Morgan:News:2010:Bronze Edition: February 2005

Monday, February 28, 2005

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #863
EAST VANCOUVER FIRM TAPPED AS OFFICE-STATIONERY SUPPLIER

Mills Basics of Vancouver is the new general-office-stationery supplier for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).

It was the company awarded a contract to become the "primary supplier of general office stationery supplies on an 'as-and-when requested' basis" for use by VANOC's 50 to 60 personnel. That population will grow to about 1,200 by 2009, which means the requirements will grow along with the labour force.

In this particular case, Mills Basics was asked to list what is, for them, the top 25-selling supplies, and provide the costs and volume discounts available for each, bearing in mind that a low environmental impact of the supplies is also a requirement, as its part of the undertakings VANOC outlined to the International Olympic Committee during the bid phase. Those kinds of products usually carry the Canadian Environmental Choice eco-logo.

Mills Basics also has connections to The Vancouver Agreement, an organization made up of the federal, provincial and Vancouver governments and VANOC that is charged with sprucing up Vancouver's notorious downtown east side, a skid-road area, as the 2010 Winter
Games approaches.

RESOURCES

Mills Basics
1111 Clark Dr.
Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5L 3K5
Phone: 604.254.7211

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 28, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #862
PENTICTON LOOKS AT HOTEL TAX FOR 2010 PROMOS; RBC'S OLYPMIC ADS NOT PART OF VANOC SPONSORSHIP; COLUMNIST: CAN "OWN THE PODIUM" DELIVER?

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The Penticton Hospitality Association says it will ask Penticton City council next month to pass a bylaw to collect a 2% hotel tax that would be used exclusively for marketing the city in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, and that some of the funds would be used in connection with the 2010 Winter Games. About 74 per cent of hotel and motel rooms and 65 per cent of the owners of hotel and motel properties signed letters of support for the tax which, if approved, would come into effect Jan. 1. There are a total of 43 hotel and motel properties in the Penticton area. Association president Barb Schneiderat says the fund would primarily be used to expand the city's regular tourism into its spring and fall shoulder seasons, but with the 2010 Winter Olympics on its way, this fund will enable Penticton to market itself to a global audience. Nearby Kelowna has such a tax now, and another Okanagan town, Osoyoos, is said to be planning to introduce a similar tax. In British Columbia, the provincial government has final approval under the Hotel Tax Act to authorize such a tax, and it has to be reconfirmed by those affected every five years or it is removed.

Gail Chiasson, reporting today in a Canadian public-relations newsletter called PubZone, says the C$110 million in cash and services pledge by the RBC Royal Bank to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) last week doesn't include the marketing value of RBC's usual advertising campaigns when coupled with the Olympic logo. She interviewed Ann Louise Vehovec -- the senior vice-president of Brand & Communications for RBC Royal Bank -- and quoted her as saying, "This does not include the additional Olympic advertising that makes up a prominent part of the regular marketing budget, giving both brand image ads and integration of the Olympic logo into other advertising... I expect that we'll have a slight increment in our regular marketing budget, as well." RBC's ad agency is BBDO Canada. Chaisson adds that: RBC employs 19 Olympic athletes as staff in various positions, giving them the flexibility to take the time off to train and compete in return for their appearance at various events, both external and internal - the latter helping to motivate staff for support and involvement. RBC hopes to bring the number of Olympic staffers up to 50. RBC also hopes to have promotions to encourage the Canadian public to support the Canadian Olympic team and to donate funds. It will be promoting the Olympics and its athletes through direct mail and point-of-purchase as part of the program. "This sponsorship will pay off for us at RBC," Chaisson quotes Vehovec as saying. "It will further enhance our brand image and will help us attract new customers and to cross-sell new products to our existing customers." Chiasson also reports that the public relations for the RBC-VANOC announcement was handled by the firm of Manning Selvage and Lee, an international agency with Canadian offices in Montreal and Toronto. It's part of the Paris-based Publicis Groupe.

An editorial today by syndicated Canadian sports columnist Ken Fidlin says that now the government's "cash box is open" for the "Own The Podium" program, public attention will be turning to seeing if it can deliver what it hopes to achieve. In discussing the reasons the program is gaining financial support, he argues: "Part of the reason the feds are more sport-friendly these days is obviously the fact that nobody wants us to look like fools in Vancouver [during the 2010 Games], or, more to the point, to be the culprit who made us look like fools... Another, perhaps more important reason is that this time, the athletes didn't just stick their collective hand out and demand cash. They delivered a strong, thoughtful business plan combined with an ambitious goal: To be the best in the world at the 2010 Olympics. Whether or not 'Own The Podium' can deliver what it promises -- at least 35 medals at the Vancouver Games -- it already has been the most successful argument ever made for financial support of Canadian athletes." Fidlin says the program is working, as well, because, "For once, all the major players on the winter sports scene came together with one voice with a vision and a strategy that captivated the government and is probably going to captivate a lot of new corporate support as well. With the NHL on sabbatical until at least October and quite likely even well beyond that, there is a window of opportunity just now when some major corporate sponsors might be discouraged enough with hockey to find another niche for that sponsorship money that's burning a hole in their pockets. Indeed, there is already a sense in some parts of the corporate world that the Olympic train is leaving the station and 'we'd better be on it.' After discussing the various corporate sponsorships that have given the nod so far to VANOC, Fidlin says, "Suddenly well-financed, the onus is now on the athletic community to deliver on the 'Own The Podium' report prepared by Cathy Priestner Allinger and Todd Allinger. It is an impressively detailed document, mostly scientific in nature, but with more than enough smoke and mirrors thrown in. They have based their 35-medal prediction on historical mathematical formulas involving the expansion of the pool of what they call 'potential medallists,' combined with better technical and coaching support that will help improve our poor Olympic game-day record. Nobody knows if it is a valid way to predict and secure medals but one thing is certain -- it is a document that magically separates governments and corporate sponsors from their money."

RESOURCES

Manning Selvage and Lee:
http://www.mslpr.com/

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 28, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #861
B.C. EXPECTED TO CONTRIBUTE HALF OF C$10 MILLION TO WINTER PORTION OF "OWN THE PODIUM" PROGRAM

The B.C. government says it will seek approval from the legislature this week for C$10 million that can be contributed during its upcoming fiscal year to the "Own the Podium" program for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes, but the funds will be evenly split between athletes competing in winter and summer Games.

Premier Gordon Campbell added, “I challenge other provinces to also make a contribution to the future success of Canada’s Olympians at Canada's [Winter] games in 2010." The premier also challenged "Canada's corporate communities" to "step up to the mark." The “Own The Podium" program is jointly supported by the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and the Canadian Olympic Committee with the support of the major Canadian winter sport federations to help Canadian athletes win medals in 2010, but it is expected to be expanded to include summer Olympic athletes using a similar template that will be published this fall.

The announcement was well orchestrated. There was an immediate distribution of news releases from the communication departments of VANOC, the Canadian Olympic Committee, 2010 LegaciesNow and the provincial ministry of Small Business and Economic Development, which is also responsible for sport development in general, and the B.C. government's interests in the 2010 Games, in British Columbia. The news releases all reported the senior executives of the respective organizations as supporting or praising the premier for his comments.

The federal government earlier this month provided C$15 million in its budget estimates as its first installment for its coming fiscal year for the "Own the Podium" program. Although it's a larger amount of money, it's a much smaller per-capita funding compared with the B.C. government's contribution. B.C. has approximately 15% of Canada's population.

The fiscal years of both the federal and provincial government start April 1. The spending plans of both are predicated on the minority federal government surviving a non-confidence vote in Parliament over its budget -- it is expected survive such a vote -- and the provincial government surviving an election set for May 17. It is also expected to survive the election, although with a reduced majority.

BACKGROUND

The "Own the Podium" concept, largely authored by VANOC senior vice-president of Sport, Cathy Priestner, before she was appointed to the post, is to approach sport development on three fronts:

Deliver high-performance programs by sport organizations in training, competition, sport science and medicine
Broaden the pool of athletes in Canada and ultimately increase the number of international-calibre, medal-capable athletes. The various organizations have identified about 700 B.C. athletes in the pool who have this potential
Give high-performance athletes a technological edge to help improve their success rates. This component includes advanced training methodology, nutrition, psychology, performance techniques and equipment, among other items. About 275 international-level Canadian athletes who train in B.C. who have the potential to benefit from this component of the program.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 28, 2005

Friday, February 25, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |General| #860
B.C.'S SALVATION ARMY PREPARES FOR ITS 2010 OLYMPIC "OUTREACH PROGRAM"

The Salvation Army's headquarters in British Columbia has begun the search for a co-ordinator to run a five-year Olympics outreach program for the 2010 Winter Olympics. It's just one step in a program that will see the social-service organization spend C$350,000 to work on the volunteer side of the Games.

Captain John P. Murray, the Sally Ann's divisional secretary for Development, says the Army has worked with every Olympics since the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, including the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002, and that its international divisions will be at the 2006 Games in Torino, Italy and "probably" the 2008 Games in Beijing.

But in the meantime, the Canadian branch of the Salvation Army is putting aside C$50,000 per year from its discretionary finances, and has been doing so for two years now, so it will have funds to provides services at the 2010 Games. He stresses that none of the funds will come from designated programs, such as its Red Shield Appeal, which provides social support, such as food and shelter, for British Columbia's indigent. The Army spent about US$500,000 on providing services for the Utah Games.

Captain Murray says the Salvation Army provides an organized Christian volunteer base at the Games and sets up tents and a mobile kitchen to provide food and water to Games volunteers and do other similar support functions as required at the Games. "And, because the Salvation Army is faith-based, we also have a chance to provide a practical ministry one-on-one with the volunteers" during the Games. The Army, he says, is one of the few non-governmental organizations of its type that can must the budgetary and organizational clout to be able to do this kind of work.

In addition, he says, the Salvation Army has been meeting with British Columbian church representatives and with the U.S.-based Southern Baptist Convention to plan for the 2010 Games, and has been working with Tom Cooper's "City in Focus" organization on the Olympics outreach program. The City in Focus program describes itself as providing Christian "pastoral and spiritual resource to the unchurched in the city of Vancouver." The Salvation Army has representation in about 50 British Columbian communities, and, globally, is represented in 109 countries, which makes the Olympics Outreach program and its support for the Olympics and Olympic values, according to Captain Murray, "a natural extension" of its work.

Although there's been quite bit of religion-based planning, he says, the Salvation Army has not yet met with any officials of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC). VANOC's Human Resources Department is in charge of the 2010 Games' volunteer programs.

The Salvation Army's outreach co-ordinator's job, which is a five-year contract that starts in April, is to develop "a comprehensive Christian outreach program for the 2010 Games... [and it] requires extensive experience in strategic planning, project management, program design, volunteer recruitment and training as well as internal/ external communications and networking abilities." Captain Murray says the organization isn't limiting applicants to Canadians. He notes that there are now quite a few people in Canada and the United States who have experience with previous Olympics. The primary qualifications for the position is that the person must be a Christian, committed to the Salvation Army's values and mission, have about five years of "sports ministry outreach experience", and, hopefully, experience with Salvation Army Olympic Outreach efforts.

