Vancity is buzzing with activities in preparation and anticipation for the coming Winter Games.

In 22 days, Vancouver will host the world with Glowing hearts!

Flags and banners are starting to appear in all corners of the city.

VANOC venue access tents (aka security check points) are being erected, these can be found just on the west side of BC Place, one of the main entrance for the 2010 Opening and Closing Ceremonies as well as for the Nightly Victory Ceremonies.

Deliveries are arriving, as seen here on Pacific Avenue, across from BC Place.

Fan gathering places are starting to pop up all over the city. Two examples seen here at Library Square on Georgia and Homer as well as at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Robson and Hornby.

Roads are being closed all over the city, these photos taken around GM Place.

Games sponsors are making themselves known as they manifest themselves on the sides of entire buildings and on various billboards. This one partially completed can be seen from the corner of Hornby and Georgia.

Fences are going up and security is starting to tighten, as you can see here at GM Place, just outside the Costco entrance.

GM’s fleet of sponsored vehicles is ready to crawl the city.

Stages are being built for upcoming entertainment acts. This one is found beside the skating rink at Robson Square.

And of course we have the Vancouver Police Department roaming the streets on horseback!

With three weeks remaining before the world visits our beautiful city, I’m sure we will continue to see the city transform for this exciting world event!

Make sure you start planning, this is the perfect time to get your game plan sorted before the storm hits Vancouver… Plan your movement and your schedule wisely, it will be wild…

Coverage of the Olympic Games is dominated by the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) contracted rights-holder and accredited major media conglomerates. However some feel there is a role for crowdsourced documentation of both sporting events and the cultural context in which it happens.

This expert panel discusses changes, challenges, and opportunities facing grassroots media makers around the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

From Northern Voice 2009.

Continuing on with the coverage of "China, The Olympics, Social Media, Symposiums, etc." mini-series, I’m am co-opting Olympic scholar Dr. Andy Miah’s questions for the panel he is organizing at the 9th International Symposium on Olympic Studies, in Beijing, August 5-7, 2008.

My point in doing this is to stimulate some discussion to push my own perceptions and resolve my own conflicts. You see, I am big fan of amateur sports (personally i prefer winter Olympic events) and an ardent advocate of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and someone who hopes for a greener planet. In some ways, I see these three as not jiving within the China paradigm. On another hand, i wonder is it really my place to ask an ancient culture why they do things they way they do?

As such, I question my personal (not professional) emotional investment in the athletes’ struggle. Should I watch them strive for greatness on the CBC while the background struggle seems so much weightier? Or are the Olympics a time for healing and celebration where understandings are fostered and differences sorted out? In other words, should i participate in the Olympics from my couch or from the streets!

I invite you to offer your answers to Dr. Miah’s questions. The comments are open for your opinions on China, the Olympics, Social Media, etc. – be frank and polite (and avoid ticket selling and other spam).

Media Access and Control

* Briefly describe whether or not you see the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as
a focal point for media transition in China.

* Will foreign journalists obtain the level of access they require to
undertake their work?

* Will the temporary legislation designating additional freedoms for foreign
journalists produce different coverage of China than we have seen before?

Politics and Focus

* Is political transition within a country a reasonable expectation to have
of the Olympic Games?

* How will commentators summarize the Beijing Olympic Games in
the closing minutes of television coverage at the end of the Closing
Ceremony?

* Will the Olympic media focus, to the same degree, on sports, compared with
other Games, or will other narratives dominate the coverage?

Social Media

* In what way are new media platforms enabling new forms of journalism to
surround the Beijing Olympics?

* In February 2008, the IOC released blogging guidelines, which indicate
that they do not consider blogging to be a form of journalism. Do you think
there is merit in their assertion?

* What kind of convergence is visible around old and new media in China, in
the context of the Beijing Olympic?

* Is citizen journalism politically prescribed in China?

* Claims have been made about China’s rising Internet population and its
surpassing the United States. In what ways do you perceive the utilization
of new media as distinct within China, compared with other nations?

More Questions

* In this context of social media, freedom of press expression, and background of security and political posturing, what other questions come to mind?

Press Release posted on New Media BC Website

February 2, 2006

Vancouver, BC – New Media BC announced today that there will be a BC led new media symposium in Torino, Italy, during next week’s Winter Olympics.

The event, billed as “Olympics and Web 2.0″, and slated for February 17th, will showcase a pioneering cluster of British Columbia companies leading a shift towards Web 2.0 – what is being called the evolution of the Internet.

Vancouver-based Web 2.0 companies, Bryght and Raincity Studios, will lead sessions examining the emergence of citizen journalism and its anticipated impact on Olympic coverage and how podcasting is bringing a whole new sound to sport. Urban Vancouver bloggers will participate from Vancouver via a live connection. Snowboarding Olympic gold medalist, Ross Rebagliati, will take part in the Vancouver activity being held at the Take 5 Café at 7 am (4 pm Torino time).

