Month: August 2008

Go Elle! Go Drew!

Elle Logan, my daughter’s classmate and teammate in the 2005 US High School National champion 4+ is rowing her first heat today at Shunyi.

“Elle Logan ’06 will be rowing in the Women’s Eight Heat 1 at 5:20 AM ET. You should be able to catch it live at

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/schedule/daily/2008/08/10/rowing/

NBC will also cover it in its Daytime coverage of the Games (12:00 PM ET – 1:00 PM ET) and in its Primetime coverage of the Games (9:30 PM ET – 12:00 AM ET).”

In other rowing news, our first athlete to commit to participate in the Voice of the Summer Olympics, Drew Ginn of Australia, kicked butt in his heat, reveling in the nasty conditions.

“This is really almost suffocating so it’s a matter of staying really relaxed and not panicking in the conditions, we’re just saying ‘breathe’ all the way down the track. ’Breathe. Breathe’,“ he said.

“You see some of the Europeans with a pink face so they’re struggling with it a bit which is a nice thing to see.”

Beijing Olympics – Day 2 – Party at the Great Wall

Met James McGregor, former Beijing bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and author of One Billion Customers: LessonsFrom the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. Awesome guy (I rather hang out with a reporter than a supermodel) who worked with with my step-sister in the late 80s and who is now a major expert on China markets and economic issues. He uses Lenovo as a key example of a China brand going global. He made one observation that hit me after watching the magnificent opening ceremonies — the history of China from the ancient discovery of paper, the press, the compass, on to the exploration of space …. skipped right over the revolution, the Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution. As he put it, “There were no men in Mao jackets to be seen in the Bird’s Nest.”

I did get an amazing opportunity to see the future of China’s leadership — art and business — at a wild party at the Commune at the Great Wall. An architectural showplace in a valley behind the Wall where leading Asian architects each designed a showcase example of residential architecture. No pictures as it was dark, but i have been there before in the day time and the work is stunning. The party was crazy. i won’t drop names (cough Quincy Jones, cough Rupert Murdoch), but the young people I met, all of whom were in the internet media business from advertising to search, social media to application development, were incredibly smart and engaged.

I have my first event to catch at 9 am with a customer — beach volleyball — and heeding the sage observation of the great Charlie Clapp (silver medal, US Men’s 8+, 1984) that “nothing important happens after midnight”, hired a car to drive me the hour long trip back to my hotel for five hours of sleep.

food of the day: I ate cold lungs in hot pepper sauce. And they were good.

news of the day: the terrible attack on an American visitor was widely reported throughout Beijing and definitely cast a shadow on an otherwise exuberant day following the opening ceremonies. “Deranged” say it best.

Olympic Blogroll : glad to see my baby, Voices of the Olympic Games represented.

uniform update: eased into it yesterday with the shirt (tucked into khakis). No visor (there will never be a visor). Today, no uniform. Going to the beach volleyball so I have on the Nantucket red preppy shorts and a polo shirt. Dave+uniform=fail.

Voices of the Summergames — Full RSS

You can pull down all our athlete postings here. Thanks to Esteban Panzeri, our tech savant, who used Yahoo Pipes to aggregate a herd of 100 different blogs from different hosts/platforms into a single stream.

Lenovo Olympic Podium for Mobile – powered by Zumobi

Want to follow the Games as seen through the eyes of over 100 athletes from two dozen country? Want to do it through your phone? Thanks to Neo, Intel, Zumobi and my team ….

“Lenovo brings the Games to your phone.

Follow the Olympic athletes on their journey to Beijing. Download free mobile widgets for your Windows Mobile or BlackBerry and keep up with the athletes as they strive for Olympic Gold! It’s totally free, customizable and ready for you to download now!”

Lenovo Olympic Podium for Mobile – powered by Zumobi.

The Opening Ceremony

Ok, I wasn’t there. Tickets were scarce and I don’t do well in heat and humidity. Still, as spectacles go, in the full Pink Floyd, Superbowl Half-time wardrobe malfunction sense of the term, this was over the top and impressive from a couple points of view.

I wonder if anyone watched it live in the States given its a work day and this all went down from 8 to noon. Beijing pretty much shut down for the event and I watched it on CCTV in Chinese. Which was a hoot, especially given the loving closeups of the Chinese officials sweating it out in their dark suits. Lots of paper fans were fluttering and there was one shot of Nidal looking like he had just stepped out of the Sweat Hut. At least George W. put his jacket back on when he stood to hail the American athletes. Looking good Mr. President and I heard his speech and his father’s speech at the dedication of the new US Embassy this morning was very good and heartfelt.

I’ll boil down the ceremony to the fireworks. The Chinese invented fireworks. They are the Picassos of pyrotechnics. right now the streets to and from the Olympic Green are exploding in chrysthanemums of color. As fireworks displays goes — this is the mother of them all.

The entertainment was good. Some great freakiness in the Bird Nest, with a condensed cultural history of China emphasizing the point that they;ve been inventing stuff like paper and calligraphy and fireworks while my Celtic/Teutonic ancestors were picking headlice off each other. Obligatory cute little kids in knapsacks getting smart. I’m not a big fan of children’s choral music — and the divas that were belting out the anthems were unrecognizable to my pop culture retardation.

