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PASUG member David Moskowitz worked with IBM at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. He was assigned to the Surf Shack located in the Olympic Village. The Surf Shack held 30 PC's for the athletes to use to surf the web, respond to fan mail, and create their own home pages. David's primary function was to make sure the LAN stayed up and running and to provide help to anyone who needed it.
David provided exclusive reports to our web site during his stay at Nagano.
Nagano, Japan 1/23/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
The Athletes start arriving tomorrow and everything is ready. When they get here, they'll raise their countries' flags in the Olympic Village and move into their quarters. The system that IBM has set up is incredible. The venues are separated by miles--curling is in Karuizawa at one end and freestyle skiing at another -- about a 2--plus hour drive apart. Yet IBM's results systems will make them appear to be local.
I don't know how many other companies could provide the complete IT infrastructure for the Olympic Games. IBM is using everything in its arsenal from large scale massively parallel SP2's to laptops, Aptivas and PC Server 330's, AS/400's, and more. Yes, OS/2 is here, too -- running on the PC Servers with CICS/2, DB2/2, etc.
It's been interesting to see the Olympic Village go from being a literal ghost town to one where there is obviously growing excitement. Today, for example, a few hundred local police got their uniforms and instructions outside the window of the Surf Shack. From bare walls and a few people to posters, flowers, maps, and areas for Kodak, UPS and other sponsors, the Village has gone from being merely marker signs to full color shops and kiosks with growing and bustling activity.
More to come...
Nagano, Japan 1/24/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
Today was the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Village replete with ribbon cutting and photographers. The athletes start arriving today. There aren't that many athletes here as I write this; that will change over the next 72 hours. Everything is ready for them when they do arrive.
To get to the official Olympic site (note, it is NEVER "olympics" -- it is ALWAYS "Olympic Games" -- trademark issues), try the following URL:
More later...
Nagano, Japan 1/25/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
The Athletes have started to arrive and use the facilities in the Surf Shack.
The Athletes can create also print their home pages, and Surf Shack staff can put it on a sweat shirt while they wait. Neat stuff!
The Athletes can receive and respond to messages from fans from the same home page. FanMail is not an e-mail system. It IS a way for athletes to get messages from fans around the world.
Nagano, Japan 1/27/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
It was Super Bowl Day (I can't call it Super Bowl Sunday, since it was Monday morning here). The Surf Shack was open and...while some Athletes surfed the Web and created their own home pages, a few members of the Japanese hockey team were glued to images from San Diego, CA. No pizza, no beer, no popcorn. Just rapt attention to what turned out to be one of the better Super Bowl Games.
Check out the FanMail homepage for the link to the athletes home pages -- The US Virgin Island's Bobsleigh team (not Bobsled), a luger from India, and more. A very interesting mix of folks, and the list is growing:
Check out the TNT and CBS Web sites to get their TV schedules for the Olympic Games:
http://cnnsi.com/olympics/events/1998/nagano/schedules/tnt.html
and
http://cnnsi.com/olympics/events/1998/nagano/schedules/cbs.html
respectively.
More to come...
Nagano, Japan 2/4/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
As I write this report, IBM is getting ready for the official opening of the Surf Shack complete with ribbon cutting. To get ready for the opening, more than 300 athletes have created their own home pages that are visible on the internet (http://www.fanmail.olympic.ibm.com/). Over 17,000 messages from around the world have been sent to the athletes using IBM's FanMail -- with more home pages and messages to come.
To say that the last few days have been busy is an understatement! We've had athletes from Sweden, the Netherlands, the US Virgin Islands, the Ukraine, the US, Great Britain, Finland, Italy, Canada, Japan, Slovenia, and more. I'm not trying to slight anyone--there are over 70-some countries competing, and most of them have been here to the Shack.
The games have not started yet, so there is no glory associated with winning, nor agony of defeat. There is a tremendous amount of anticipation. Everyone is waiting for the games to begin -- in less than 3 days.
Nagano, Japan 2/7/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
Well, the flame is lit, the games have begun and... I've been here a month, and there doesn't seem to be any difference between today and yesterday. The Surf Shack is BUSY!!! There is only hockey, today; the rest start tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I'll get a chance to attend an event or two, and THEN it will be real. For now, it's business as usual.
Athletes keep coming into the Surf Shack to publish their own home pages on the Web -- well over 400 (any number I give you is going to be old before this report is received and posted). If you had told me that we'd have athletes in the Surf Shack, today, during the opening ceremonies, I would have laughed. We did! Athletes competing tonight or tomorrow didn't attend the ceremonies, preferring, instead, to take it easy or get in a day of training.