According to symposium organizer Kris Krug of Bryght, the time is right and Torino is an ideal place to spread the word about this new movement in Internet usability: “Having an international audience on hand coupled with the energy of the Olympics only serves to further the momentum of the Web 2.0 revolution.”

“Vancouver has emerged as a real leader in Web 2.0 activity,” says Duff R. Gardner, VP, New Media BC. “The Olympics offer a great opportunity to profile just how much of an impact it is having on the way athletes, spectators and citizens interact with the Web during major sporting events.”

The Olympics and Web 2.0 Symposium will be held from 1 to 5 pm on February 17th at BC Canada Place at the 2006 Torino Winter Games.

About Bryght:

Founded in the summer of 2004, Bryght is an open source company with offices in Vancouver, BC. Bryght’s mission is to provide the best community content hosting and tools available, giving people and organizations the ability to maintain dynamic and leading-edge websites and web presences. We believe in open formats and standards, and our team is actively involved in the international open source community. Through our development efforts and partnership agreements, Bryght’s goal is to continue to provide innovative solutions for management of content, communities, and communication.
www.bryght.com

About Raincity Studios:

Founded in 2003, Raincity Studios is a Vancouver-based award-winning, full service, new media firm focused on web marketing, web 2.0 development and web design. Raincity also develop web-based communication applications for educational institutions such as BCIT, and is a reseller of weblog services for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
www.raincitystudios.com

About Urban Vancouver:

Urban Vancouver is Vancouver’s blog. It is the online community for “the rest of us”. Membership is free to anybody with a Vancouver connection. Members can post to their own blog, submit their event listings and add photos, audio and video. Since its inception in April 2004, Urban Vancouver has become the premier place for Vancouver related expression on the web ranging from personal reflections, diaries and journals to citizen journalism.
www.urbanvancouver.com

About New Media BC:

New Media BC is a not-for profit industry association whose mission is to advance Vancouver and BC as the World Centre of New Media and Digital Entertainment. Through networking events, peer-to-peer mentoring programs, advocacy work and marketing, New Media BC is building the new media community locally and promoting it abroad. The region’s new media industry is made up of close to 800 companies with combined annual revenues in excess of $1 billion. New Media BC hosts the annual Vancouver International Digital Festival (VIDFEST), currently Canada’s biggest digital content event.
www.newmediabc.com / www.vidfest.com

For additional information:

Kirstin Richter
Manager, Marketing and Communications
New Media BC
604-739-9878
kirstin@newmediabc.com

-30-

Today, I went to a demo meeting at ComVu, a local mobile company with Kris and Roland of Bryght.

On our way there, Kris used Roland’s Nokia N70, on loan to him as part of their blogger outreach program, to film this short vidcast.

We joined Duff from New Media BC and Aileen from Leading Edge BC in a Demo of the platform and phone presented by their CEO William Mutual.

I really enjoyed the demo and seeing the phone in action.

Here’s a summary of the meeting posted on Roland’s blog.

As part of the planning process for the events at the Torino Olympics with New Media BC, Mobile Muse and Raincity Studios, Kris and I met the folks at Comvu, yet another local Vancouver mobile company. They have a cool product: a way to broadcast from your mobile device (Windows Mobile only for now, but Linux and Symbian versions are coming soon, wish comvu had a blog so I could know more about what’s happening because I know there’s a fascinating story there that’s not being told) LIVE to people on the Internet who can watch on their mobile devices or on a web browser on their desktops. A great complement to the timeshifting of videoblogging. In fact, apparently the live video is saved on server and has RSS so it could be video podcasted and blogged after the fact!

The Comvu demo was great. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get this service bundled in with your mobile phone from your carrier for a reasonable monthly fee? Wouldn’t it be great if you could see a demo of this during the Olympics and see how we can broadcast from our mobile devices from Torino to Vancouver and Vancouver to Torino? Well it’s not a pipe dream; we’ll do our best to make it a reality soon hopefully during the Olympics timeframe! And of course I am working to get them to give a demo at MoMoVan say in March or April.

Poste on Roland Tanglao‘s blog.

I just received an email from the fine folks at ComVu, it looks like they will loan us some mobile webcasting video phones to use in Torino and we will be collaborating on some presentations and technology symposyum at the BC Canada House next to the Media Centre in Torino from the 14th to the 18th of February.

I’ll post an update as soon as I get more information.

We need your feedback please, what would you like to see us cover while we are there? Dope me a line with your comments (Please keep in mind we have to follow the broadcasting rules and licences in effect with any Olympic events..)