Olympic Park 2012

On July 27th 2012 the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony will be held in London, as the Olympic torch relay arrives from Olympia in London’s east end. We won’t know until 2011 where the torch will go on its way to the site, but it will probably come down the A11 through Tower Hamlets to the Olympic park in Stratford.

So, with a thousand days to go the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) took the opportunity to celebrate. If you were in central London last night you might have seen the light show at the BT Tower, which was also on TV during the lottery programme. If you missed that and you are in London, you can still see celebratory art at the National Portrait Gallery :

“To celebrate 1000 days to the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe launches the National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Project, a three-year collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and BT, the official communications services partner for London 2012. It will create 100 world-class photographic portraits celebrating the people around the UK, both high-profile and those behind the scenes, who collectively are making the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games happen.” – National Portrait Gallery

Or around the UK, the Inspire Programme is encouraging activities locally, and e.g. in England the Arts Council is “challenging artists to use the nation as a blank canvas” in Artists Taking the Lead.

“The successful commissions will be developed across 2010 and 2011, and all 12 will take part in a final unifying celebration before the opening of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.” – Artists Taking the Lead

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How long does it take to get to Stratford from St Pancras in central London? Right now the answer is 26 minutes (or 38 minutes on the weekend due to ‘planned engineering works’ see TLF for details), but in 2012 the Olympic Shuttle will take only 7 minutes. In fact in the trial of the new ‘Javelin’ service this week, the time achieved was only 6 minutes and 45 seconds.

New Train for Olympic 2012 passengers from Kings Cross St Pancras - Stratford

This will be an important piece in the East London transport network, when is comes to games time. The ODA is aspiring to encourage use of public transport – in fact it would be impossible for all spectators to come by car – witness the gridlock at the Blackwall tunnel at rush hour. Capacity at Stratford station will be trebled, new Dockland Light Rail (DLR) tunnels are being added, there will be a new ticket hall at Kings Cross, a new DLR platform at Stratford, a direct link from City Airport to Stratford, to name but a few improvements. Overall this part of East London will be far better connected in three years.

Olympic 2012 Stadium in 2009 - constuction workers form 3 for 3 years to go!

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The Olympic Act of 2006 came back into the news last week, with a Human Rights story about police powers “to enter private homes and seize political posters during the London 2012 Olympics” from the Daily Mail amongst others.  According to the Guardian, these measures were passed with the intention of preventing “‘overcommercialisation’ of the games” but might be used differently.

The original purpose of the Act (which can be read on the Department for Culture Media and Sport website at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/pdf/ukpga_20060012_en.pdf ) was to give police powers to enter private homes e.g. to deal with ‘ambush marketing’ materials advertising near to Olympic Venues with the Olympic logo. Press coverage suggests that the Bill is so broad that the powers could be used where terrorism is suspected, and that cival rights groups are worried that the right to protest is also under threat.

I am not sure why this story is back, but it reminded me of news from 2007 about a leaked memo from No.10, when the Telegraph reported that the government was considering using DNA checks, scanning post, CCTV, monitoring oyster cards etc. to fight Olympic 2012 crime. Doubtless we all value our personal freedom and privacy, but if these powers are really necessary, then what is the real threat?

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This weekend 24-26th July across the UK there are various events as part of the Open Weekend. You can search for events near you at http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/open-weekend/event-search.php

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Work has begun on the last of the major permanent structures. The Handball Arena will be used for Basketball, Wheelchair Basketball, Boxing, Handball, Badminton, Judo, Netball, Futsal (5-a-side indoor football) and Volleyball.

With (recycled) copper cladding and glazing for a view into the action, I think this building will look distinctive despite the regular shape. It will be sited a little north of the Stadium, and you can see how it will look in this picture from the ODA. The design includes taking natural light and rain water through pipes into the building for use in the facility.

As a legacy venue it should be a flexible space, according to Peter Rogers (CE of the London Development Agency) “With the equivalent space of 12 badminton courts and retractable seating, the venue has been designed for all levels of sports participation and has the potential to accommodate cultural, entertainment and business events.” The promise is also that it will include a health and fitness club with changing facilities and a café for the local public.

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Olympic Arena 2012 being built in East London on 3rd July 2009

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Over the past 2 months there have been some noticable changes to the development site of the Olympic Park. Work on the aquatics centre has been underway for some time already and now we can see the unusual structure of the building starting to take shape. The first image shows how the centre will eventually look when it is finished, and the second image is a photo taken today, showing how the construction looks right now.

