
“If we didn’t do it, someone else would fill the gap and we want to make sure we are the ones leading the charge of the content on those platforms.”
The consortium has Twitter feeds and Facebook groups and are hoping to post user-generated content beginning with the torch relay on their website.
Marcovici said one of the strengths of social media is it could allow Olympic communities to exist after the Games, instead of just bubbling up in the days around the events only to recede.
“The IOC can play a role in connecting them and making the Olympics a little bit more than just, maybe not 24/7, but certainly for a big chunk of the year rather than just 17 days.”
On Twitter, there are already dozens of users tweeting about the Games, including athletes, fans and recently, the IOC itself.
One is Garnet Nelson, who was the marketing manager for Vancouver’s bid for the Games.
Tweeting under the handle of OlympicGuy, he uses his feed to broadcast Olympic-related news as a fan but also in his current capacity as the managing partner of Altius Sport Marketing in Vancouver, which advises companies on sports sponsorships.
“Social media will absolutely change the face of events and the way happenings are reported and recorded en masse,” he said.
“It will also change the way that events try to define and protect their own territory and their own messages.”
While Vancouver Olympic organizers were quick to register traditional Internet domain names for the Games, they weren’t as fast on Twitter. There are users who aren’t officially affiliated with the committee using the names of the mascots or titles like 2010Olympics.
The committee says it is watching the users but doesn’t intend to go after them for violating copyright.
The explosion of social media also paves the way for the IOC to potentially branch into another category of sponsorship – technology.
Companies like Microsoft or Google, the owners of YouTube, could be brought onside to become the exclusive “social media” technology providers for future Games.
Vancouver organizers are looking to use social media applications during the torch relay.
People will be able to follow the torch via GPS, click on geo-tagged photos to see a live map of where the flame is or sign up for Facebook groups that organizers are encouraging communities to set up to allow people to connect with the torch.
“It’s absolutely new territory for all of us,” said Suzanne Reeves, the committee’s director of communications for the torch relay.”
“Our expectation is the relay and people following the relay will be very active in the social media, on the web and it is an opportunity just to have a broader reach.”
Organizers are also allowing bloggers to be accredited as official media along the torch relay route.
Just prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics, the IOC issued its first set of guidelines for whether and how athletes and other officials could blog at the Games.
The concern around athlete blogs is that the IOC forbids anyone but accredited journalists to act as journalists.
The committee then decided that blogs weren’t journalism, more like personal diaries, so athletes were given a green light.
Even as sports leagues like the NFL forbid players from using Twitter during games, the IOC has no formal policy.
When it comes to whether bloggers can get accredited as official media for an Olympics, the decision rests with the national Olympic committees who parcel out the coveted all-access passes for reporters.
For the 2010 Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee has given accreditation to a handful of web-based outlets, mostly to ones who follow the Olympics on a full-time basis.
There will also be a citizen journalism space for the Games, being set up by a group of social media advocates in Vancouver.
B.C.’s unaccredited media centre for the Games has also opened up space for bloggers and received seven applications for its 30 available spaces.
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
##
ED NOTE: Used for review and educational purposes.
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows?
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and social media, will they be awkward bedfellows?
Note: Full article shared here for permanent historical record – original link is broken, as such, accessed via Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine on Feb. 2017.
##
By Wes | September 27th, 2009
Yesterday in my RSS feeds was a little tidbit from the Canadian Press regarding social media and coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The article describes an IOC pretty much acquiescing to the uncontrollable forces of social media nature, quoting head of communications Mark Adams as saying “We can’t ignore them. They are there and people are going to talk with you or about you, you might as well talk with them.” essentially what sounds to me like a classic -if you can’t beat’em join’em- approach. Because it seemed like the IOC was trying to beat them for a while (and by them I mean us, the public).