Nagano, Japan 2/13/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
It's real! What makes it that way is to be able to view a gold metal close up! The Women's Biathalon 15K individual winner, Ekaterina Dafovska (Bulgaria), stopped by the Surf Shack to update her home page to include a picture with the gold metal. The TV photos, etc., don't do it justice!
IBM has added reports for events real-time from the official web site (http://www.nagano.olympic.org). As things happen in selected events (as I write this, Men's Hockey is currently on the site), they are immediately posted, in real time (well, within seconds, anyway). The links are on the lower right side of the page. You'll need a Java 1.1 browser and Javascript to view the results.
Nagano, Japan 2/17/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
Earlier tonight I was fortunate to be able to attend the Women's Final Ice Hockey game between Canada and the USA. Because of my work in the Surf Shack, I had gotten to know many of these women. To them, the Surf Shack represented a way to stay in touch with the rest of the world. They read and replied to their FanMail and their E-mail. They were serious and also displayed a sense of humor. They are nice people that I've had the pleasure to meet and to get to know, just a little.
Tonight I watched them do what they do best, as a team. They played 60 minutes of some of the best ice hockey I've seen. Note, I didn't say "women's ice hockey"! They reminded me of the old Montreal Canadians -- the team that was always where they were supposed to be, that forced their opponents to make mistakes, that didn't give anything away -- the team that dominated the Stanley Cup. Tonight, 20 women from the United States played with heart and soul and won the Olympic equivalent, the Gold Medal.
Olympic memories of this game:
It was an event that I will remember. Thank you Team USA!
Nagano, Japan 2/23/98 (JST) by David Moskowitz
[Author's note: While this dispsatch was written while I was in Japan, it was not filed, for various reasons. I included it as part of my presentation to the Philadelphia OS/2 Users'Group meeting on 3/25/1998.]
Closure...
When the Olympic Games convene every other year there are really two sets of games played, simultaneously. The first set of games is the one everyone sees. It is played by the best athletes of the participating countries. These games are played, by some, for the glory of gold, silver or bronze; others play for the mere glory of competing. The second set of games is played by the sponsors, behind the scenes for big money. It is played for exclusivity, branding, and positioning.
There are smaller different games played, for much lower stakes -- the scalpers, the train pushers, the friends....
Last night I attended the Closing Ceremonies for the XVIII Olympic Winter Games. Words aren't totally sufficient to describe them adequately, even though I can use isolated words: Music, pageantry, parade, speeches, fireworks, and pure unadulterated joy!
Sunday, February 2, 1998, everyone gathered--athletes, sponsors, spectators and performers alike. There was no way to capture everything for television no matter how hard the various media teams worked. Unless you were there, at the Olympic Stadium, there were many, many things you did not get a chance to see. You didn't see the entry security checkers politely but firmly checking everyone, not just to protect the athletes, but because the Emperor was in attendance.... You didn't see The Wave that started when Juan Antonio Samarach started his speech... the rapture on the face of a child... the glow that lingered after they extinguished the Olympic Flame... the spectacular fireworks in all of their glory... the awe that sweep through the crowd as the folks from Salt Lake City road in on horseback and a stagecoach...
Everyone got a chance to experience being a child again, to share the happiness of the competitors, whether or not they were medal winners. Everyone was smiling! The energy level was incredible!
I don't know how many athletes registered with HotMail or Yahoo Mail so they could have a way to reach out and touch family, friends and admirers. I do know that by the middle weekend the most important service provided by the Surf Shack was e-mail. What the athletes wanted, more than anything, was a touch of home.
Oh, to be sure, athletes created homes pages (over 1500 of them -- more than fifty percent of the 2700 athletes in attendance). There were more than 300,000 FanMail messages, and I don't know how many responses! By any measure, what we did at the Surf Shack was a phenomenal success.
The Surf Shack closed early that night -- the thirty IBM Aptivas were idle, during business hours, for the first time in four weeks. The Surf Shack crew had our own closing ceremonies back at the hotel with sushi, karaoke, smiles and tears. We were all ready for a trip home.
The backup systems... Servers, problems, so... These were the Closing Ceremonies... stuff happens, next.
This is my final report from Japan. In a little over 48 hours I'll leave this country to go home. I've been here for almost two months -- as beautiful as Japan is, Dorothy said it best: "There's no place like home."
One final observation about the Surf Shack: I am delighted to have been part of a group of people that, for the most part, did not know each other and had never worked together. We came together to make a little magic. It worked!
These articles are copyright (c) 1998 by David Moskowitz. Permission to publish is granted ONLY to the Philadelphia Area Computer Society (PACS) OS/2 User Group. Any other use of this material without written permission of the author is prohibited.
David Moskowitz is president of Productivity Solutions, Bala Cynwyd, PA. He is a consultant and lecturer and was a lead editor of OS/2 Warp Unleashed. David was also one of the founders of the OS/2 SIG of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society.
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