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Olympic site excavations were in the news today, as some interesting objects have been dug up. Archaologists confirmed that a flint axe over 4000 years old had been found as well as four prehistoric skeletons buried in graves around an area of Iron Age settlement, a Roman coin, Roman river walls, medieval and Neolithic pottery, Second World War gun emplacements and a complete 19th century boat used for hunting wild fowl on the lower River Lea.

Click through for more pictures from East London’s history:

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The internet has become such an essential part of our life, that I find it quite hard to believe that only the last 4 Olympics actually had a website – that is Atlanta ‘96, Sydney ‘00, Athens ‘04, and Beijing ‘08 (leaving winter games to one side for the moment). Considering that the first radio broadcast was in 1924 and the first TV coverage was in 1936 (Berlin of Jesse Owens vs Hitler fame), we have waited for a long time for a new medium of coverage.

I hope the ‘Technology Partners’ for the London 2012 Olympic Games (see list below) are ready to go for some really inspirational, efficient and sustainable IT infrastructure.

• Atos origin – Official Worldwide IT Partner to International Olympic and Paralympic Committee
• Samsung – Official Worldwide Wireless Telecommunications Equipment Olympic Partner
• BT – Official Partner to 2012 Olympic Games
• Nortel – Official Partner to 2012 Olympic Games (…but they have fallen prey to the downturn … currently operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection …more on that later)

Atos Origin, an international IT services company will be in charge of the IT system that relays results, events and athlete information to spectators and media around the world. It is estimated that games will use c. 900 servers, 1,000 network and security devices, and 8,000 computers, and all applications and equipment will have to undergo loads of testing.

As FT.com reports the supremo at Atos said:

“We are looking to reduce the amount of hardware, power consumption, air conditioning and space needed,” said Michele Hyron, Atos Origin’s chief integrator for the Olympics. The Beijing Games required some 10,000 computers and 50m sheets of paper. Ms Hyron said she hoped to reduce these levels “dramatically” in London.”

Atos needs to be bold, and to be encouraged to be so. The contract it now holds with the International Olympic Committee is the world’s largest IT-related sports contract covering the Athens 2004, Torino 2006, Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. So it clearly has the confidence of the IOC, but apparently they are still not sure about server virtualisation.

“Atos and the Olympic committee are still evaluating, for example, whether or not to use server virtualisation – a fairly established technique for cutting computer power consumption – at the Games.”  FT.com

Server virtualisation uses one physical server across multiple virtual machines, that can run in isolated operating environments and applications. This reduces need for hardware, power cooling etc.  Nice article by someone who knows much much more than me. It is a young technology and not normally used for large scale ops. but perhaps this is the opportunity to take it to the next stage. If they can do it, it would be nice and maybe that could even be one more ‘legacy’ of the UK games.

So far construction crews are using IT applications inside a virtualised environment, and there is the promise to improve on Beijing in other ways.

“The London Games will also make greater use of remote information systems than any previous Olympics, streaming real-time results and coverage to broadcasters around the world and offering a single feed of all Olympics news. The tech is aimed at reducing unnecessary travel by journalists and using less paper than the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where seven million sheets were printed out.” ZDNet.co.uk

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I wanted to watch the TV programme on BBC 2 tonight called “Building the Olympic dream”, but after 15 minutes I just could not stand anymore.  This was the first in a series of 3 and I suppose I might have realised it would not be great because it focused on the hand over ceremoney in Beijing, which most people agree was a bit embarassing to watch. One big blooper was the exploding London bus, which is not something anyone really wants to dwell on. Also, there was too much small scale action and detail that would have been good on a stage but did not quite work in a large arena. The carnival theme aimed at was not really a UK theme, and even so it ought really to have been bigger and brighter to convey a party going on. I would have liked to have seen a few bold statements, which could have given an image of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the rest of England, for example with a pipe band or other classic UK images for people to relate to.

Anyway, what I had not quite grasped was that so much time, effort and money had been spent planning the handover ceremony, and this is what the programme was celebrating. There did not seem to be much guidance or critical feedback from the overseers who the ceremonies team reported to, which is a pity as they team seemed to be looking for appraisal and open to ideas. I will probably tune in for the next 2 programmes which will focus on other aspects of the build up so far to the London Olympics. Right now I am just hoping we can raise our game a little, so to speak, for the cultural Olympiad and all the up-coming ceremonies, to hit the right note.

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