/Olympic blogs: How to make the most of the impact of an event

Olympic blogs: How to make the most of the impact of an event

Six Journalism students from Germany, Austria, Canada, China, the USA and Italy have been invited by Coca-Cola to travel to Turin (Italy) and report the events of the Olympic Winter Games through six blogs known as ‘Torino Conversations‘.With the passes they?ve been given by Coca-Cola (a long time Olympic sponsor) they can walk around the facilities with their laptops and digital cameras to send information about the opening ceremony, the ice hockey matches, or even create podcasts.Visa, another historical Olympic sponsor, has undertaken a similarinitiative: athletes, journalists and even the company?s workers in Turin have been invited in ‘The Journey‘ to relate their experiences during these games.Visa has provided its own employees with a tool that allows them to create information via TypePad and also has some space in Flickr at its own disposal to upload the pictures that it gets from several agencies.These two blogs are striking up conversations with users about the sport events that are happening during these couple of weeks in Turin. Some years ago, only the traditional media could create news, images and videos from the headquarters of big events, like the Olympic Games; now, though, we can and we should use new technologies to inform the users and be able to take advantage of the attention that this kind of experiences catch from them.And we need to take into account the obstacles that the legislation of these events generate; for example, the Olympic Charter forbids the participants to carry out any journalist activity from the inside of the facilities, just as the Japanese athletes were told a few days ago.