Boris Mann's blog

Wow! Arieanna just wrote an incredible piece outlining how she feels blogging is missing from the Olympics. I'm going to point this out to several people as an example of how we might get a better glimpse into viewers as well as competitors.

Right now we have plenty of coverage of the Olympics. I'm seeing it a lot - I watch the coverage from the Canadian perspective and the US one - watching highlights on both channels to catch different elements of each event. I read the b5 media coverage. I catch snippets here and there over the Internet. But it's very one-sided. It's about the perception of the events - not the participation. From the viewers/commentators, not the athletes, their families, the coaches or the judges.

My understanding of the IOC rules indicates that athletes cannot blog their Olympic experiences. This is just wrong. It's not about granting exclusive media coverage to a multinational network - it's about capturing the event. And for that we need perspective. Right now the coverage is like a picture with giant holes cut in it.

When blogging is banned from certain perspectives, it not only makes me angry and annoyed, but it makes me feel empty. In this instance, I want more than the media can provide. Interviews are not the same thing as blogging. Blogging is a very personal activity - where one person by choice shares their perspective and emotions and pictures and lives. It's not edited and it's not driven in question/answer format.

Read the whole thing: Blogaholics - The Olympics needs perspective

Darren Barefoot explains why Biathlon is his favourite event, and also covers some of the background of how it came to be:

After hockey, I think biathlon is my favourite event in the Winter Olympics. I like its peculiar, conflicting combination of activities--cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. It's conflicting, of course, because the skiing gets your heart rate up to 180 beats per minute, which isn't particularly conducive to shooting a silver-dollar-sized target half a football field away. I had assumed it had its origins in hunting, but actually we can blame the Norweigians.

What's your favourite Winter Olympic sport?

Chuq von Rospach writes a lot about NHL hockey on his blog. He's put together some notes on Olympic hockey with the same high level of quality:

Over on the women's side -- congratulations to Sweden for knocking the US out of the gold medal game, setting up the first ever international tourney where the US and Canada won't be fighting for the gold medal. This is historic, because it means it's no longer a two-team sport at the elite level -- and that can only improve the sport and interest in it.

Chuq goes on to point to the Vancouver Canucks OpEd stunned reaction to the Canadian men's hockey team loss.

One of the great experiences of supporting events at the BC Canada Place here in Torino was meeting the CTV team -- including Murray, Brent, Kevin, and Vicki (apologies if I've missed some people). If you want to get a real sense for how media functions on the ground during such a crazy news period as the Olympics, check out Murray's blog, aka Chopper Murman. These guys are working super hard and going through a lot, and for such a sustained amount of time that the fatigue levels are astounding.

Murray has been doing a fantastic job of chronicling the experience with words and pictures on his blog, which he started right at the beginning of the Torino experience. I like this post about filming a typical Italian family's reaction to the open ceremonies (since non-rights holders can't cover ANY events that take place directly at official Olympic venues). They ended up editing the shots directly at the dinner table -- check out The Opening:

The symposium is underway. My computer has been taken over by Dr. Andy Miah to give the first presentation. Kris handed his computer over and I've taken a few pictures with my cameraphone. Robert is taking pictures with his "good" camera and taking a few notes as well.

We started by going around the room and having everyone introduce themselves. Internet service providers, website developers, research consortiums, and content providers are here. Words like innovation, promotion, and research are being used a lot. This is a very interesting group of people, and I'm already thinking of just opening up my 15 minutes in a very different way. There are many experts in the room and I'd love to hear them all speak.

A representative from Top-IX talked about taking technologies from something that people are perhaps aware of or at a research level, and promoting them and making them real to people. Their challenge is about promoting home Internet broadband -- I pointed out that we have much to share. Canada has some of the highest per capita home broadband usage, but we lack sadly in mobile technologies.

The Torino Piemonte Media Center is where all the non-accredited journalists go. Non-accredited in this case, means they are not part of the official paid coverage. Media organizations pay rights to cover the sports and for access to all the venues, and are located in the International Broadcast Center or the Main Broadcast Center. So, unaccredited does not mean (as I first thought), non-traditional media like citizen journalists that myself, Kris, and Robert are representing, but rather all those that have not paid rights. Even the major media organizations, such as CBC, New York Times, BBC, etc., only have a limited number of accredited media, and all their extra journalists use the Media Center as their base camp. They cover all those elements of the Games that are not the sporting events. For example, press conferences covering the bands that are playing at the Medal Center are held at the non-accredited center.

On our first day, we headed straight for the nearest cellphone store, which ended up being a Vodafone provider. First of all, we were astounded at the amount of cell phones available. Canada doesn't have as much of a selection, and most are barely differing older phones with few new features.

In any case, Kris and Robert had been given advanced devices by ComVu to do direct pocketcasting with. I had my Nokia 6630, which I bought the last time I was in Europe. We all had to pull out our passports in order to get Vodafone SIM cards, which was a surprise.

Not speaking Italian, it was a bit difficult to figure out the different plans. In the end, we got a 60 hour data plan for only 30EU. Contrast this with my $50CDN unlimited data plan which is only available to grandfathered accounts before Fido was bought by Rogers. And let's compare speeds. In Canada, it's a GPRS connection that is at most 40kbps, while the UMTS here in Italy can be up to 320kbps. That's about as fast as some of the broadband lite plans that people have for their desktops!

Dr. Andy Miah came over to BC Canada Place and tested some new software that the University of Paisley is trialing to give remote classes using a web browser. Here's a little video clip on YouTube of Andy giving his talk plus the Torino team of KK and Robert hard at work uploading our citizen media.

We're putting videos on YouTube as well -- not just from my little cameraphone, but from Kris and Robert's Samsung SportCam. Check out the Torino group on YouTube to catch up with all the latest videos. If anyone else is in Torino, stick your videos there -- it's open to everyone.

Flickr also has lots of coverage. We've been tagging everything with Torino, so check the torino tag for ours and others. As well, someone created a Torino 2006 group.

It's great to see so much citizen media being created. I only wish we could have more directly from athletes themselves, but blogs by Olympic participants appear to be banned, according to a story from the Japanese Olympic Committee. The problem appears to be commercial use, or perhaps the key phrase being "journalistic activities" by participants. And that's the key issue: are blogs and other citizen media quote/unquote real journalism, or are they personal expression? I can only imagine that an athlete's appearance at the event is one of the most amazing and powerful personal experiences they will ever have. It's a shame that they can't (or aren't allowed) to share that with both their friends and family, as well as us.

There are HBC stores set up at both the British Columbia Canada Place as well as Canada House. I took this picture of a gaggle of young Italian Olympic Village volunteers wearing the Canada hats that are available. We think they're a bit silly looking, but it turns out that the Italians really do love them (Robert's Flickr stream will have a better picture later). In any case, whether during regular public hours or even at the Whistler Apres event where I took the picture, the HBC stores are packed and Canadian gear is flying off the shelves. In part it's a love of Canada and the excitement of the next Games being there, but HBC has really put together a fantastic selection of clothes. Even the green has grown on me.