Step-sister Dede went, so she will give me the full report tomorrow. But from the vantage of my bed, watching the #080808 tweets and our Lenovo2008 twittering delivering the blow by blow, I had a dang good time and about to hit the rack rather than sweat it out looking for a bus somewhere out there to get me back to be before 2 am.

Tomorrow. I move into the city with my sis. Deal with some athlete blogger issues, help plan a big blogger meetup in Sanlitun, and then go to a big party out at the wal with my sis and brother in law. Too hectic to think, so I try to keep my mouth shut.

And hey, WW team that made this all happen. Couple pieces of news

1. When CCTV films athletes in the iLounges the athletes are invarialbly looking at the Voices of the Summere Games page.

2. The USA Today article nails it — this blogger program was exactly the play we needed to support. And it’s only going to get better. Now to start meeting these fine people and helping them really kick it. 30 new posts today alone. People are talkiing. Be proud. This is working better than expected.

Follow the Games on Twitter

http://www.twitter.com/lenovo2008

Rohit and Kaitlyn have been tweeting the opening ceremonies and calling out the Lenovo athlete bloggers as they spot them. Good stuff.

SitePoint Blogs » 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Some shameless horn honking. Sitepoint named Lenovo to its list of companies that get the whole blogging thing.

“Below is a list of 15 companies that really get corporate blogging and produce blogs that are informative, fascinating, and a joy to read even for people who aren’t die-hard fans of the company. ..

…Lenovo – The great collection of blogs from computer maker Lenovo demonstrate that the company really understands blogging. Lenovo intersperses posts about its product line with musings about business, design, life, and technology. Definitely don’t miss the Design Matters blog, which should be a must-read for any designer.”

We’re in great company — Dell, Sun, Adobe, 37Signals…..

SitePoint Blogs » 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging.

Faster, higher, stronger and digital – USATODAY.com on Olympic interactive marketing

Big piece in USA Today — talking about leveraging social media as a sponsor:

“Blogging from China. The Beijing Games are the first to allow athletes to blog during the Games. In the past, athletes could blog only until opening day, then resume after the Games ended. But new International Olympic Committee rules permit blogging during the Games.

Lenovo doled out computers and video cameras to more than 100 Olympians, asking them to tell their tales. Lenovo.com/VoicesOfTheGames has contributions from athletes representing more than 25 countries.”

Faster, higher, stronger and digital – USATODAY.com.

And away we go – Day 1 housekeeping

Here it is, 8-8-08, an auspicious number in Chinese numerology. So get out there and play a lottery ticket as fast as you can. Tonight the place goes nuts at the Bird’s Nest – the gorgeous National Stadium – but not me. That’s a tough ticket and I’m laying low. I heard a rumor of a $20,000 scalp price being offered. Seems off the charts, but hey, what do I know?

The Games actually have already started. Some events are rolling along and I’m looking for a thumbtack to stick up the full page schedule that the New York Times published on Monday. I am at a serious disadvantage to my American comrades in that I don’t have any way to watch the Games in English on television (I know, ironic, fly to China to the Olympics, and then watch them on television). NBCOlympics.com – where we are advertising – has a Microsoft Silverlight enabled stream but guess what? IP block on non-USA traffic, so unless one of you geeks knows how to IP spoof from inside of Great Firewall, I am going to have to content myself with CCTV.

We’re also doing a sponsorship at the European Broadcast Union, but as my blogging colleague Carina told me yesterday, we can’t see it because we’re not inside of the EU. So, message to family – clear out some Tivo space and save me all the rowing, baseball, weightlifting, and track and field you can.

Other Lenovo bloggers in Beijing include Kevin Walker and Geri Kan. I’ll to get their blog addresses and show them some link love. Other Lenovo bloggers – don’t be shy. I’ll open up a blogroll and update it as additions come in.

Randomly:

  1. If you need tech support or any kind of assistance and you’re in Beijing. Ping me. I am on my US cell phone but also have a China number which I’ll disclose if you email me at david AT churbuck.com
  2. Starting Monday I’ll be stationed during the day on the Olympic Green at our Olympic Hospitality Center. If you’re on the Green, phone me, or find me online.
  3. I’ll be dumping photos into my Flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/churbuck/ randomly
  4. Organizing a Lenovo-Ogilvy blogger meet-up on Sunday night, 7pm at the Bookworm in Sanlitun with Rohit Bhargava and Kaiser Kuo. Ping me, or tweet me if you’re coming.
  5. Looks like things are getting “interesting” in the city center with traffic restrictions due to the big Olympic banquet at the Hall of the People for the foreign dignitaries. So … I may not go mobile this afternoon and may do a photo/video walk around Haidian and a march up to the Summer Palace.
  6. Athletes – if you need help at the International iLounge, ask for Kevin Walker. Best time to seek help with posting problems, hardware, etc. is after 4 pm. Ping me for his cell phone and stand by for an email from us inviting you to lunch, a meetup on Sunday night, and other info and offers of assistance.
  7. There is a cool hashtag campaign being organized by Chinese twitter users – tag with #080808

More later.

From the mall under the Grand Hyatt, there were a few of these wild mannequin displays.