craig ritchie is a web strategist with an extensive background in experience design, content and community planning. product creation, management and marketing.
craig ritchie is currently focused on social media creation, brand building and online reputation management.
craig ritchie is also:
Strategist at Organic
Web Consultant/Owner of Thunderpulse Consulting
Product Management, Marketing & Content Rock Star for Bluehaze
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I’m an Olympics junkie. But, until the olympiad when I can watch the event I want, when I want, wherever I want, my craving will remain unsated.
Athens 2004 gave a glimpse at the potential of the future of Olympics coverage, and as Beijing 2008 approached, it seemed that on-demand, super-immersive web strategy and mobile tactics would be ubiquitous and all-encompassing.
As it turns out, it’s not quite there yet. NBC’s has no regrets however, as their lock down of the coverage has grabbed a 17.6 Nielsen rating and $1 Billion in advertising revenue.
Nevertheless, social media and Web 2.0 has opened new doors for the dissemination and celebration of the games to spread higher, faster and stronger.
Here are some of the strategies and memes that are defining the Olympic Games online and on your mobile device:
Video
Wired’s “How to watch the olympics online”
If you’re hunting for the ultimate on-demand and live coverage online, this is a good place to start.
CCTV Olympics Flash interface
Flash designers are boasting about the scope of the content being delivered on a Flash platform implementation. It’s “pretty,” I suppose, but severely limited as far as organization of the content and usability. It’s possible this answers the question whether Flash can support large projects, but that’s secondary to delivering a good user experience… and Flash just isn’t the right fit for this type of content.
NBC using Silverlight
… but at least the CCTV site is Flash and not Silverlight. Users, if they’re so fortunate to own a Windows PC, are forced to download the new Microsoft Silverlight plug-in to view NBC’s online video. After that hurdle is cleared, the experience is good for some, terrible for others.
Googolympics
StartupMeme lists the many Google initiatives for the games, including Gadgets, One-box search, Maps visualizations and the (arguably) revolutionary dedicated YouTube channel.
And here’s Google’s mobile access to stats and updates.
Widgets
All the major content providers have built desktop widgets.
Lenovo’s TVTonic Super-Widget
Lenovo’s has sponsored a skinned TVTonic app that allows you to subscribe to full-length events, viewable on- and off-line.
Interactive Strategies
CBC’s Sport Explainer
CBC explains events with simple animations. You can learn water polo by clicking on the link at the bottom right here>
BBC Interactive Olympic Map
The BBC leverages Microsoft Live Search Maps to surface blog and twitter coverage via a geographical visualization.
NYT’s Medal Count Map Visualization
The New York Times shows us the historical (and current) medal counts for all of the modern games.
BBC’s Olympic Myth: “Monkey”
The Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett adapt and animate a classical Chinese novel to promote BBC coverage.
Mobile
Blackberry Cool’s Olympic Roundup
Follow on your Blackberry with these apps.
Softpedia’s Blackberry Beijing Travel App
Going to Beijing? Here’s an interesting targeted Travel App.
Zumobi’s Olympic iPhone App
Zumobi has a simple app – no video, but general coverage, including photos and blogs. If you have an iPhone, let me know what you think of this…
Social Media
Twitter Hashtags: BG08, Beijing, Olympics
The twitterati can’t make up their mind on a tag, so here’s all three as they are rolling out on Twemes.
Flickr
Wow, Flickr had a great opportunity to capitalize on all the great photos from the event… but finding the good photos is tough. Most searches return almost an equal number of protest and political images as mediocre shots of the games.
Facebook Apps
Pramati has built an interesting Guess-the-Podium app for Sun. It’s a good idea, but tough to guess many events – that is, I could have an educated guess on a World Cup or March Madness app, but I’m not sure who to pick for 60kg Men’s Freestyle Wrestling. Will it be He Qin, Yandro Quintana or Mavlet Batirov who take the gold?
NBC’s and other also-ran apps are available too.
Wikipedia
Blogs
Bloggers Blog Olympics Blogs and Twitterers
A great list of bloggers and twitterers is collected here.
Athlete Blogs
With so many to follow, I haven’t had a chance to sift through these massive lists. (If you have any highlights of great athlete bloggers or entries, let me know.)
- danwei.org/blogs/athletebloggers_at_beijing_oly.php
- hehe2.net/misc/60-beijing-olympic-athletes-blogs-opml-file-directly-to-your-reader/
- summergames.lenovo.com
Wordpress Tag: Olympics
Of course, there are lots of other bloggers talking about the olympics. Wordpress aggregates the tags from these posts.
Reuters Olympics Podcasts
User-generated content and Memes
We can’t ignore the waves of UGC and the viral contributions of general public.
FriendFeed Spanish Faux-pas
This story exploded across the web, and gains strength still via social networks.