RESOURCES

Lieut.-Colonel Don Copple
Divisional Commander
E-mail:

Captain John P. Murray
Divisional Secretary for Development
E-mail: mailto:John_Murray@Can.SalvationArmy.Org

British Columbia Divisional Headquarters
103-3833 Henning Drive
Burnaby, BC V5C 6N5
Tel: 604.299.3908
Fax: 604-299-7463

Tom Cooper's "City in Focus" program is described here:
http://www.cityinfocus.ca/aboutcif.html

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 25, 2005

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #858
BANK DEAL CLEARS VANOC'S LINE OF CREDIT; MARKETING PLUMPS FINANCIAL AGREEMENT; VICTORIA INTERESTED IN 2009 CURLING TRIALS FOR 2010

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

A financial staffer for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) was pleased about the RBC financial-services sponsorship deal because, among other things, it clears VANOC's hefty line-of-credit. VANOC's financial statements issued last fall said VANOC has arranged a C$15-million rolling line of credit to help pay for its operations, but it didn't identify the bank. By July 31, it had drawn down almost half of that -- C$7.2 million in various methods, some of which were at 10 basis points below the bank's prime, which was 3.75% on July 31. The credit facility was guaranteed by the bank having first call on VANOC's "personal property." Jack Poole, VANOC chairman, joked that he left a message for Vancouver City mayor Larry Campbell that said, "Larry, there's money in the bank -- and it's from the bank." By the way, Campbell was supposed to undergo day surgery angioplasty today to clear a blocked artery near his heart and had been taking a few days off work to prepare for the procedure. But he was told by his doctors today that he wouldn't need the treatment, and the surgery team went on to other patients. But he still has to quit smoking.
The marketing departments of both VANOC and RBC were hard at work for the Financial Services sponsorship deal. There were news conferences in Halifax, where senior officials of VANOC were attending the Royal Bank's annual general meeting and board meeting, and Vancouver, along with teleconferences for national news media. The Vancouver announcement took place in front of puzzled bank customers in the main lobby of the Royal Bank's downtown corporate headquarters, where about 150 bank employees were told to gather round in sight of the TV cameras, and were handed small Canadian flags to wave for them, and to cheer on cue during the speeches. It also involved a number of the Canadian Olympic Team members, which RBC is sponsoring in the deal, news-release kits bearing both the RBC logo and the VANOC logo, with backgrounders and joint testimonials, a goodies bag for everybody in sight that included a funky pen with the phrase "Vancouver 2010... Spirit of the Games" (yes, the trademark symbols were there), and even two massive ice sculptures, one each of the logos of RBC and VANOC. Those who looked in the goodies bag were taken aback by a rolled-up copy of a clumsily drawn human with the head of an indecipherable type of animal in loose-fitting exercise clothing and wearing an Olympic medallion. Deeper down in the bag was a temporary tattoo sticker of the same thing. Nobody ever said what the point of the exercise was. Even though John Furlong, VANOC CEO and his chief sponsorship negotiator, Dave Cobb, were in Halifax, VANOC senior vice-presidents Terry Wright (Planning), Steve Matheson (Venues) and John McLaughlin (Finance) were there, along with a number of second-tier VANOC staffers from communications, sponsorships and finance.
They're already starting to think about the 2009 Canadian Olympic curling trials, which will determine the men's and women's Canadian teams that will appear at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Several cities are interested in hosting those trials. According to the Canadian Curling Association, they include: Ottawa and Brandon in Ontario, Victoria in B.C. and Red Deer, Alberta. The next Olympic curling trials will be held in December in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to choose the Canadian teams for the 2006 Winter Games in Italy. By the way, one of the main considerations in choosing a city: the facilities that are available to host the related parties that go along with the curling trials.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #857
SENIOR AIR CANADA EXECUTIVE APPOINTED AS VP, COMMUNICATIONS

Renee Smith-Valade, Air Canada's former manager of public relations and director of corporate affairs and government relations, has been hired by the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) as vice-president of Communications. She'll report to senior vice-president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, Dave Cobb.

Smith-Valade was one of the main public faces for the airline for 12 tumultuous years. She was based in Calgary for most of that time, after earlier completing a stint as a media-relations officer for the Calgary Olympic Organizing Committee when it hosted the Winter Olympics in 1988. It was her first job after graduating from university in Calgary. She also worked for several years as the executive assistant to Calgary mayor Duerr. She worked on the City of Calgary's bid to host Expo 2005, an international exposition, that was ultimately awarded to another city. She later signed on as media relations with Canadian Airline, a national airline that was eventually absorbed by Air Canada, where she continued in that role.

While at Air Canada -- as it navigated bankruptcy and the effects on the airline and the industry of the September 11, 2001 attack on New York -- she handled hundreds of media interviews and as much or more in requests for information on a wide range of topics connected with the troubled airline, from lost luggage to security checks. She was also one of five people assigned to represent the airline's employees before the court dealing with Air Canada's bankruptcy. After a promotion within Air Canada to a confidential job, she was obliged to give up the employee-representation aspect, and she was transferred to its headquarters in Montreal from Calgary.

But, she says, she wanted to return to western Canada and applied for the Communications Director job with VANOC to achieve that. She moved to Vancouver last week. She also testified, either on her own or as backup to senior airline officials, at various Canadian senate and parliamentary committees studying the airline industry's control and regulation during the last few years.

She's married, to Andre Valade, a senior executive with Canada's national oil company, Petro-Canada, and they have one son, Max.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #856
MASTER MARKETING AGREEMENT FINALLY SIGNED WITH IOC

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and the International Olympic Committee have signed -- after months of often intense negotiations -- a Master Marketing Agreement that gives VANOC a wide range of authority over its marketplace for years to come.

The agreement was signed last Friday by VANOC CEO John Furlong and his senior vice-president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, Dave Cobb, and it gives VANOC the ability to fully negotiate and sign sponsorship agreements. The IOC agreed to release the telecommunications and financial-services sponsorship categories under special arrangements to allow Bell Canada to be awarded its telecom sponsorship deal, and today's deal with RBC Royal Bank Financial Group because of the length of time it was taking to nail down the master agreement. Negotiations over the agreement began last August, shortly after Cobb was appointed to his position, and face-to-face meetings with IOC officials were conducted in Beijing, Vancouver and Lausanne, Switzerland at IOC's headquarters. As well, there were numerous drafts exchanged electronically.

VANOC is still mulling over whether to make the MPA public, following a request today by Morgan:News:2010.

VANOC, particularly Furlong and Cobb, have been holding "about 60 or 70" corporate meetings in cities across Canada -- and in Montreal and Toronto in particular -- during the past few months as initial approaches are made to companies interested in sponsoring various aspects of the Games, according to Furlong.

In 2002, VANOC's predecessor, the 2010 Bid Corporation, run by Furlong and the man who is now his senior vice-president of Planning, Terry Wright, predicted VANOC would generate total cash and in-kind income of US$160 million from the highest-level national sponsors from eight to ten of the following categories: airline; automotive; banking; brewery; communications; lotteries and gaming; oil and gas, petroleum; power and energy; telecom services; timing and scoring. So far, VANOC's generated about US$265 million just from banking and communications, and Swatch, via its Omega brand, has already arranged to do the timing and scoring reached last year through an international sponsorship deal with the IOC.

Another of the top-level sponsorships is expected to be announced next week, according to VANOC staffers but they say that though several deals are nearing completion, the category that was rumoured to be settled next, automotive, isn't likely to be the one announced next week. They declined to be more specific because of competitive issues and marketing arrangements that are part of the deals being reached.

Since airfares are a major operational component of VANOC's these days, and are likely to get even larger as the organization prepares during the next 12 months to provide a large contingent to observer the workings of the 2006 Winter Games in Italy next February, next week's announcement could well deal with the airline industry.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #855
MORE DETAILS ON HOW THE RBC FINANCIAL SERVICES SPONSORSHIP DEAL IS STRUCTURED

There are further details now available about how the Financial Services sponsorship between the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and RBC Royal Bank of Canada is structured.

Andrea Shaw, vice-president of Sponsorships for VANOC, says that under the deal, RBC will sponsor the operations of the 2010 Winter Games to a total of C$70 million in cash or equivalents. It will also sponsor the Canadian Olympic Team itself for another four Olympics -- the Winter Games in Torino Italy in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010, and the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008 and in 2012. The choice of the 2012 city is to be made by the International Olympic Committee this July.

The rest of the deal, she says, which amounts to C$40 million as valued by VANOC, is value-in-kind: banking services, athlete and amateur sport investments, support for the Paralympics, community development programs for at least the Squamish and Lil'Wat aboriginal bands in British Columbia, and Olympic brand marketing and promotional support through the RBC network. More announcements will be made on a piece-meal basis as a way of implementing the brand marketing.

Graham MacLachlan, the western regional president of RBC Royal Bank, says in Vancouver that the RBC arrangement with VANOC and the Canadian Olympic Team and Committee, "is the ideal mixture of brands and values."

The deal, according to Shaw, includes specific support for the Canadian Olympic Committee's "Own the Podium" program, but the amount of that support will not be released for marketing reasons: RBC's marketing department wants to make a separate announcement about that.

Meanwhile, John McLauchlin, VANOC's vice-president of Finance, says a decision has yet to be reached as to whether the Royal Bank's branches will be involved in ticket sales for the 2010 Games, as the 3,000 branches of Sanpaolo Bank, the Torino Olympics financial-services sponsor, is doing now in the final year before its Games. "That hasn't been decided yet, and Europe doesn't have the network of ticket retailing that we have. In any event, it's not part of this agreement."

The deal between RBC and VANOC was reached earlier this month, but the announcement was planned to coincide with the RBC annual general meeting and board meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, today and tomorrow. That's where VANOC CEO John Furlong and Dave Cobb, his senior vice-president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, are today. They took part in a conference call with RBC executives from Halifax this morning as part of the announcement.

BACKGROUND

The Royal Bank of Canada, which is public and listed on the TSX and NYSE under "RY" uses the initials RBC as a prefix for its businesses and operating subsidiaries, which operate under the master brand name of RBC Financial Group. Royal Bank of Canada is Canada's largest bank as measured by assets, and is one of North America's largest, diversified financial services companies. It provides personal and commercial banking, wealth management services, insurance, corporate and investment banking, and transaction processing services internationally. The company employs about 60,000 people and has about 11.5 million personal, business and public-sector clients in North American countries and about other 30 countries.

RESOURCES

This RBC page outlines the bank's history of sponsorship with the Olympics brand:
http://www.rbc.com/sponsorship/history.html

This RBC page is its investor-relations home:
http://www.rbc.com/investorrelations/index.html

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #854
RBC FINANCIAL GROUP LANDED AS THE 2010 GAMES PREMIER NATIONAL BANKING SPONSOR

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has entered into a four-Olympics sponsorship agreement with RBC Financial Group, which operates the Royal Bank in Canada.

Under the deal, the RBC Financial Group has sponsorship rights to the Canadian Olympic team for the Torino 2006, Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and 2012 Games. RBC's total commitment is valued by VANOC at C$110 million over the next eight years including a cash contribution of about C$70 million. Other support includes banking services, athlete and amateur sport investments, support for the Paralympics, First Nation's community development programs and Olympic brand marketing and promotional support through the RBC network.

VANOC's marketing program will be focused on "securing mutually rewarding partnerships with shared Olympic values" to generate sufficient revenue to host successful Winter Games in 2010 and to leave a financial legacy for sport.

RBC is the longest-serving national partner of the Canadian Olympic team, and with this announcement, continues its 58-year relationship with the Canadian Olympic movement that officially started in 1947.

"RBC has an outstanding record of supporting amateur athletics in Canada and has been an exceptional partner for Canada's Olympic and Paralympic movements," said John Furlong VANOC CEO. "Our goal is to organize great Games on behalf of all Canadians and help Canada's athletes achieve great results in 2010 and beyond. RBC - one of Canada's most trusted companies - shares this vision and with their tradition and experience will help us create the conditions for success in 2010."

Gordon Nixon, President and CEO, RBC Financial Group, added, "We are extremely proud to renew our long relationship as the exclusive national Olympic banking partner for the Games. Our employees have always been terrific supporters of Canadian Olympians. We are delighted to have the opportunity once again to help fulfill Canada's commitment to the International Olympic Committee to promote, care and nurture the Olympic promise and its values. And we are ready to assist VANOC in setting a new world standard for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games."

