Club Bud Vancouver

Club Bud, host of the hottest parties in Beijing and Torino, will claim its place on top of the party podium in Vancouver. Budweiser will be the center of Vancouver’s social scene for five nights in February.

In Torino, Budweiser introduced the world to Club Bud with a six-story pyramid-shaped nightclub. Club Bud kept the party going in Beijing with 360° video screens, an electrifying dance floor and an outdoor pool. In February 2010, Club Bud will transform the famed Commodore Ballroom into the place for athletes, celebrities and some lucky fans to celebrate in style.

Club Bud will be located on pedestrian-friendly Granville Street in the heart of Vancouver’s entertainment district. The 19,000-square foot, 1,000-person capacity, multi-level venue will feature a concert stage, elevated seating, several bar and lounge areas and the legendary 2,646-square foot sprung dance floor. Partygoers will enjoy live DJs and music throughout the night and three separate bar areas will offer distinct atmospheres to enjoy a cold Budweiser with friends.

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Club Bud party co-hosts Burton, the National Hockey League® (NHL), Under Armour and lululemon athletica will present themed evenings, with doors opening at 9 p.m. Athlete and celebrity arrival times on the red carpet will vary by party. More information will be available via media advisories prior to each event.

• Friday, February 19; Burton Party
• Saturday, February 20; NHL® Party
• Thursday, February 25; Budweiser Party
• Friday, February 26; Under Armour Party
• Saturday, February 27; lululemon athletica Party

“Budweiser is renowned for its exclusive parties and guests,” said Richard Musson, Vice President of Marketing, Labatt Breweries of Canada. “Club Bud is bringing Vancouver five epic parties and will be the place to be for competitors to come together to celebrate their achievements and enjoy the camaraderie shared among world-class athletes.”

Wanna be a Party Crasher?

In addition to drawing top name athletes and celebrities to Club Bud, Budweiser is searching for two lucky people to crash the parties in Vancouver. The Club Bud Party Crasher job search offers applicants the chance to attend one of the Club Bud weekends and will require the successful applicant to use social media tools to capture and share the Club Bud experience online. Details can be found at www.facebook.com/budweisercanada.

Speaking about Citizen Journalism and Gonzo Olympic coverage at Media Democracy Day Vancouver 2008: Panel 3, The Battle for New Media and Open Communication from www.workingtv.com/mdd2008.html .

More information at www.mediademocracyday.org/vanc ouver.

Points for Participation?

Into the thick of the Olympic sporting competition, Canada is rolling in a litany of 5th, 6th, 7th places … but with track and field, rowing finals and trampolining yet to come, the Canucks still have a chance to visit the podium.

As Tod Maffin twitter’ed: "Maybe Beijing will at least give us a courtesy Participaction pin?(Dont understand this? Ask a Canadian over 30.)" (ed note: or view this Participaction toque).

In the social media production department, Scales continues to create video at an epic pace despite losing his co-hort Kris who was repatriated to Vancouver in time for a glorious summer weekend. Scales is staying busy by picking up more tickets for varied events at the incredible new venues including the whitewater kayak run (plus visits to the Danish hospitality house).

I’m heading to the hills with tent and beverages so here’s a few highlights to enjoy with your weekend viewing:

Buzz Speaks of the Conundrums

Buzz Bishop, an on-air personality at 95Crave, also writes a tech column for daily paper 24 Hours. In an Aug. 13 dispatch, he addressed the fine line between professional accredited media and "grassroots" coverage created and disseminated by non-paid enthusiasts in an article he titled: Olympic Coverage From the Streets of Beijing. Here’s a nugget about this tension between MSM and the rest of us (joined in progress):

But Robert and Kris didn’t pay anything to have official broadcast rights for these games. Is what they’re doing by posting blogs, tweets, photos and streaming videos a violation?

“It’s a really complicated issue,” admits Krug.

“They’ll end up realizing that they can’t control all of it, and they’ll spend less effort trying to block people like us, and more effort monetizing the content they do control.”

The IOC has taken steps to rein in the content online as rights holders’ geoblock their websites to be only accessible within the rights holder’s borders. YouTube has also been approached to make sure highlights from the Games do not appear on the site, until after the rights window has expired.

Youtube with a takedown move

Reminiscent of the Judo competition, Youtube issued a swift takedown to Krug regarding his fan-made clips of a women’s basketball game.

As a registered USA Library of Congress DMCA agent, I know how the procedure works and have received many of these boiler-plate take down notices spewed out by the leery hosting companies with their phalanx of laywers, lackeys and salivating rights-holders. Methinks besides a nicer bedside manner, they could use a better copywriter.

Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing: Team USA Women’s Basketball – Beijing 2008: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fyPrwBVG9zY Please Note: Repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others.

Dear IOC/VANOC, Join the Conversation

No doubt the IOC need to listen in to social media makers at least a little. With 2010 happening in our open-everything-friendly backyard, perhaps they’ll listen to our message of: We are here and plan to document our experiences.We don’t seek to supplant the rights holder, rather we aim to enrich the experience for worldwide fans, athletes’ families and ourselves for personal expression. Call us, we’ll have coffee and talk – no big whoop.

Fencing De-mystified

Scales often casually mentions jobs/careers/experiences/adventures/skills which we, his colleagues, have little/no idea about. E.g. he’s a reiki practitioner, dive master, served in Canadian Forces, worked for Greenpeace etc. He’s also a fencer – not someone who sells stolen goods but a real sword-wielding fencer.

At my request, he prepared a video to explain this simultaneously classic and futuristic looking sport.

He also delves into the ticket buying scenarios in a video: Buying tickets and Empty seats in Beijing. Empty seats along with a few minor quibbles about the opening ceremonies have become touchstones for the mainstream broadcasters who seem to seek any topic which diminishes the Chinese efforts (or is it just me?)

Up Next

Scales is exploring more sports, armed with a new Canon D9, a Nokia cameraphone and uploading movie with Qik. Check his Flickr photostream for more photos as per his latest tweet which says (sic):

I am beat and amazed at the amount of pictures i took today: 1500+ of fencing and archery.. I need to do some downloand but 1st sleep..

PS I’m Tivo’ing the end of the rain-delayed Canada vs. Cuba Baseball game so don’t tell me who wins.

What a party.. walk with me in the Holland house for what could be one of the best party here in Beijing!

Open every night until 2am..
Live music and lots of Orange!
Amazing beautiful people and always loads of fun.. If you’re looking for me after midnight, you know where I’ll be!

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?

Walking the streets of Beijing and exploring the night market..
I always wanted to eat scorpion, snakes and a few other things..
This is not the snake i am looking for, but will do for now..
24 hrs later i am still alive and not sick!

Checking out the rowing venue at the Beijing 2008 games..
Picture by Kris Krug (cc) 2008

Cross-posted from: BBC Sport | Olympics | Beijing Diaries

Background: Raincity Studios CEO/Founder Robert Scales and Pres/Ambassador Kris Krug are on the ground in Beijing to document and study the 2008 edition of the Olympic Games. They are publishing dispatches to a variety of news outlets including the venerable BBC. Here’s Scales’ first installment of his Olympic diary.

ROBERT SCALES, MONTREAL, CANADA

Robert runs a web development company based in Canada

Since Autumn 2007, I have been living in China in preparation for the upcoming Summer Games.

I can honestly say that I have been an Olympic fan, or a "fen zhi" as the Chinese say, since I was a little boy!

I remember watching the 1976 summer games in Montreal on the TV, and
that has always stayed with me. In 2006, I had the opportunity to go to
the Winter games in Torino, Italy. This lit a flame in my heart and
since then I have been working on securing new opportunities to attend
future games such as Vancouver 2010 and London 2012.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be sharing my Beijing
experience with you. I like to shoot low quality, single take, unedited
videos.

I am also travelling with my friend and business partner, Kris, who
is a photographer extraordinaire, so there will be no shortage of
pictures to share with you folks.

Some of my goals over the next 16 days are to attend the
Olympic fencing, which I have several tickets for on 15 August. I also
plan to visit some of the nation houses around the city to make new
international friends and meet athletes.

Other goals are to enjoy some of the local food and culture, and to have a great time.

Now, I must make myself ready to go and venture out into the Beijing
wild, in hope of finding the perfect spot to watch the opening
ceremony, since I have not been blessed with a ticket.