Late last year Dave Olson, formerly of Raincity Studios in Vancouver and now with MovieSet, wrote an open letter to VANOC laying out quite eloquently the need for the Olympics to recognize the utility and inevitability of social media, blogging, and other modes of communication now prevalent in media. It was amicable, proactive, and totally necessary in my opinion; simply asking for inclusion and cooperation between the IOC machine and multitude of bloggers in Vancouver. Up until earlier this year the IOC had serious reservations about blogs and social media in regards to the Olympics, and many in the blogging and internet community had to push for inclusion and for recognition of our legitimacy. The IOC still does not recognize blogging as a legitimate form of journalism and rather paints it as a form of personal expression. So we’re akin to those crazy guys standing at speakers corner in London. Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter states that, “Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity.” Bloggers, we’re just a bunch of punks I guess. But the IOC has been loosening up, or maybe giving in would be a better expression.
According to www.sportsjournalists.co.uk there are new media guidelines being implemented for the Vancouver Games “The guidelines are the latest development in IOC rules which have had to evolve rapidly, reflecting the growing appetite for first-hand accounts from Olympic competitors, and they mark a sea-change from the rules issued from Lausanne ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where athletes were banned from blogging altogether.” People really want to hear firsthand accounts of the athletes as soon as they can have it. And sorry to say, Twitter and Facebook are a more efficient way than a room full of clamoring reporters, to get the real emotional content inside athletes out into the world after a victory or defeat. Yes, it might not be objective journalism- by definition a personal expression of experience won’t be objective, but it will be honest and real; and it’s what people want to read and hear. SO I’m glad that athletes are now able to blog about their experiences- it was ridiculous that they weren’t allowed before. But the IOC also has other issues to consider beyond the athletes, and that’s guys like me.
The relationship between journalists and the Olympics and the Olympics and bloggers is directly related (or how about inversely proportional) to the relationship between networks, advertising revenue and the Olympics. And while I could go on some Marxist rant about the risks and damages of the Olympic games and all about how it’s an elitist money making scheme I won’t; not because I’m not a Marxist but because this is about blogging, control of content, legitimization of our medium and the old way of thinking that is crystallized in the IOC and its great reluctance to welcome social media, or fear that it will run amok throughout the games. (So maybe I’ll go on a Marshall McLuhan-esque rant instead) The fact of the matter is that the Olympics also has positive benefits too.
the Olympic Village has gone insanely over-budget and in fact the entire Olympics are over budget. So of course the IOC, Vancouver, BC, and Canada all need to make some dough off this fiasco. So shouldn’t blogging and social media be viewed as a revenue stream to them- a huge one? And not just a bunch of hacks with laptops posting useless drivel; which is what the rhetoric tends to make me feel they view it as. Where other large events like the Academy Awards and Grammies welcomed bloggers into the fold, the IOC has been unwilling to welcome the public observer into their mix. And I truly believe it comes down to advertising revenue, licensing, and control of the Olympic image. But I’ll end it there. I look forward to blogging extensively throughout the Olympics and reading the other Senses posters as we proudly watch a piece of history unfold in our sleepy little logging town.
“Exclusive: Half of money lost in Madoff scam set to be recovered by IOC”
RT @insidethegames: Exclusive: Half of money lost in Madoff scam set to be recovered by IOC http://ow.ly/r42T #olympics #madoff #scammed [dead link, not archived]
BC to force homeless into shelters for 2010…
My note: Yup happened in Atlanta, Sydney, Beijing, Athens etc. @corinn So no one is *really* surprised at this new draconian plot to ‘cleanse’ street
RT @Dave_Eby: BC to force homeless into shelters for 2010 Olympics. …
Note: original link dead and not archived in Internet Archive – keeping post for placeholder for backfilling for archival purposes
Note: Original article by Frances Bula in Globe and Mail respectfully re-posted in full here for archival purposes to document civic issues during Vancouver 2010 Olympics / accessed via Internet Archive on Jan. 30, 2020 from capture Sept 21, 2009
##
B.C. wants to force homeless into shelters in extreme weather
Frances Bula
Vancouver — From Monday’s Globe and Mail
Last updated on Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009 03:00AM EDT
British Columbia is drafting the country’s first legislation that would give authorities the power to compel homeless people to go to shelters or even jail during extreme cold- or wet-weather periods.
The plan has sparked intense discussions in Gordon Campbell’s government between the B.C. Housing Ministry and the office of the Attorney-General about Charter of Rights issues and liability problems, according to e-mails obtained by The Globe and Mail.
And the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is questioning the timing of the announcement, given the impending Olympic Games.
“This comes after seven years of a lack of concern about sleeping on the streets,” said executive director David Eby.
An internal ministry memo details potential roadblocks to the proposed Assisting to Shelter Act, noting that “requiring people to go to a shelter against their will may make the legislation vulnerable to a Charter challenge. A legal opinion is pending.”
Housing Minister Rich Coleman confirmed Sunday that he is planning to move ahead with the legislation, but it has nothing to do with the Games.
He said the catalyst for the bill was the death of a homeless woman on Vancouver’s streets in December. The 47-year-old woman, known to the police only as Tracey, burned to death while trying to keep warm with a candle.
The police had offered to take the woman to shelter three times during the night after temperatures fell below zero. On the same evening, officers from the Vancouver Police Department offered shelter to 101 people; only 12 accepted and six took blankets.
“I just think we have to do what we can to save people’s lives,” said Mr. Coleman, who is also working on plans for urgent-response facilities where people can be taken besides jail or shelters. “I just believe it’s worth a try.”
An internal ministry memo proposes the mechanisms that would be necessary to make the new law work fairly and efficiently. Police officers or others (which the memo did not specify) would be given the authority to force people to shelters – with a limit specified on the level of force allowable – once a region had declared that Extreme Weather Response plans were in effect. Extreme weather was described as low temperatures or excessive rain. That declaration is already set out in B.C. as the trigger for the opening of emergency shelters in many municipalities.
Outreach workers would give homeless people a written warning that the extreme-weather declaration is in effect and notify police. Police would then try to convince these people to go into shelters and, if they refused, police would contact “an official (to be determined) by telephone who would then issue an administrative order which the officer would then enforce,” the memo says.
“As a last resort and in order for the police officer to discharge their legal responsibility, the individual may be taken to police cells, either voluntarily or involuntarily, where they will be held until the extreme weather declaration is no longer in effect.”
Mr. Coleman said it’s possible that advocacy groups will mount a Charter challenge to the legislation, but he said the government is willing to accept that risk. He wouldn’t say when the legislation would be coming forward, but an internal memo noted that the deadline for the draft was Sept. 10, indicating it could be imminent.
The bill will be what is called an “exposure bill,” meaning it will be tabled and then responses will be gathered from police, homeless-shelter operators and others. It is not aimed at people with mental-health problems, who can already be apprehended under mental-health laws, but at any homeless people who refuse to go to shelters even in life-threatening weather conditions.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s Mr. Eby said the legislation appears to be rife with legal pitfalls, including the Charter of Rights issue of whether you can force into a shelter someone who chooses to stay out on the street. Police will need to come up with ways to prove someone is homeless and that they’re putting themselves in danger.
“Whether we like it or not, staying out on the streets is their right,” Mr. Eby said.
As well, he said it appears ministry bureaucrats are aware that they’re leaving police open to questions of liability such as the ones they faced during a recent inquiry into their handling of Frank Paul, a native man who died after police picked him up for public drunkenness and then, when no agency took responsibility for him, left him in an alley.
The ministry memo states that there needs to be a clear endpoint to police officers’ liability if they pick up a homeless person but the shelters are full or won’t take that person.
Special to the Globe and Mail
“The location and size of the safe assembly areas will be announced closer to Games time” by the ISU:
“The location and size of the safe assembly areas will be announced closer to Games time” by the ISU:http://ow.ly/pRg8 [link dead and not archived] #TNMH #2010 #liberty