Chris Rudge, the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, was also pleased by the move "This is great news for sport. Over the past 58 years, RBC has played a pivotal role in the Canadian Olympic Movement through the support of athlete development, Olympic education and athlete career mentoring. We look forward to continuing this successful partnership."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 24, 2005

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #853
OLYMPIAN BROADCASTER TO HEAD UP TVNW MEDIA GROUP; OKANAGAN 2010 COMMITTEE TO GO PUBLIC IN MAY; REVELSTOKE SIGHS OVER SIGNS

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

TVNW Media Group, a Canadian television production company based in North Vancouver that focuses on high-performance sports, has appointed strong-willed Olympian medallist Adrian Metcalfe of England as its first president. Metcalfe, the head of sport for the UK's Channel 4, has either produced or directed live Olympic Games television coverage, and he's been brought onboard to help the firm focus on the 2010 Winter Games and the lead-up to it. His resume includes the fact that he helped launch the Eurosport channel and received an Order of the British Empire for services to sports broadcasting in 2000. Metcalfe already knows the people in the North Shore operation, however. He has worked with TVNW managing director Martin Perry, in the UK and in Canada. He was was involved in distributing the TV rights to the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships, which was produced by TVNW and broadcast in about 50 countries. In addition to sport television, the firm, founded three years ago, has produces documentaries, corporate videos, and light entertainment. Its clients and projects include the International Triathlon Union World Cup Series, FIS World Cup Skiing -- which it did for Channel 4 -- and the firm is the host-broadcaster for the Vancouver Whitecaps Soccer Club. The firm has also produced more than 90 hours of programming for Canadian sports cable channel TSN. Metcalfe’s appointment is also seen as a method of bringing closer control to TVNW's seven divisions: sports production, original programming, facilities & outsourcing, corporate media services, media management and marketing & distribution. Metcalfe, then 22, took part in the 1964 summer Olympics track-and-field competitions in Tokyo, where he won silver in the 4 x 400 metre race.
The Okanagan Spirit of BC Committee, which is made up of 21 people and based in Kelowna, plans to host a community meeting towards the end of May to talk about the kinds of opportunities that might be available to the area in connection with the 2010 Winter Games. The organization, chaired by Winfield businessman Cal McCarthy, includes representatives from the Okanagan involved in marketing, recreation and sports, cultural services, economics, education, politics and tourism. The approach of the information meeting is expected to be based on "five pillars of opportunity" identified by 2010 LegaciesNow during its tour of the area and other parts of British Columbia: sports and recreation, tourism, arts & culture, education & youth, and business. The Committee has been talking about encouraging the teams of smaller nations to train in the area, perhaps a curling team.
From our Sign of the Times Department: The 2010 Winter Games -- and the tourism stemming from it -- have been cited by a council member for the city of Revelstoke, in south-eastern British Columbia, as the reason that businesses there should spruce up their storefronts and, in particular, their signage. Councillor Chris Johnston told Council the Enhancement Committee, after seeing a slide show of town signage, wasn't too impressed with the look of things at the moment.

RESOURCES

TVNW Media Group

Suite 203, 38 Fell Avenue
North Vancouver, BC V7P 3S2
Phone: 604.904.7579
Fax: 604.904.7589
< mailto:info@tvnwmediagroup.com>
http://www.tvnwmediagroup.com/home.php

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 23, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #852
C$23 MILLION COLISEUM RENO STARTS WITH REPLACING 16,000 SEATS FROM MAY UNTIL DECEMBER

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has begun the C$23-million process of renovating one of its main venues, the 16,000 seat Vancouver Coliseum in east Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition grounds, which will be host to the 2010 Olympic figure skating and short-track speed-skating competitions.

Jane O'Flaherty, VANOC's Manager of Venue Finance, reports that for the first part of the renovation work, VANOC is looking for design-build proposals from companies interested in doing all the work involved in replacing the seating in time for this December's World Junior Hockey championships.

The arena is to eventually be brought to Olympic standards. This request, though, is for proposals to provide the labour, materials, equipment and services to design, engineer, fabricate, supply and install fixed arena seating, in-fill seating and telescopic-platform seating.

When the original seating was installed, 1,940 seats were mounted on telescopic units, there were 288 in-fill seats and the balance of 13,635 fixed Hussey/Irwin-style seats were split between lower and upper bowls. The idea is to replace the 38-year-old seating with essentially the same configuration.

The work also involves removing, recycling and reusing the existing seating so there is minimum landfill disposal, as environmental considerations are part of VANOC's promises to the International Olympic Committee in holding the Games. VANOC also wants a 10-year warranty built into the proposal, for replacement within 48 hours of any seating that fails during that time.

The arena, originally built in 1967 and where the National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks played for years before moving downtown to General Motors Place, is now the home to the Vancouver Giants of the Western Hockey League and is owned by the City of Vancouver, but it's also used during the PNE, an annual two-week fair on the grounds that includes the Coliseum.

The installation schedule will have to avoid those two weeks, from August 26 to September 6. In addition, work will have to pause for the dozen or so events the Coliseum has booked between May and the start of the PNE, and the 17 events booked from the end of the PNE to December 1. That means the seating will have to be replaced incrementally, so the events can use the seating, and finished by December 1.

RFP-2010-516, on B.C. Bid, closes March 4 at 2 pm, and is restricted to companies with at least five years of experience in dealing with this work. And, along with a long list of criteria for the seats, VANOC wants each proponent to drop off a sample of each type of chair and its fittings, along with colour samples and fabric swatches, at the Coliseum before the closing date.

BACKGROUND

VANOC is still mulling over the type of seating that it wants to use in the Coliseum renovation, so it's asked for proposals based on three seating options:

An upholstered seat pan and back with exposed plastic or steel, such as the Irwin Citation No. 41212
An upholstered seat pan with exposed plastic or steel, such as the Irwin Patriot No. 301208, or
A plastic seat pan and back, such as the Irwin Patriot No. 303030

You can see the examples being discussed, here:
http://www.irwinseating.com/market_pages/arena.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 23, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Sports| #851
2010 LEGACIESNOW AND BC SPORT GROUPS WELCOME FEDERAL SPORT FUNDING

The 2010 LegaciesNow organization and several other BC sport organizations say they are pleased with the federal government’s announcement of C$20 million in new funding for sport in Canada during the release of today's federal budget for Ottawa's upcoming fiscal year, which includes an additional annual investment of C$15 million for the “Own the Podium” program.

Marion Lay, the president and CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow says today in Vancouver that, “These new investments will definitely help to reinforce our 'Playground to Podium' strategy in British Columbia... With strategic and targeted investments in our athletes and coaches over the coming years, we are working hard to ensure that British Columbia and Canada shine atop the podium in 2010.”

Meanwhile, Sandra Stevenson, the president and CEO of Sport BC says that the new federal funding levels for sport are "a welcome next step for achieving both podium performance and increasing the number of opportunities for Canadians to be physically active through organized sport... Our collective vision for sport in Canada depends on increasing support from all sectors. It is great to see government modelling the way. Keep it up!”

Roger Skillings, president and CEO of PacificSport Victoria. “This additional funding will help us continue providing programs and services to give every advantage to our high-performance athletes and coaches. When the difference between a gold-medal performance and not reaching the podium is measured in milliseconds, this type of funding can help to bridge that gap.”

They note that beside the Sport portion of the budget, there is also C$300 million over five years for an integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Disease, which is to include a series of activities to promote healthy eating and encourage physical activity and healthy weight. Suzanne Strutt, executive director of the British Columbia Recreation and Parks Association says, “The investment in sport announced by the federal government will not only assist our high- performance athletes but also British Columbians’ participation in community sport and physical activity. The province has set the target of increasing physical activity levels by 20% by 2010, and this funding will go a long way in assisting us reach that goal.”

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 23, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #850
CANADIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE OK WITH FEDERAL FUNDING LEVELS IN NEW BUDGET

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC)'s president said today that although the funding wasn't as much as he had hoped for, he is pleased with the federal Canadian government's decision to increase funding for amateur sport by an additional C$20 million per year in the 2005 budget it made public today.

In addition, Michael Chambers says he is pleased that the government has rolled into the base funding for high-performance sport an additional C$50 million that was part of Sport Canada's high-performance funding last year, which was set to expire at the end of 2004.

"We are pleased that the Martin government has significantly increased funding for sport in Canada," said Chambers, in Ottawa, where he has been intensively lobbying for additional funding for the past week. "The increase demonstrates the federal government's increasing commitment to high-performance sport in Canada. This new funding will help build long-term sustainability for the sport community and greater success for all our athletes."

The COC has been actively co-ordinating the advocacy for increased federal funding for sport. As a result, representatives of the sport community, including the Sport Matters Group that represents a wide range of amateur athletics in Canada, the Canadian Paralympic Committee, a number of national sport federations recognized by the Olympics, and Olympic athletes and coaches, met with Members of Parliament, and senior government officials this month to plump for amateur sport in Canada and the "Own the Podium" program in particular.

"We are happy that federal Sport minister Owen recognizes the important role that sport plays in Canada," noted Chris Rudge, the COC's CEO. "It is an essential component of our culture, not only in terms of the national pride that is fostered when Canadian athletes win Olympic medals, but also in terms of the benefit to our health and well-being from participating in sport. There is a significant return to Canadians on the federal investment in sport."

The COC says it will and others in the Olympic sport sector will continue working on Minister Owen along with their national funding sponsors in the private sector, and the national sport federations, and to further develop the "Own the Podium" program to prepare Canadian athletes for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver, and to create a similar program for summer sport, which allows for success of Canadian athletes in future summer Olympic Games.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 23, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #849
OTTAWA'S BUDGET OFFERS HIGH-PERFORMANCE SPORT MORE MONEY, PLUS INITIAL SUPPORT FOR "OWN THE PODIUM"

The Canadian federal government budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts April 1, today provided for an additional C$70 million a year to Sport Canada which, according to the federal finance ministry's documents, means that it is "doubling its ongoing funding to [a total of] C$140 million in the upcoming fiscal year from C$70 million during the current fiscal year."

But that extra includes about C$50 million in program funding that was to have ended this year but is being extended. On the other hand, it also includes the first installment of its support for the "Own the Podium" program, requested by the Canadian Olympic Committee and authored by Cathy Priestner, the senior vice-president of Sport for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Organizing Committee.

In order for this to all take place with certainty, however, the minority federal Liberal government must survive a vote on approval of the budget by Parliament, although it's unlikely any replacement government would have a significant effect on actual expenditures during the forthcoming year.

The break-out documents, which deal with the federal Heritage Department, which is the channel through which Ottawa is funding its share of the 2010 Winter Games, put it this way: "As part of the Government of Canada’s ongoing commitment to the [2010 Winter Games, the budget] provides an additional C$87 million over seven years, including an additional C$20 million for the Paralympic Games, to ensure that Canada is ready when the world comes to visit in 2010. This funding is over and above the Government of Canada’s existing commitment of [more than] C$410 million to help build the Games’ sport and event venues, as well as to provide the essential services required for such an event, such as policing and security."

The federal government says, as well, that it wants to ensure that Canadian high-performance athletes have the coaching, equipment and support "they require to perform at the top levels of national and international competition", so Ottawa will renew, for the next few years the C$50 million "investment" it made during the current fiscal year. In addition, it says, "A further C$15 -million per year will be provided to respond to the recommendations of the 'Own the Podium' report and provide the resources required for Canada’s elite athletes to reach their potential in the years to come." Ottawa also says it wants to ensure that "Canadians across the country have more opportunities to get involved in sport at the community level," so the budget is adding C$5 million per year to the C$10 million it's been providing for those programs since 2003.

Finance minister Ralph Goodale says, "These investments will bring stability to Sport Canada’s budget... [and] they will provide the sport system with the highest level ever of ongoing funding from the Government of Canada."

Despite all the nice words, the Sport budget makes up only a small part of the Heritage Ministry's budget, and this coming year will be the best it will be at least until 2010. Here's how the federal budget predicts the government will fund Sport Canada over the next five fiscal years:

2005-06: C$76 million (9.2% of the Heritage budget for that year)
2006-07: C$78 million (6.5%)
2007-08: C$79 million (5.6%)
2008-09: C$85 million (6.0%)
2009-10: C$113 million (7.6%)
Total: C$429 million (6.7%)

Sport isn't the only budget that the federal government funds through Heritage Canada and other departments that will have an impact on the economic ripple effects of the 2010 Winter Games. There were also funding increases for various programs that have to do with culture -- the 2010 Games will also involve a five-year "cultural Olympiad", starting in early 2006 and going through until 2010, and there are also environmental and sustainability funding programs, which also affect promises made to the IOC in how the Games are to be delivered, and which could be tapped in various ways.

Heritage Canada's "Tomorrow Starts Today" program, for instance, which began in 2001, is also receiving a boost in funding. It provides support for Canadian arts and culture. Last December, the government said its commitment to the program would include $172 million of new funding per year for another four years, and that's also included in this budget.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 23, 2005

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #848
FORT ST. JOHN SPEEDSKATERS HAVE HOPES SET ON HIGH; COC SUPPORT GENERATES LOTS OF INK; ROSEN HEADS FOR 2010 - AND 50

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

Western Canada has one speed-skating oval at the moment, in Calgary. By 2010, it might have three, including the C$60-million one the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is funding in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. Skate Canada's BC/Yukon section chair, Gail Weber of Fort St. John, in British Columbia's northeast quarter, says the city, which already has an outdoor oval, is keeping its fingers crossed that the provincial government will approve its application for a C$28-million indoor speed-skating oval complex, which it is billing as a pre-Olympic training site, as part of the 2010 Legacy projects funding. That's a sizable project, even with the amount of funding the province is making available to spread throughout the province, although Weber says she thinks it might still be viable even if a Legacy grant didn't cover all of the complex. It's a project that Fort St. John has been touting officially since 2003. Weber and the city, which last night granted approval to a new gaming hotel complex, feel there is a good business case to be made for the new complex, which would adjoin an existing large and small ice rink and swimming pool. The city, which is going through another of its periodic oil-patch boom economic cycles, is the only BC community to have hosted five multi-sport winter games: four Northern BC Winter Games and one BC Winter Games. It has also produced 64 national or world champion speed-skaters, including two-time Olympian Linda Johnson-Blair, and is home to The Fort St. John Elks Speed Skating Club, the largest speed skating club in BC. Denny Morrison of Fort St. John, won a silver medal February 5 in the men's 1,500 metres at the world junior long-track speed skating championships in Finland. The proposed facility features a long-track speed-skating oval that circles an Olympic-sized hockey rink, and includes a conference and training centre, an indoor track and an indoor venue that can be used for either soccer or tennis. The city of Fort St. John, 1,300 km from Vancouver, but a lot closer to Edmonton, both economically and physically, has a population of about 16,000, however it handles a regional population of about 53,000.
You have to hand it to the Canadian Olympic Committee and its various troop of supporters who have been banging on the federal government's door for the past week, lobbying for funds to be included tomorrow's federal budget for the "Own the Podium" program and other projects. There have been dozens of inches of national newspaper articles, and plenty of TV, radio and Internet broadcast coverage of what they've been up to, and what they think about this or that aspect of the story. Still, the budget is set by a systematic process and leaves little room for last-minute tweaking; if Ottawa hoped the leak to the Canadian Press the other day about the amount that's supposed to be in the budget for their funding would quieten things, it seems to have had the exact opposite effect, since now the media are reporting a sense of disappointment if it comes to pass that they got most, but not all, of what they wanted.
Toronto Star newspaper columnist Jim Coyle tells the story today of Paul Rosen of Vaughn, Ontario. Coyle says Rosen told him he intends to ignore doctors who are urging Rosen to retire as goalie of Canada's 2006 Winter Paralympics Sledge Hockey team that will be heading for Torinio, Italy, later this year, assuming things work out for the 18-member team during the World Cup Championships in Colorado in April. He says he's going to put off his retirement until after the 2010 Winter Games. The sledge-hockey contests in 2010 that Rosen's talking about will be played, along with the rest of the Paralympic events, in Whistler on a rink that doesn't even exist yet. Rosen says he'll be 49 if he makes it to the 2010 Games, which will be held in March that year, and he will turn 50 shortly afterward. But that's OK, because he didn't start playing sledge hockey until he was 40 and, he tells Coyle, if George Foreman, the boxer, can do it, so can he. Rosen has been a hockey player since he was kid, when he broke his leg. Eventually, that rippled into a knee replacement, which got infected following several surgeries to deal with it, until the leg was amputated in 1999. As he was recovering from that, he got to talking to a 13-year-old boy who had lost both legs and an arm; the boy brought up sledge hockey, prompting him to try out for the national team in 2000. Rosen is quoted as saying that, in essence, the boy told him: "So you're missing your leg. Big deal. Get over it."

RESOURCES

Fort St John Elks Speed Skating Club
http://www.solarwinds.com/sskate/

The full story on Paul Rosen:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagenamethestar/Layout/Article_Type1&cArticle&cid1109027412030&call_pageid970599119419

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 22, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #847
SHAKEUP AT BELL CANADA; CELLS AT 2010 - VIDEO ALERTS?; INFLUENTIAL SPORT WOMEN INCLUDE THREE 2010 CONNECTIONS

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

There's been a shake-up in the upper echelons of Bell Canada as the company is in the process of rolling out its push into western Canada using its 2010 Winter Olympic links as a springboard. Michael Neuman has resigned as president of Bell Mobility and Bell Distribution Inc. after three years. He's being replaced by Robert Odendaal, who joined Bell Canada in 2004 to head up the company's Video Services group. He has been appointed CEO Bell Mobility and Video Services, reporting to Pierre Blouin, the group president of Consumer Markets for Bell Canada. Odendaal was Director of Digital Business Development at European broadcaster BSkyB before joining Bell. Alek Krstajic, formerly the chief marketing officer in the Consumer Group, will become Bell Mobility's president. He will be responsible for implementing Bell Mobility's 2005 operating plan. He will also have responsibility for all of Bell's retail operations, which include Bell World stores. Another BSkyB alumnus, Gary Smith, has been appointed president of Bell ExpressVu. He was senior vice president of Operations. Smith also joined ExpressVu last year. Kevin Crull has been appointed president of Consumer Solutions. He was senior vice president for Enterprise Wireless at AT&T in the United States. Crull will be responsible for all marketing, sales and product development in the Consumer group as well as for Bell's call-centre operations. He'll also be focusing on expanding broadband use in residential markets. And Bell is setting up a new unit within the consumer group to deal with VoiP (Voice over Internet, the system of carrying phone calls) which will be lead by Ron Close, another former AT&T Canada executive, who has an Internet and telecom background. He will head Bell's Consumer VoIP product line which is being launched this year.
One of the comments made by Bell Canada after it garnered the broadcasting rights for the 2010 Winter Games was the fact that cellphones would play a much larger part than presently in delivering the Games to spectators. Keep that in mind as we tell you about something that 20th Century Fox has just announced which doesn't -- yet -- have any connection to Bell: Fox intends to create a series of one-minute dramas based on its hit show "24" for a new high-speed wireless service, known as 3G, being offered in Europe by Vodafone PLC, the world's biggest cell phone company. Vodafone will begin offering "mobisodes" as they're called, for "mobile episodes", in January in the United Kingdom, coinciding with the start of the fourth season of the show on a satellite TV service. The company intends to introduce the same thing later this year in up to 23 other countries where Vodafone operates, mainly in Europe, as well as in the United States through the company's Verizon Wireless joint venture. In March, the new Vodafone service, to be called "Vodafone Live! with 3G," will also offer trailers and clips of movies under a "Movie of the Month" service, the first one being "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason." Fast-forward to 2010 in Vancouver or Whistler, and this kind of technology, which will probably allow you to get a cell-phone video-clip of a winning performance at the Games on your cellphone seconds after it happens as easily as you now get a text alert, will be fairly mature by then.
Three of the 20 Canadian women who have been named to the 2004 list of the Most Influential Women in Sport and Physical Activity, compiled by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity, have a connection with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC). They include: Cathy Priestner, who is the senior vice-president of Sport for VANOC; Charmaine Crooks, who is a VANOC Board Member and Marion Lay, the President & CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow Society, the B.C. government's private-public partner that works with VANOC. The list recognizes women who have made a significant impact in Canadian sport as athletes, administrators, advocates, board members, executives, medical doctors, officials, policy makers or volunteers.

RESOURCES

The complete list of the Most Influential Women in Sport and Physical Activity is here:
http://www.caaws.ca/influentialwomen/e/2004/index.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 22, 2005

Monday, February 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #846
CP SAYS WEDNESDAY'S FEDERAL BUDGET TO PROVIDE C$140 MILLION FOR AMATEUR SPORTS

A Canadian Press report by Alexander Panett out of Ottawa tonight says "The federal government will boost amateur-sports funding... to a total of C$140 million" in Wednesday's federal budget, which is expected to be made public about 1 p.m. Pacific time, after the Canadian stock markets close.

A "a senior government official" is quoted as confirming the information, but the person is not identified.

Panetta says the funding will be a mix of C$20 million in new money and C$60 million in funds that existed in last year's budget and which had been set to expire at the March 31 end of Ottawa's current fiscal year.

There's no word in the report about how the funds are to be directed. Typically, federal budget figures are closely held.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #845
WADA CHOOSES BELL'S CGI GROUP TO RUN BIG DATABASE FOR FOUR YEARS; CUPE 2010 TAKES JOB ACTION AGAINST WHISTLER TOMORROW; ISRAELI BOBSLED TEAM FOR 2010 A KOSHER IDEA

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) -- which is based in Montreal -- is run by a director of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Dick Pound. It will have a major presence at the 2010 Winter Olympics. It has contracted CGI Group Inc., a subsidiary of the Bell group of companies, for a four-year information-technology contract. CGI will host the infrastructure, which has a requirement for significant confidentiality, on all international and national athlete profiles worldwide on WADA's Anti-Doping Administration & Management System -- nicknamed ADAMS -- as well as to provide help-desk services to the anti-doping organizations of various nations that will be feeding the database with information on their country's athletes. Eventually, WADA expects to have more than one million people and up to 400 organizations using the system. The two executives who arranged the deal: Pierre Turcotte, senior vice-president and general manager of CGI Montreal, and David Howman, WADA's general director. CGI is a multi-national information-technology and business-process service firm; it and its affiliates employ about 25,000 people. CGI's annualized revenue run rate is currently C$3.8 billion and, as of last September, CGI's order backlog was C$13 billion. CGI's shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.SV.A) and the NYSE (GIB) and are included in the S&P/TSX Composite Index as well as the S&P/TSX Capped Information Technology and MidCap Indices. Note that the contract's term expires the year before the 2010 Games start.
The 29 members of Whistler's Canadian Union of Public Employees local, which changed its numerical designation to 2010 last year to emphasize its connection with the 2010 Winter Games, is proposing the start of job action against the Resort Municipality of Whistler tomorrow. The workers currently make between C$14.50 and C$25 an hour. Among other things, they operate the municipality's sewage and water systems, enforcing its bylaws and the like, but VANOC operations in Whistler, or planning for the Athletes Village and media centre there, while underway, is at too early a stage for the work actions to have any significant effect. The key issue, at least for the union, is cost of living bonuses in the expensive region. The last union request, for a C$4,000 COLA per worker, was rejected by the municipality, which pointed out that lots of Whistler workers who aren't in the local have the same affordability issue.
From the Bob Oy Vay Department: Will the Israeli bobsled team be the equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team for the 2010 Winter Olympics? The hearts of spectators at the Calgary Winter Olympics were captured by the incredible determination and happy-go-lucky attitude of the Jamaican bobsled team, which managed to wangle its way into competing at those Games. At the 2010 Games, it may well be the Israeli team, nicknamed "The Frozen Chosen," playing the same role. The Israeli team is currently composed of the guy who organized it, John Frank, 42, a former tight-end with the San Francisco '49ers football team who is now a plastic surgeon and who has recently acquired Israeli citizenship; Aaron Zeff, 34, also of San Francisco, who is a former U.S. fighter pilot and who is also the pilot for the sled; a former Canadian sprinter, David Greaves, 37, from Winnipeg; and Moshe Horowitz, 24, a young Israeli from Jerusalem who Zeff expects will one day replace him as pilot. Ross Dominikovich, who is the team's coach, is a former Olympic bobsledder for New Zealand living in Calgary. Before they get to 2010, though, they have to get to the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, a year from now. The field will be the top 28 sleds determined in World Cup competition in Europe and North America this year. The United States, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Canada and the Czech Republic usually qualify two sleds each for a total of 12. Ten more are determined by next highest finishers. A series of races determines the final six, which is where the Israeli team thinks it will compete with Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Britain and France.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #844
HUNDREDS OF BUSES POSSIBLE ON ROUTES INVOLVING CYPRESS MOUNTAIN VENUE, SAY TEST REPORTS

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has identified at least two major bus routes it expects could be used for spectators travelling to its Cypress Mountain venue in West Vancouver, following empty-bus tests to the mountain and back, and, a VANOC report says, during peak times in 2010, hundreds of buses could be flowing between Vancouver and the mountain.

As part of its due-diligence work connected with the venue, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding competitions will be held for up to 12,000 spectators at a time, VANOC did some tests with buses to see how they fared going up to Cypress Mountain's parking lot and back, at least to the Park Royal Shopping Mall parking lot in West Vancouver, although there's no word yet on whether the lot will be part of the bus route.

The final report of the test indicates that two shuttle bus routes, using "low floor transit equipment could serve the mountain," were available. They identified the two routes this way: "Route 1: Departing from Waterfront Station bus terminal [in downtown Vancouver] to Park Royal Shopping Centre then on to Cypress Mountain. Travel times approximately 75 minutes each way, with a round trip time of 135 minutes, which works out to 2.25 hours. Service would operate as frequently as one every minute during peak times, carrying 3,000 people per hour per direction. The route would require approximately 135 buses. Route 2: Departing from Lonsdale Quay [in North Vancouver] to Lonsdale [North Vancouver's main north-south street] and then on to Cypress Mountain. Travel times approximately 60 minutes each way with a round trip time of 120 minutes, or two hours. Service would be platooned to connect with the SeaBus, with three departures every 10 minutes carrying 1,000 people per hour per direction. The route would require approximately 40 buses."

The test buses, which were empty, made it there and back in a round-trip time of 60 minutes at an average speed of 60 kph going uphill. Buses assigned to the shuttle route, report the testers, will require retarder-brake systems for the decent; however, all new transit equipment operated by subsidiaries and contractors of TransLink, the Greater Vancouver transit authority, are apparently capable of climbing or coming down the mountain.

BACKGROUND

Here are the results of the field test, using a transit bus: Travel on the 21.5 km route from Taylor Way and Marine to the top at the Cypress lift area near the first-aid station took 24 minutes for the bus, respecting all speed limits. This, the testers say, should probably be about 30 minutes under load in ideal conditions. The bus maintained its speed of 60 km to the top and, in fact, had to back off slightly on throttle to stay at that speed. Ideal conditions aren't normally encountered on any mountain, and the bus, during the test run, did encounter fog beyond the "High-View" lookout, which is about 11 minutes from top, and visibility dropped to 40 meters in some cases.

On the way back down, the bus's retarder-system brake was activated, but it was "insufficient to hold bus back. Braking required," according to tester notes. They also did a rear-brake check half way down. According to the tester notes: "Rear hubs quite warm to the touch - no smell."

The due-diligence also included discussions with private-bus operators travelling the Cypress Road, who indicated they never chained up for two reasons: "It was too time-consuming and not all that necessary. Road maintenance crews do an excellent job of clearing the road." On the other hand, they report that the worst part of the road is just south of cross-country snow-play area, which is about three minutes from the top, with the worst part being the decent. They add, "The road can be covered hard, compact snow, and fog can be an issue."

Currently, there is a daily shuttle bus service to Cypress Mountain from Park Royal Shopping Centre, the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, Caulfeild Village in West Vancouver, and the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal.

RESOURCES

You can get a photographic tour of the Cypress Mountain road on a nice day in winter by clicking here:
http://modena.intergate.ca/personal/pl8s/BC99_CB/Hwy_1W_Cypress%20Bowl_Road_W.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #843
HOW WILL THE PROCUREMENT PROCESS WORK? LET US COUNT THE WAYS...

Here's a detailed look at how the procurement operations of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) are expected to normally work internally. Among other things, it will let you know what kind of tracking and checking is going on in the background if you're supplying goods or services, and it will also give you a heads-up when various types of documentation and contracts are offered.

The procurement system, which involves functions of the Finance Division, also covers Commitments Tracking and Contract Administration. It is just coming out of the planning stage, and so could still be modified or evolve as it hits the real world; however, there has already been some procurement experience in the past six or seven months that has been used to test and tweak the systems.

Procurement is a critical area for VANOC given the nature of hosting the 2010 Games, according to its planners. Compared with most companies, VANOC has a short and defined life cycle, and its procurement operations have to deal with and incorporate significant growth and change across distinct businesses, according to planning documents.

And you'll recall from our earlier financial system stories about VANOC, that its eight divisions are unevenly divided into 64 functions; work packages involve defined activities either within a function or which cross functions and either involve a place or a time period. The planners add that, "While the business practices relating to this area are evolving, it is expected that the basic elements of the information flows through the procurement cycle will be similar" to the following:

A budget is first prepared and approved which includes specific work authorizations at the finance department's account code level.
Functional managers will be allowed to buy goods and services for using work authorizations through a Request For Proposal process administered through the Procurement Department.
Often that will be published through B.C. Bid or the federal government's equivalent, but doesn't have to be. Planners say the RFP process will likely take various forms, depending on the magnitude or nature of the goods or services to be procured. This will include single transactions and recurring business with common suppliers.
Once the RFP process is complete, the functional department will produce a requisition form which must be approved by the appropriate spending authorities.
The requisition is compared by supervisors to the budgeted Work Authorizations to ensure the authority to purchase has been approved.
Once the requisition form has been approved, the Procurement department will generate a purchase order for the goods and services.
All approved requisitions have to be recorded or reported on a commitments log within VANOC. This captures all approved commitments in real-time by work authorization and account code. "This is to ensure that as approvals are obtained, all commitments (including actual requisitions amounts spent) are captured in comparing requisition to approved budget work authorizations," report the planners.
Depending upon the nature of the goods or services to be acquired, there will be standing purchase orders with established products and pricing.
The Procurement Department will provide the necessary contract for the supply of the services, which is then sent to the Functional Manager who initiated the purchase, with copies as necessary to others involved in the approval process.
Information relating to all contracts is captured and entered into the contract administration database, which is not expected to be in full operation until late this summer.
Any contract change orders, which involve a procurement process flow that staffers are still working on, are also expected to be updated in the contract-administration database as they are approved.
As goods are received at designated locations, a goods-received report is completed to ensure VANOC knows about the condition, quantity and nature of the goods received.
Invoices for services provided under a service contract are approved by the appropriate function managers.
Invoices for goods received are matched with the completed Goods Received Report and approved by the appropriate function managers.
As invoices are received and approved, they are entered into the VANOC's contract-administration database in real-time to track the status of the payments and services under contract.
Approved invoices are forwarded to the Finance department for payment. VANOC wants the Accounts Payable module of the General Ledger of whatever major financial system it decides this spring to use to be integrated with the commitments log and the contract-administration database so that all information is available to all of its users in real-time.

VANOC planners are still considering whether to include the following aspects of VANOC's requirements into its main financial systems, or have stand-alone processes for them:

A rate-card system
Logistics and materials planning
Its retail operations
A web-based management-reporting system for its road warriors
A procurement catalogue
A budget and forecast module
Cash flows
The Olympic Family accommodations and reservations systems
A ticket-sales system
A time-and-attendance system and its payroll / HR system
An asset tracking / inventory system for VANOC infrastructure
Its volunteer system
Its accreditation system
Its transportation system
Its information management system

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #842
VANOC REGISTERS MORE TRADEMARKS; HIRTHLER HEADS FOR DENVER; THE VANOC NAME GAME CONTINUES

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) have either registered or are in the process of registering more trademarks with the federal government's Trademarks bureau, in part to regularize its marketplace. For the first time, it's registered "Olympic" all on its own, along with the number "2010" and just "'10". The phrases "Canada 2006", "Canada '06", "Canada '08 and "Canada 2008" are also new. No word yet on why. It's also registered "Own the Podium" and "Own the Podium 2010", which are based on the name of the Canadian Olympic Committee report on how to get Canada to the 35-medal mark in 2010, and "XXI Olympic Winter Games", "X Paralympic Winter Games" and "X Paralympic Winter Games". The trademarks were advertised this month. The new marks were registered for VANOC by the Vancouver law firm, Borden Ladner Gervais. And what about the new Games logo, which is to be shown shortly to the winner of a contract to manufacture a batch of trinkets, and to be revealed in late April? "It's locked in a vault, inside a vault, with soldiers standing on guard outside," smiles VANOC CEO John Furlong.
George Hirthler, the main partner of Hirthler & Partners, a firm that bills itself as "the world's foremost Olympic Bid strategists," has been working in the communications department at VANOC headquarters in Vancouver for a while now. He was, for instance, behind the controversial logo-design competition run by VANOC last summer. But he's about to take on other responsibilities elsewhere that may ultimately see him advising a competitor to Vancouver 2010 that has indicated it will be after international high-performance winter sports events, including some which VANOC has been eyeing as test events for its venues between 2007 and 2010. Hirthler has worked as the lead communications strategist for six Olympic bids - including three winning campaigns: Atlanta, Beijing and Vancouver, and three that didn't make it: Istanbul, Turkey, summer 2000, Stockholm, Sweden, summer 2004 and Klagenfurt, Austria, winter 2006. He also consulted with New York on its pending bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Now, the Metro Sports Commission in Denver, Colorado, is hiring Hirthler to help lure international sporting events to the city. Such as, the Commission says, world figure-skating competitions. The US$50,000 to hire Hirthler is reportedly coming from a loan to the Commission from an arm of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. There's quite a corporate tree above Hirthler, by the way. SP Holdings PLC, run by Tony Simpson from London, England, and which also has one of its major offices in Lausanne, Switzerland, owns TSE Consulting SA of Switzerland, which has an American joint venture, TSE Consulting LLC that includes Atlanta, Georgia-based Hirthler & Partners and which will be run by Hirthler. TSE Consulting SA provides sports consulting to cities, governments and international sporting federations. Current clients include New York, Copenhagen and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). A couple of other tidbids: Coca-cola is an international sponsor of the International Olympic Committee's Olympic Games. It's headquarters is in Atlanta. The IOC's headquarters is in Lausanne.
From the Learn Something Who Every Day department: Yvonne Curry is the person at VANOC headquarters in Vancouver working on hotel accommodation for the 2010 Olympic family -- that's all the VIPs associated with development of the Games that don't live in Vancouver. VANOC estimates it will need about 9,000 rooms. Hotels that accept VANOC's bulk buying agreement agree to give somewhere between 60% and 80% of their room inventory to VANOC for prices based on the average room rate during the previous two years, the remainder of the room inventory is available for spectators and regulars. The rooms aren't just wanted for the two weeks of the Olympics in February 2010, or the week of Paralympics in March. They'll be required during the immediate run-up the Games as well as IOC administration and sponsor representatives, along with broadcaster staff descend on the region. Nicole Lavigne is the main HQ receptionist. We've all heard of Communications director Sam Corea, but a couple of the people who help him are Erin McInnis and Stephanie Herdman. The senior person in the Sustainability function at the moment is Tina Symco. Catherine Bachand is executive assistant to CEO John Furlong. Marnie King is the main person in charge of organizing the 2010 corporate in-house library. Mark Cutler is in charge of the 2010 Olympic village relationships with the City of Vancouver and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, who are each overseeing the actual construction with funding from VANOC. Burke Taylor is the former Vancouver cultural affairs director who is now in charge of the four-year "cultural Olympiad" which starts with Vancouver's few minutes in the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Games a year from now in Torino, Italy. During that ceremony, the Olympic flag will be passed from Torino's mayor to the mayor of Vancouver. There's no way of know if that would be the current Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell. Even if he won re-election this November, his term of office would expire in November, 2008. Cathy Priestner is, as we know, senior vice-president of Sport for VANOC, which puts her in charge of everything of the 2010 Winter Games that the athletes touch or deal with, which encompasses more than just sports itself. The director of Sport, however, is Tim Gayda. Donna Wilson is the new senior v-p of Human Resources. Ali Moorhouse works with her.

RESOURCES

Hirthler & Partners corporate profile:
http://www.hirthler.com/profile.htm

SP Holdings:
http://www.spholdings.co.uk

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 21, 2005

Friday, February 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #841
BC CONSTRUCTION COSTS SETTLE DOWN; BC APPRENTICESHIPS SETTLE UP; FURLONG MEETS HIS NEMESIS - AGAIN

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The spike in British Columbia construction costs during the middle of 2004 continues to subside, according to the economists at the BC Central Union, the clearing house for British Columbian credit unions. The big run-up in construction costs -- particularly in steel rebar and, concrete -- has been worrying planners of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), as they try to stay on budget while heading into their first major construction season. But Helmut Pastrick, BC Central's chief economist , and economist David Hobden, writing in a weekly economic briefing paper in an analysis of the apartment-construction sector, says that structural costs there, which had spiked at 10.9% in the middle of the year, slumped to a 2% rise in the last part of the year as the market corrected itself through increased supplies of rebar. They noted that during 2004, structural costs jumped a huge 17.4% from 2003, though, adding that, "The next largest increase was in the architectural-trade group, at 6.4%. Buoyant construction activity in 2005, reflected in both residential and non-residential construction, will be the main impetus for future cost increases. The demand for construction labour, as evidenced by last year’s 20% increase, will continue to rise and put upward pressure on costs. Materials cost increases are not likely to show the same gains as in 2004, with lower lumber prices in the forecast and the steel shortage subsiding. An overall increase in the 5% range is expected for 2005."
The B.C. government is patting itself on its back as it released statistics that it is pumping more people towards trades through apprenticeship training, in an effort to ease of a potential trades shortage at the time when VANOC is expected to be competing with a large number of other major projects for construction employees, between now and 2008. BC’s Industry Training Authority (ITA) reports that it is already exceeding the targets it has set for increasing participation in industry training. The number of apprentices and employers actively involved in industry training in B.C. continued to increase throughout January, extending a nine-month growth trend that began last year. As of Jan. 31, 2005, it says, there were 18,985 apprentices registered, up by 4,309 or 29% from the 14,676 registered on March 31, 2004. There are also 9,720 employers or sponsors training apprentices, up 8% over the same period. In addition to registered apprentices, the ITA estimates that there are more than 10,000 British Columbians currently enrolled in Entry Level Trades Training programs at B.C. post-secondary institutions. With these numbers included, total participation in industry training programs has increased by 17% in the 10 months since the ITA was established. Anecdotally, however, some apprentices believe the changes made in the last year by the government in an effort to increase trades training are still somewhat chaotic as the system reorganizes.
During his tour into the interior of British Columbia last week, VANOC CEO John Furlong did his first major speech to about 650 senior students and teachers in the gym at Columneetza Secondary School, in Williams Lake, a city south of Prince George. There wasn't anything unusual about the speech -- Furlong's inspirational speeches are well known in Vancouver. But this was not the first time Furlong has been to Columneetza. He said he had been to the school a few times in the distant past, when he was a teacher and school coach in Prince George, and, he said, teams he coached travelled to Columneetza to compete. His recollection, he said, was that his team didn't always do well.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #840
OLYMPIC SPORTS TALENT SEARCH TO TOUR B.C. IN MARCH

A number of Olympic, sports and government-related agencies are funding a search for blossoming Olympic sport talent in British Columbia during a six-city tour over three weeks in March, but it will be up to B.C. sports organizations whether those assessed will be considered 2010 Games material. The "Playground to Podium: Sport Talent Search" will be led by representatives of PacificSport and 2010 LegaciesNow, and will be looking for young athletes, according to organizers, "who may have potential to excel in Olympic and Paralympic winter sports." Wendy Pattenden, president and CEO of PacificSport Vancouver says, "

The Sport Talent Search allows us to go out and identify young active British Columbians who may unknowingly already have the skills-set essential to success in winter sport." She says the organizations will be working "to ensure a strong representation of B.C. athletes on national teams.

" The Sport Talent Search is to test athletes between the ages of 16 and 23, depending on the sport, using a number of physical fitness measurements and trials to discover if they have potential talent for bobsleigh (age 20+), freestyle aerials skiing (16+), skeleton (20+), alpine snowboard (16+) and speed-skating, both short- and long-track (16+). It won't matter, say organizers, if the potential athletes have winter sport experience or not. The sessions are expected to last all day, depending on turnout.
 Information will also be available for for people interested in luge as well as Paralympic disciplines, although there aren't aren't currently any testing programs available for either luge or the Paralympic winter sports.
 Marion Lay, president and CEO, 2010 LegaciesNow, says the program "will give these youth the opportunity to realize their skills and talents in sports they may never have considered participating in."
 The tour will stop in Burnaby (March 19), Kamloops (March 24), Kelowna (March 23), Nanaimo (March 13), Nelson (March 21) and Prince George (March 30), with marketing beforehand to invite young athletes from all sport disciplines to participate, including those from summer sports like gymnastics, dance, diving and cycling.

The names of the identified athletes will then be sent to the appropriate provincial sport organization for follow-up. John Les, the provincial government minister of Small Business and Economic Development, which is helping to fund the trip through various channels, says, _We have a lot of young talent in our province and this tour gives our youth the chance to discover new skills and opportunities they may never have imagined."
 Only those youngsters who are physically fit and have medical clearance from their family doctor for the necessary exertions, can take part. Organizers say they will be assessed by age, height, weight, then tested on vertical jumps using mats, doing push-ups to a rhythm set by a metronome, the number of box jumps they can do in 30 seconds, the time it takes them to do a 30-metre sprint and what's known as a beep test -- a 20 metre shuffle.
 PacificSport was founded by theˇ¸Canadian Olympic Committee, the Coaching Association of Canada, the Commonwealth Games Association of Canada, Sport Canada and the B.C. provincial government's Sport and Physical Branch. 
RESOURCES

Nicole Miller
PacificSport Team Leader
Playground to Podium: Sport Talent Search
Phone: 604.730.7271
mailto:NMiller@PacificSport.com
http://www.PacificSport.com

2010 LegaciesNow
http://www.2010LegaciesNow.com

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #839
FINANCIAL SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS YEAR REVEAL MORE OF VANOC'S ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is expected to issue a Request for Proposals for procuring and implementing its major financial and accounting system in the latter half of April, probably around the 22nd. The process for doing that has lifted the veil on more parts of how VANOC is to be structured.

VANOC is currently using a range of off-the-shelf financial tools because of the way the organization evolved from the Bid corporation, and because it hasn't yet outgrown such tools, but that situation won't be lasting much longer, according to VANOC procurement chief Jim Bornholdt. VANOC will soon require a major system that will support its core financial requirements. These include budgeting, forecasting, procurement, contract administration, inventory management, logistics, material planning and other lesser aspects.

By the end of VANOC's 2007 fiscal year (which ends July 31 each year), it's expected to have spent roughly C$75 million during the year, but by the end of the following year, it expect it will have spent roughly C$175 million. During fiscal 2009, it expect to have spent about C$400 million, and during the final major operational year -- in which it will be constructing Olympic overlays on all of its venues, building up inventories and supplies, paying more than 1,200 employees, outfitting and supporting more than 25,000 volunteers and actually holding the Games -- it expects to be spending just over C$500 million. During its final wrap-up year following the March 2010 Paralympics, the number of staff are expected to drop to about 50 within a few months.

In addition, VANOC will have to report its financial situation to a wide range of organizations, such as the International Olympic Committee and the British Columbia government. And it will also have to deal with most of the major divisions and functional areas within VANOC. The new system will have to deal with this logarithmic growth and corresponding demands for financial and related information. As Bornholdt puts it, "The current systems will not support VANOC's growth through the project."

Bornholdt reports VANOC is now in the process of selecting a consultant to help it prepare the RFP and, to protect the independence of that process, the firm that gets the consulting job won't be able to respond to the RFP.

VANOC's already done some research work on what it can expect in terms of financial organization and requirements. During the past year, it's had a number of conversations and attended debrief presentations from officials running the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, and from staffers at the International Olympic Committee, and through information gleaned from the IOC's formal Transfer of Knowledge program. It's also had a first-hand look at systems used by the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.

In some ways, the financial-system requirements of VANOC are unique. It doesn't have the luxury of time to create a legacy system -- the organization isn't going to be around by the end of 2011 -- and there will essentially only be about three or four months to implement it this year. In addition, staff will be flooding in, and there won't be much time to train them how to use it, either for data input or for reporting, so one of the main requirements is ease of use and, so there won't be duplication, centralization.

During the life of the Games, VANOC will produce at least three major and specific budgets that go beyond annual budgets prepared for cash-flow reasons. VANOC's first budget is nearly finished now and is due to be delivered in April. It will show budgets by VANOC's eight major divisions, by its major functional areas and by what VANOC calls "work packages," which are distinct activities within a function, but it will not be detailed enough to take it to the work-authorization or account-code levels. This budget will be VANOC's first major look at the cost of the Games and the run-up to them since the 2002 budget it prepared for its Bid, and it will have to be approved by VANOC's board of directors, the federal and provincial governments and by the International Olympic Committee.

The second major budget will be prepared -- and go through a similar approval process -- about a year later, in June 2006. By that point, VANOC will have received a full debrief of the financial situation of the 2006 Winter Games in Italy from TOROC, it's equivalent in Italy, and it will have received and assessed tenders for at least the first part of the major construction work associated with the big venues it intends to build -- the Whistler Nordic Centre and the Whistler Sliding Centre. In addition, it will probably have a much better idea of its share of the IOC's major revenue stream, from broadcasting, for the Games, and this budget is expected to go down to the work-authorization or account-code levels.

The final major operational budget will be prepared about one year out from the Games, and will probably be ready about December, 2008. That's the big one, and by that point VANOC should have good estimates of all its expenditures and revenues. When TOROC prepared its version and presented it last fall, there was a significant shortfall projected and the head of TOROC nearly resigned after the Italian government agreed with the International Olympic Committee that it would cover the shortfall in various ways and that those Games have a new overseer appointed by the IOC.

