Urban Vancouver

On June 8th this past summer, my Olympic Outsider podcast (podcast feed) co-pilot Dan and I took a trip to reconnoiter some the venues under construction for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

You can see all the snapshots at the Whistler 2010 Olympic Venues photo set - here are some previews:

First, we checked out the sliding track near Whistler Village where the luge, bobsleigh and skeleton athletes will compete.

Then headed up Callahan Valley. passed security to the massive 90K and 120K Ski Jumps, and observed the jumper's view, and an Inukshuk.

Thanks to Jeff Lee's blog post "London 2012 gets social media while Vancouver 2010 falters", I saw this slide deck by Alex Balfour, the Head of New Media for London 2012 where he sets the table and drafts a plan of action for encouraging crowd coverage of the Games.

I can't help but feeling that Vancouver is missing a huge opportunity by not planning and evangelizing new media - with a diverse creative and info tech sector, it's a shame.

Anyhow, i saw this great twitter from @stuartgh in London who saw Mr. Balfour's presentation:

Just been to hear a talk on using social media to inspire change at the 2012 Olympics. Fascinating. And I ate two very nice biscuits. 3:19 PM Nov 26th from web

I love tasty biscuits! Later he puts forth his vision, thusly: