mayfly.net

I am sure this is a well documented problem, but I just got this from our Communications department:

“There is no reason why you cannot keep a personal blog in your own time, but we would ask that you did not mention who you work for on this. The same rule applies for social networking sites. There should be no discussion of (my employer) affairs on blogs/social networking sites. We have a blog that you are welcome to feed your thoughts into, email your content…”

Well now I know!

I posted this in my lunch break BTW 😉

Version 1 from Wikipedia:

“Key Performance Indicators(KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to quantify objectives to reflect strategic performance of an organization. KPIs are used in Business Intelligence to assess the present state of the business and to prescribe a course of action. The act of monitoring KPIs in real-time is known as business activity monitoring. KPIs are frequently used to “value” difficult to measure activities such as the benefits of leadership development, engagement, service, and satisfaction. KPIs are typically tied to an organization’s strategy (as exemplified through techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard).”

Version 2 from IBIS Associates:

“The term KPI has become one of the most over-used and little understood terms in business development and management. In theory it provides a series of measures against which internal managers and external investors can judge the business and how it is likely to perform over the medium and long term. Regrettably it has become confused with metrics – if we can measure it, it is a KPI. Against the growing background of noise created by a welter of such KPI concepts, the true value of the core KPI becomes lost. The KPI when properly developed should provide all staff with clear goals and objectives, coupled with an understanding of how they relate to the overall success of the organisation. Published internally and continually referred to, they will also strengthen shared values and create common goals.”

LOCOG now has a blog. I dearly hope it really will be a blog and not just another one-to-many corporate communications tool. Ringing the bell for a memorable Games is the best entry so far IMO. Anyway, well done Alex 🙂

There has been lots of news recently about cost overruns for the 2012 Olympics. From what I can see, however, the details about the Games operating budget – i.e. LOCOG’s budget – are out there and nothing has changed. Consider this from the QandA on the BBC News website.

“At the time London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games, it was estimated it would cost nearly £2.4bn to build the infrastructure, while just over £1bn was earmarked for the wider regeneration project for the area post-2012. A further £2bn would be needed to stage the games themselves – although this money would be raised privately.”

The key is that last bit – a further £2bn. That remains LOCOG’s budget. There is nothing in the press that talks specifically about LOCOG’s budget not increasing, which is a shame. It’s the capital budget for the new build venues in the Olympic Park, and the extent to which the Olympics will be the catalyst for a wider regeneration of, let’s face it, a pretty grubby piece of London, that is responsible for the overruns. Any dialogue about costly regeneration is a political football, all the more so when associated with something quite so much in the public eye as the Olympics. Is that the reason the status of the operating budget is so obfuscated? Probably!

No link for this which I received by e-mail.

China is to use mice to test the safety of food for athletes competing in the 2008 Olympic Games.

“Milk, alcohol, salad, rice, oil, salt and seasonings will be tested by white mice 24 hours before they are used in cooking or served to athletes,” the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhao Xinsheng of the Beijing Municipal Health Inspection Bureau as saying.

Zhao told a meeting on hygiene safety for the Games that the mice would develop an adverse reaction to any food poisoning within 17 hours, sooner than test methods such as bacteria cultures.

He said all the food would be securely stored, and all food arriving at the Olympic restaurants would be recorded by the control headquarters after being transported by special vehicles and staff.

Zhen Xiaozhen, of the medical team of the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, said most of the food for the Olympic athletes would be Western style, complemented by Chinese dishes.

Health inspectors were to receive training in management and inspection techniques of Western food starting this month, said Liang Jin of the inspection bureau.

Recently, the closing remarks at a LOCOG staff briefing made by Sandy Holloway, who was the CEO of the Sydney 2000 Organising Committee (aka SOCOG), have been invading my head. I also noticed, when searching for this on t’Internet, that the remarks were published on a poster which appeared in the SOCOG offices. Bref, we should expect that the lifecycle of LOCOG will be characterised by the following phases:

1. Euphoria
2. Disenchantment
3. Search for the guilty
4. Persecution of the innocent
5. Successful completion – and finally…
6. Glorification of the uninvolved

I’m still waiting for 2 :), although some would say the VAT story (a non-story if ever there was one) is an indication of things to come. We shall see.

We’re about to put in place a senior technology team. This is very exciting. It’s been a long road through the bid and the first 18 months of LOCOG. Mike Power, Pascal Wattiaux and myself have been covering a huge brief. But that’s all about to change, and I’m really delighted. Which all proves the point that the worst thing anyone can do when working for an Olympics organising committee, is resist change.

Nearing the end of four quite intense days in Vancouver. TOROC have provided a huge amount of data and the job of filtering relevant pieces for LOCOG is not easy. Why? Well, technology moves so fast that the lessons from 2006 may not have any real context in 2012. That said, some things stand out and are perhaps the perennial challenges in running successful sports events – seamless communicaiton up and down, teamwork, sticking to sound values (really sticking to them), total clarity on budgets, local initiative and devolved decision making. These are just as important to technology as to any other functional area in the organising of a Games.

I am now in Vancouver at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games technology debrief. Four days poring over the lessons from Turin. (The technology sessions precede the main debrief next week.) It is refreshing that the Turin technology team are willing to share things in a very frank way. The biggest lessons often come from mistakes, after all. So thanks to them.

I was lucky enough to get a study trip to the World Cup. I have just spent 3 days in Munich, visiting the main technology locations and the International Broadcast Centre (IBC). The IBC is stunning – the best I have ever seen. I’ll post a few photos just now. FIFA run a very tight ship. Big thanks to Dick Wiles from Eurotech Global Sports for such an excellent trip 🙂

Mind you, DRM hovers all over the broadcasting of such events. Interestingly, on the way out to Munich, I bumped into Cory Doctorow at the airport. Cory is leaving London and heading out to LA to do a Fulbright Scholarship on DRM. I asked him if he wanted to come and talk to LOCOG about DRM and he said he’d think about it. If he did, it would no doubt place sports broadcast rights in an interesting space up against emerging technologies. Broadcast rights holders of course fall naturally into the camp opposing net neutrality. One to follow closely.