Blue Screen of Death @ Opening Ceremonies
The meme says Windows projected its infamous artwork on during the opening ceremonies. Real or fake? Either way, geeks grabbed on to the story and added another chapter to the Windows Fail mythology.
- gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting
LOLBush @ Olympics
The Guardian wonders if Bush “can haz” anything else to do, besides watching Misty May dig sand.
Sponsor Strategies
Most of the official international sponsors have weak (if any) strategies – Flash timelines and movies that unapologetically cram the brands down the users’ throats. If your computer doesn’t crash, check out Panasonic’s “World Wide Wave.” Yikes.
On the other side of things
McDonalds’ The Lost Ring Cross-channel Immersive Storyline
Wow. I stumbled on to this only recently, and it looks expansive, and impressive. It also looks like it’s nearly over. I’ll be looking deeper into this multilingual social media play.
Atos Origin’s On-site Infrastructure
Here’s an overview of Beijing 2008’s IT provider’s offerings, including the “Olympic Family Intranet”
Kodak’s Blog?
Meh. Kodak’s final olympiad as an Olympic sponsor passes on a weak note online.
… one interesting post however, is the comprehensive gallery of Kodak’s Olympic Pins.
Samsung’s Medal Mania
Medal Mania is a cross-Internet hunt for medals. The clues are kind of lame, but it’s a good attempt at engagement.
Official Web Strategy
Beijing 2008’s official site
One wonders at the missed (?) opportunities for the official sites to host and stream on-demand content. And for revenue streams? Sponsorships, subscriptions and fee-driven access. How about a deal with iTunes?
Vancouver 2010
Finally, a shameless proud plug for the home team currently building towards the next winter games. Go Canada Go! (See you there.)
This list is a work-in-progress. Send me your links and thoughts on the games…
Web conferences have become host to the new wave of viral tools and technologies that are enhancing community and business meetings. Carlson Marketing calls this next-gen conference style ‘Meetings 2.0.’ As a worldwide enabler of business meetings, Carlson has added mobile tools and social networking to their meetings and events offerings, which expands the experience from just ‘During’ to include ‘Before’ and ‘After.’
Twead carefully during your keynote
Recently, at the Toronto Mesh web conference, a lot was revealed about the future of conferences. Specifically, the massive impact of mobile devices and social media tools on these types of get-togethers. The communication vehicle of choice? Twitter, of course. During the two-day event, power-tweeters (frequent users of Twitter) introduced the power and benefits of micro-blogging to dozens of twuddites. (Twitter luddites)
What was the call to action for these new adopters? Easily a quarter of the audience members in any given session had laptops open, and half of them were twittering amongst themselves, expanding the presentations and panels to deep discussions in the seats.
Twemes, a Twitter API implemetation, further enabled the conversation between tweeters, as Mesh attendees or ‘Meshies’ tagged their 140-character-or-less comments with ‘#mesh08,’ allowing the community to follow the discussion in real time as the comments rolled by. You can see all of these comments aggregated here.
I recommend trying out Twemes.com: ideally, follow a “hot pick” in the top right corner (these are usually conferences) and click “start live update” to see the topic-tagged twitters roll by. You can imagine the additional engagement this provides for events and conferences.
The added value of the Twitter conversation backchannel was obvious. During the conference, Meshies were using Twitter to discuss the future of music as a business model, and taking the liberty of re-branding Saturn’s awkwardly named social network ImSaturn (the marketer from Saturn tried desperately to point us to the correct URL, but stumbled through the difficult address).
Do we even have to attend anymore?
ScribbleLive was unveiled at Mesh ‘08, a live blogging platform with real-time updates. In this forum, ScribbleLive users live-blogged forums and presentations, allowing multi-taskers and attendees in other sessions follow multiple discussions. For a great example of the group blogging output, check out the live blog of Steve Jobs’ Keynote at the WWDC, including his announcement of the new iPhone 3G.
My mobile meeting manager
Mesh ‘08 also boasted an impressive, although slightly off-the-mark blackberry app. The technically-oriented (crackberry-addicted) audience presented an optimal opportunity for Sweet Caesar to offer a free downloadable guide to the event. The features and user experience of the app were quite valuable, even though it just left me wanting more.
Among the features were a venue map, schedule and presenter bios. Unfortunately, this information didn’t update over the two days and was incorrect (as conference schedules go) as soon as the first keynote began. Overall however, the implementation demonstrated the potential for great value in the future. Now event planners must consider “What is my mobile strategy?” “What is my web strategy?” Maybe next time we’ll see the integration of Twitter, ScribbleLive and social networking tools to enhance our next Mesh (or your next conference’s) experience.
Look for Part 2 of my post on the evolution of Meetings and Conferences: Meeting virtually in real life (Part 2): Entertain us, we’re bored and twittering.
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