In this installment of the Beijing Summer Olympics social media report, we join Robert Scales and Kris Krug as they spread their on-the-ground reportage around the world. Indeed, their barrage of videos, photographs and words are deepening the coverage for fans, pundits and athletes’ families as their coverage is picked up by social and mainstream media outlets.

Coverage Highlights

BBC’s Canadien Correspondent

Robert Scales’ second entry from his Olympic diary is up on BBC – this time he talks about the opening ceremonies (video) and their venue reconnaissance (video) with visits to the Birds Nest’ national stadium, the ‘Water Cube’ aquatic centre, the fencing hall and the Yukeson basketball stadium while fortified by snake, silk worms, scorpian and salamanders (videos).

Beijing’s Faces in LA Times

Krug’s Olympic photos are in the LATimes blog with a photo essay called the Faces of Beijing – the candid photos show KK’s skill of relaxing the subject to be themselves – you can almost feel the humidity in the photos.

International Men of Mystery

Kris scored one of the rarer tickets of the Games – after a long wait in the rain, he hauled his camera gear into the Men’s Basketball game between the USA and China.

Besides providing fan’s eye view shots of the elite players in the game (watched by over one billion people), he snapped a bevy of world leaders hanging out in the stands. The identification game continues as Flickr followers add tags and notes to ID the luminaries beyond the Bushes (i.e. Prince of Denmark, Emperor of Japan, Henry Kissinger’s wife … etc.)

Brazil is social broadcasting

Kris Krug’s evocative photos are included in Empresa Brasil de Comunicacao the official broadcaster of Brazil with a great social media rich and ready Olympic coverage site in Portuguese.

Cultural Exploration

Scales and Krug’s cultural journey rolled on with visits to various hospitality
houses hosted by countries’ teams and sponsors.

After a visit to the
Canada house (not much going on there), they visited the Netherlands house (video)
to enjoy tasty croquettes and partying good time (the Nederlanders,
always clad in orange, are easy to find) and also hung out at the last
Drive-in theater in Beijing.

Symposium and Academia

Robert and Kris participated in the Olympic Studies Symposium with Dr. Andy Miah – we’ll hear more about this later with full recap on the opinions and trends discussed by this academic panel.

In the meantime, listen to them read a stirring passage from the companion book about Olympics and Social Media (video).

Quick hits

Social Coverage

Miss 604 is keeping an eye on the Beijing 2008 social media coverage by and for the people!

Canada’s broadcasting online

CBC is hosting athlete’s diaries
- which begs the question: What is the difference between an online
diary and a blog? Is nomenclature the only distinction? And bear in
mind, there are restrictions about what athletes can say and show.

How about blogs by CBC regulars? The IOC doesn’t consider blogging journalism so what are these dispatches to be called? And is there a role for political conversation around the Games?

Also, thanks to CBC for offering raw live feeds from the venues – just what i wanted and i am sure the athletes’ families are thrilled!

Note/request to BBC

While I am stoked the BeeB is outreaching to
the “amateur” media makers, I’d really like to see better url namespace
and even unique feeds for the diaries to make it easier to follow
along with the authors you want to read.

Meats on sticks

Speaking
of namespace, Kris contributed a radio interview to Vancouver local
radio station who gave a lesson in obnoxious post titling and url
writing.

Give BZ’s interview with KK
a listen nevertheless to hear about eating odd foods on a busy market
street.

I’ve often said “meat on a stick is what unites the world” but i’m not
so sure in this case.

Canadians try harder

The Canadian trail has been bereft of medals thus far despite lots of Canadian records in the pool and some solid rowing/sculling qualifying (video) performances, but my fave Canuck Olympian so far is Badminton ace Anna Rice who handled the massive interest in her sport with aplomb and enthusiasm after going out in the group of 16 to a Chinese opponent. North Van represent!

Questions

So, with all the talk about the great firewall … how is the Internet access anyhow? How do people connect? Is all access created equal?

What’s up with fencing? Those helmets are out of control and i still don’t understand the scoring!

Scales/Krug are posting videos to YouTube but cannot post to to (my
preferred) Blip.tv. Is this a technical or political issue?