BACKGROUND

Software currently being used by VANOC for its financial systems: Simply Accounting, Microsoft Excel, Ceridien (for payroll, personal-property inventories, HR benefits and administration) and FRX Forecaster (for budgeting and forecasts).
The major functional areas of VANOC the accounting system will deal with, in addition to smaller such areas: Administration, Accommodations, Communications, Culture & Ceremonies, Finance, Games Management, Games Services, Host Broadcasting & Media Services, Human Resources, Inclusivity, Legal, Licensing & Merchandising, Look Of The Games & Creative Services, Marketing & Sales, Media Relations, Procurement & Logistics, Sponsorship Sales & Service, Sport, Sustainability, Technology Services, Ticketing, Transportation, VANOC Relationships, Venues and Workforce. Each of these functions has a distinctive operating department with a senior manager responsible for the area's budget and financial accountability.
The current schedule for the financial systems RFP process: Distribution of the RFP: April 22 with a May 6 deadline: evaluation and interviews with the proponents until May 20 and selection by May 27. The installation and implementation of the software, and training staff to use it, is expected to take place during the following six months to coincide with the end of the current fiscal year's accounting and annual report cycle.
What financial reporting is VANOC doing -- and what will it be doing? It's required to supply quarterly unaudited financial statements and annual audited statements to its bankers, the B.C. Government, the Canadian Government, the City of Vancouver, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee. Internally, it provides monthly financial reports to its Board of Directors and reports are provided monthly to CEO John Furlong and his eight senior vice-presidents. They get reports on the overall financial health of the organization, as well as the financials for their sections. And reports are provided monthly to all of the functional-area managers on the status of their areas of responsibility. They also are expected to have access to real-time views once the new system is in place.
How is VANOC structured, from an accounting point of view? Eight divisions report to the CEO. Sixty-four functional areas are divided among those divisions. Work packages are distinct activities within a function. Work authorizations are budgets within a work package, which involve specific budget allocations according to the scope of the work over either a type of activity or time. The Work Authorizations are divided into Account Descriptions (VANOC says these might be Travel, Contractors, Entertainment and the like). The Account Descriptions are broken down into General Ledger account codes.
There is another organization method that VANOC has set up, called Activity Groups, which are teams that operate across functional-area lines. Not only do budgets have to take their work into account, but so do value-in-kind donation accounting, because these kinds of transactions often cross functional-area lines, and VANOC will also have to track VIK donations by contractor or vendor. VANOC's planning staffers are now working on how Activity Groups will work. Another major cross-function system is Human Resources.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #838
TORINO COINS TO BE LAUNCHED IN STAGES; SUCCESSFUL AUSSIE COMMUNITY ESCHEWED OLYMPIC TOURISM; LEUDERS SAYS SUCCESS, ADVANTAGE DOESN'T EQUAL MEDALS

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

Here are a couple of marketing-oriented things now being done in preparation for the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, which are due to be held next February. The Italian Mint, under an agreement with the 2006 Olympic Organizing Committee, TOROC, has produced a series of 11 gold and silver commemorative coins, introducing them in a two-hour program at the World Money Fair in Basel, Switzerland. The introduction garnered wide-spread publicity in Europe, and in numismatic circles around the world. The coins are to be issued in stages through four different releases starting next month, starting with the least expensive and ramping up in price, to capitalize on public collection interest as the start of the Games nears. Coins range in nominal value from e5 to e50 (about C$8 to C$80). TOROC's official pictograms -- symbols of various winter sports at the Games -- which are being used in a number of different marketing ways, from signage to magazine articles, are reproduced on the less expensive silver coins in the series, while some prominent monuments of Torino and its territory are on the gold coins. The last coins, the most expensive gold ones, are scheduled to be issued in January will depict the Torch Relay logo. The Italian mint is selling them through its own outlets and over its own website, and Samlerhuset Group B.V., a multi-national Dutch-based company known for its jewelry, watch and coin sales, has been contracted to sell them outside of Italy. Commemorative coins have been a feature of every Olympics since the Helsinki Games of 1952. Meanwhile, the second phase of ticket sales for the individual Torino Games is underway. This main phase of sales -- the first phase took place last year over several months leading up to Christmas -- is expected to last until November, while tickets remain. Any residual tickets will then be sold in phase three, which will run from December until the day of a competition. The sales are through TOROC's call centre, over its website, and in Europe at the 3,000 branches of TOROC's financial services partner, Sanpaolo Bank, and through 400 sales locations of the TicketOne network.
Graeme Hicks of Albury-Wodonga, Australia, which was an area that was seen as one of the most successful in creating its own lasting Olympic opportunities when Sydney, Australia hosted the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, has been touring British Columbia as part of a speaker series hosted by 2010 LegaciesNow, the organization working with both the 2010 Winter Games and the B.C. Government. Among other things, he said his area spent little on tourism promotion --figuring that athletes don't have time to tour a place when they are training -- and instead focused on specific sports. It created a pre-Games training manual, a video and a sports planner for the sports. They sent these tailored packages to other countries to get them thinking about the area, a six-hour drive from Sydney, for training. The area got a lot of response: 317 Olympic athletes showed up to do training, including the Ukranians. The beat goes on: the Aussie communities hosted another 130 deaf Olympic athletes from the Ukraine who came later to train for three weeks.
Pierre Leuders, one of the bright lights in Canadian bobsledding, is suggesting that the Canadian Olympic Committee and others who are heavily focused on implementing the multi-million dollar "Own the Podium" program, designed, at least in part, to help Canada win 35 medals at the 2010 Winter Games, should stop thinking the program and home-field advantage, a favourite theme of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, makes such predications a sure thing. "They're not the ones who have to do it," he told Edmonton Sun sports columnist Terry Jones yesterday. "They take a look and say 'There's a Canadian who is doing well. Let's put him down for two. I've never said I'm going to win two medals at the Olympics," Leuders told Jones. And, he's quoted as adding, "I don't think there's a home track advantage. In fact, we have to be careful we don't think we can fall down the hill and do well. When you've had so many repetitions on the same track you can get into bad habits. That's something we have to be very aware of and work extra hard on... All the guys here are excellent drivers and very track-wise."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 18, 2005

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #837
CYPRESS MOUNTAIN VENUE TO UNDERGO FEDERAL, PROVINCIAL ENVIROMENTAL REVIEWS THIS SPRING

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) Cypress Mountain venue will need to undergo both a federal and provincial environmental review before it can be upgraded for the freestyle skiing and snowboarding competitions and test events. And that's in addition to the studies VANOC has already done on the mountain.

VANOC estimates it will cost about C$10.9 million to renovate the existing ski facilities and terrain and build some permanent facilities, but that doesn't include the cost of erecting the temporary Olympic overlays required for the 2010 Games. Design is expected to be finished by the end of July, which is a month late according to planning schedules prepared last fall, but site-preparation work will be tendered this May so work can begin on time in June or early July, with the main construction awards to be done by July so construction to start this August. The work will be finished in seasonal stages, like other alpine venues, by November of 2007, so Canadian athletes can use the facilities for training, and test events can be held for at least two and possibly three winter seasons before the Games. Olympic overlay work is expected to start in the summer of 2009. The adjustment in scheduling is evidence there's an organizational improvement as senior Venues vice-president Steve Matheson gets the workload under control from late last year, when it was estimated that a number of the venue-construction projects and other aspects of VANOC were running between four and six months behind schedule.

The two environmental processes that must proceed all this, besides being relatively expensive and time-consuming, could conceivably bring the use of the venue by VANOC to a halt, although this is not considered likely. However, the requirement is in part driven because the current facilities, which are commercial, and the new venue areas, are located in a provincial park, and there is a previously approved ski area master plan into which the 2010 work must fit.

The proposed venues will use the existing terrain of Cypress Mountain's ski area -- which are technically Black Mountain and a base area -- and there will be limited permanent change to Cypress as a result of VANOC's plans, according to VANOC documentation. The Olympic facilities required by the Games will mostly be temporary, and most of it will be removed in 2010, following the Games. As well, the access road, sewage system and existing ski facilities of the mountain, in West Vancouver, within sight of the downtown Vancouver itself, are also expected to be sufficient to handle Games traffic -- which is forecast to be the equivalent of a normal busy weekend -- and so they won't be upgraded.

But because of the planning requirements, the nature of the overlay facilities, the Games operations and the legacy of the projects that remain after the Games, and the fact that federal money is being spent on the venues, all combine to trigger the two reviews. Although most changes will be temporary, there will be some permanent infrastructure work. This includes a new base lodge, re-grading the parallel giant slalom course, new in-ground half-pipe facilities, better lighting, a full snowmaking system as well as the reservoir for it, and a new freestyle site for the aerials and moguls. As well, some forest areas will also have to be cut, including some old-growth forest, which is an environmentally sensitive topic in British Columbia. In addition there will be some start-finish buildings, a guest-services building, a warm-up area for the athletes, and some weather projection construction.

The B.C. Parks and the British Columbia government's Ministry of Water, Lands and Parks confirm that Cypress Mountain, which has already undergone a Stage 1 preliminary review, will have to go to a Stage 2 review. And the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act will also apply, although Heritage Canada, which will be the lead federal government agency in the matter, says their system will only require a so-called screening review, which is basically a documentation of any environmental affects and mitigation or compensatory efforts by VANOC.

VANOC says it expects to hire an environmental consultant in March -- the RFPs are out now -- to help the organization walk though the environmental assessment process, and provide it with information about whether there are any concerns that will affect the design of facilities. VANOC's schedule calls for the environmental assessment work to be done by June, so licenses can be issued and the construction can start on time.

BACKGROUND

Work that VANOC has already spent part of the budget for the venue on environmental surveys involving Cypress Mountain's venue areas: preliminary geophysical, hydrological, atmospheric and biological surveys, as well as fisheries surveys on Cypress Creek, a study of a rare type of forest bird -- the spotted owl -- that's native to the area, and a transportation review. The park area also underwent a separate biophysical impact assessment study, and a study of what would happen if Cypress Creek's water flow was diverted to a reservoir, yet to be built, for use by snowmaking machines. The assessment included the impact on water tables of the new ski terrain, snowmaking and the renovations required for the existing terrain, as well as changes to the base parking and facilities there.
The companies that have been involved in the preliminary environmental studies include: Enkon of Victoria, British Columbia, and McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. with Thurber Engineering, both of Vancouver.
Work to be done as part of the Stage 2 review: a bird-breeding survey for raptors, a planting plan and vegetation mapping for the snowmaking reservoir and its attendant water systems, a rare-plant survey, a regular-plant survey and a tree survey -- which has to be conducted by a certified arbourist -- to ensure there are no wind-throws along the lift lines. Also to be done: avoidance-mitigation-minimization planning, sediment and erosion-control plans, and environmental monitoring plan for during and after the Games, and a re-planting and re-vegetation plan for after the Games. The federal plans also call for the possibility of accident-and-malfunction planning, and potential health impacts by air or water or noise on employees and the possibility of long-term effects studies.
There will be quite an assembly of bureaucracies overseeing the environmental assessment work. Besides BC Parks and the provincial government Water/Land ministry and Heritage Canada (which is the vehicle through which federal funding for VANOC's work comes), there will also be Environment Canada, the District Municipality of West Vancouver and the organization that operates the ski facilities now, Cypress Mountain Ltd.
Cypress Mountain is a group name for two adjacent mountains: Mt. Strachan and Mt. Black. The vertical rise is 470 metres, with 1,450 metres on Mt. Strachan and 1,220 metres on Mt. Black, with the base facilities at the 980-metre mark.
The proposed 550-metre giant slalom and its 18-degree slope will require some new groundwork, and the new half-pipe are going to be located on an existing run at the base of Mt. Black in front of the new base lodge. The half-pipe venue, which is also new, will have lighting so it can be used for night events, and is expected to be between 4.5 and 4.7 metres tall, 150 metres long, about 17 metres wide, and sloped about 16 or 17 degrees. The moguls and aerials, which will be near the snowboarding competition section, will be next to the existing parking area -- some secondary-growth forest that's there now will have to be removed. The moguls course will be 250 metres long, 40 metres wide and a 27% slope on average. It's wide enough so that it can run dual-mogul events during world-cup events. An aerial jump hill will be built for the freestyle events, and a tunnel will be built through the table area, which is part of the facility, for access to both sides of the run. The freestyle area will also require a new fixed-grip quad chair that can carry up to 2,400 people per hour at five metres per second and which will have unloading areas at mid-stations for the moguls and aerials.
The Olympic overlay set-up will include temporary seating for about 7,000 people, plus standing room, and a venue capacity of about 12,000. There will also be tents constructed for volunteers, athletes, along with compounds for broadcast facilities and the media, spectator services and the parking areas for officials. The preliminary work on this aspect of the design for the venue was done in late 2003 and early 2004 by a team of consultants, and that information will be factored into the detailed design work done this spring.
After the facilities are decommissioned -- in the summer and fall of 2010 -- the sections that remain will be used to host World Cup, CanAm and international skiing federation events, and for training.
VANOC has 64 functional areas spread among eight operation divisions -- this organizational structure has been developed over the past year and will be important as the organization implements its plans. In some cases, these operate as distinct departments, such as Logistics; in other cases, they identify physical spaces, such as seating and entrances. At Cypress, there will be 29 functional areas, including and, and about 300 sub-functions. The 29 functional areas, in alphabetical order, include:

Accreditation
Awards Ceremonies
Broadcast Operations
Catering
Cleaning & Waste Management
Doping Control
Entrances - Pedestrian
Event Management
Event Services
Logistics
Look of the Games
Medical Services
Merchandise
Olympic Family Services
Press Operations
Seating
Security
Sponsor Services
Sport Operations - Competition Management
Sport Operations - Field of Play
Sport Operations - International Federations
Sport Operations - Sport Presentation
Technology - Operations
Technology - Telecommunications and Information Services
Technology - Timing and Scoring
Ticketing
Transportation
Venue Development
Workforce

RESOURCES

Enkon:
http://www.enkon.com/

McElhanney Environmental:
http://www.mcelhanney.com/corporate/corp_mcsl.html

Thurber Engineering:
http://www.thurber.ca/

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 17, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #836
NEW SPEED-SKATING OVAL FOR FORT ST. JOHN?; CASTLEGAR CONSIDERS TURNING SCHOOL TO SPORTS; NANAIMO HOSTS SPORTFEST 2005 TO MARK 2010

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

Vancouver Sun newspaper reporter Jeff Lee says he has made the surprising discovery that the British Columbia government is thinking about spending C$29 million to build a speed-skating oval in Fort St. John in a facility, which would also be a designated training site for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and which will also include two hockey rinks. If true, Lee notes that "it would be the second permanent speed-skating facility in Canada; the other is the Olympic oval in Calgary." Lee said he also spoke with Fort St. John Mayor Steve Thorlakson, who told him "the project has been getting favourable reviews from the province." Lee says the funding is part of a C$200 million fund included in the budget estimates of the Ministry of Small Business & Economic Development; the budget was tabled on Tuesday. The documents flagged C$50 million of the fund for "regional sports facilities" and C$150 million is "set aside for future economic development initiatives."
Officials of the city of Castlegar, in the Kootenay area of eastern British Columbia, and the town's Spirit of BC Community Committee toured Kinnaird Middle School in the town as they mulled over an idea from John Ritchie of the Stanley Humphries Hockey Academy about whether the school, which is to be closed, might be packaged for upgrading to a sports-training facility. The idea would be to pitch the project to take advantage of the B.C. government's 2010 Legacy funds. But there's quite a bit of information gathering yet to be done, not the least of which is whether the project could be made to work commercially, and whether the local school district, which needs capital funds, would be willing to sell the property.
Nanaimo will be hosting SportFest 2005 this Saturday to celebrate the five-year-out mark to the 2010 Winter Olympics. It's a community-based initiative in the city on eastern Vancouver Island, directly across Georgia Strait from Vancouver. The Team Nanaimo Spirit of B.C. Community Committee is doing the organiztion of the event. It features a number of different opportunities to try out various winter sports. Participants can take part in curling, see if they have the hardest slap shot in town, play a road hockey game and a local firm, PacificSport, will be providing luge and cross-country ski events.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 17, 2005

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #835
2012 IOC EVALUATION COMMISSION HAS 2010 CONNECTIONS; 14-YEAR-OLD EYES 2010 GAMES; CTV BRIEFS CEO

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

Almost half of the International Olympic Committee’s 13-member evaluation commission that's doing the major techncial review of the bids by five major cities shortlisted to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games have a connection to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. The five are: Philippe Bovy, the IOC’s transport advisor who was on the evaluation team for the 2010 Games. He's a professor of transport at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne; Gilbert Felli is the Olympic Games executive director and one of the top executives in the movement. From Switzerland, the former professional skier, a qualified ice hockey coach and architect. On February 11, following his latest trip to Vancouver with IOC president Jacques Rogge, reported to the IOC's Executive Board on the development of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), as well as on the Canadian Olympic Committee’s “Own the Podium” program for athletes in the lead-up to the Vancouver Games. Paul Henderson, one of VANOC's directors, is from Canada, he has been an IOC member since 2000, been a contestant in summer Olympics since 1980 and is president of the International Sailing Federation; Patrick Jarvis: A leading Paralympian, also from Canada, who moved into sports administration after taking part in the 1992 Paralympics. He was a leading light in Vancouver’s successful bid for the 2010 Winter Games, and he was Canada’s chef de mission at the 1998 Nagano Paralympic Winter Games; and, José Luis Marco is an Argentinian lawyer who sits on the International Ski Federation, he has worked on evaluation commissions for the IOC for the 2010 Games.
The Canadian Olympic Committee is campaigning hard for government funding of its "Own the Podium" program, part of which suggests encouraging athletes from other sports to get involved in high-performance winter sports so Canada can win medals, an idea that worked pretty well for the Australians in the run-up to the 2000 Summer Olympics. But no matter how much money Canadian governments commit to the OTP program, it's not going to have any effect on Chloe Dauwalder, a 14-year old gymnast turned ski jumper who is in Grade 9 at Timberline Middle School in north Utah. She captured gold medals in the Utah Winter Games women's divisions of the Slopestyle and Aerials events Jan. 30 at the Utah Olympic Park in Park City. She told the Daily Herald, a Provo, Utah, newspaper, today that she dreams of competing in the Olympics but will be two years under the minimum age limit to compete in the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy, next February. So she instead has set her sights on going to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
VANOC's CEO, John Furlong, and other senior executives have now been personally briefed in Vancouver on the Bell/Rogers broadcasting bid, awarded last week by the International Olympic Committee. The briefing information was similar to the details we provided in our item 'Details outlined of Bell / Rogers Canadian broadcasting commitment for 2010' [Morgan:News:2010:Number:825; Published on Friday, February 11, 2005]

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 16, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #834
PART 4 OF THE 4-PART SERIES "60,000 MILESTONES" - THE ROAD TO ELDORADO

This is the fourth and final part of a detailed look inside the planning process of the 2010 Winter Olympics, an overview of the planning process, and an outline of the distinct organization and life-cycle of the 2010 Games in Vancouver. It's based on comments by Marti Kulich, the director of Project Management for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).

VANOC's project-management department manages the benchmarks of most of what the organization will do over the years from now throughout the lead-up to the Games, during the Games themselves, until it begins to decommission the Games in the latter part of 2010, and as it either turns over or returns the venues to those organizations that will be responsible for them after VANOC winds up. "The current master plan has about 60,000 milestones during the course [before, during and after] the Games," he says. "We look at the plan, the actuals, and the corrective action that needs to be taken if there's a deviation, and we report that back to senior management."

In this part of our series, Kulich talks about the road map VANOC is using to get to the Games - what Kulich calls "The Road to Eldorado" -- as he puts it, "The journey takes quite a while. it takes planning. You don't get there by taking short cuts. There are none."

Kulich also says there are a lot of ways for businesses to take advantage of the Games, particularly if they know how it's planned and organized. "There are a whole bunch of different ways to skin this cat. There are a whole bunch of angles. There are many, many avenues for [business] to get at that ring and grab it. I can't tell you how, but lots of companies have done it in other Games. In most cases, they won't tell me. It's their trade secret. Fair game. .. But you're creative people and it's your responsibility to figure out how it's going to be done. I'll give you an example. Kootenay Knitting. Their people did something very smart. They didn't have the contract to produce any clothing for Olympic Games, or any of the Canadian team clothing. Instead, they went to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and got to the two main on-air hosts and got them to wear black-red-white-knit cardigans and sweaters. Kootenay Knitting's sales went up 100% almost immediately. They had to put a whole second shift on to match the demand. They got world-wide exposure because they were able to get their product on the air during the Games."

Kulich says that planning now for delivering the games is serious business for VANOC. "If we don't set ourselves up properly now, then we'll pay the price down the road." He says VANOC has decided to use the functional-planning model [Morgan:News:2010 will be reporting more about this in future stories]. Using this model, VANOC identified about 60 functions -- described as to goal, scope and responsibility in two or three pages for each at VANOC headquarters. These are grouped under eight divisions, and the organization will work on all of them during the remaining five years. Every function is responsible for integrating its own cost and operations into the organization. "What we're trying to ensure in this early stage is that the cross-function teams will work together, so that everybody is singing from the same song sheet. We're in the 2005-06 part of our plan. We're just in the early stages of this project. While we have some requirements now, for things that have be started now or done now, we don't want to be in the position of trying to figure all this out later or as we go; we won't have the luxury of time to do that."

As those functions were determined, strategic planning was done for using each function to deliver the Games overall, and then roles were worked out for who would deal with the functions and what expertise they would need. Kulich says questions were asked during the planning stages for each function, "Who, internally, and who, externally, will be a part of it? How is it budgeted? Do we have revenue applications as part of it? Can we sponsor part of it? Is there VIK -- value-in-kind -- required of the sponsors, that is, maybe the sponsor doesn't contribute money, maybe it, for example, contributes building materials, which offsets the cost of the Games? What are the opportunities involved in that?"

Kulch says once the strategic planning was done by function, VANOC then began operational planning. That's when operational questions were asked: "How do we achieve, develop, plan and operate a venue? Who's involved? Who makes the calls? Where do responsibilities start and end? Who is in control of it in-house? Who's involved in the security? How will those parts go together? How will transportation affect it? What about other functions?"

As well, he says, separate planning was done for each venue which was separated into two basic types: sporting -- known as a "comp" venue, or competition venue -- or "non-comp", which is a support venue. "There are tons of non-comps. There's the host-broadcaster venue, our main press centre, the UDAC -- the Uniform Distribution and Accreditation Centre, the athlete villages, the ceremonies venues, there are transportation hubs we have to set up, the list goes on and on and on. These are venues we have to support, and we have to provide services to, but they're not part of the competition side. They're what we call 'back of house", but they're significant to us. If the competitions are the tip of the iceberg, it's the non-comps that are supporting the whole structure, and these are as big, or bigger, in complexity that the things you'll see on television."

Kulich says virtually all of the Games development is up to VANOC because the IOC agreements only require a handful of specific things. "There are a number of things we are required by the International Olympic Committee to do to develop the Games in their stages. We're required to take part in the closing ceremonies in [the Italian 2006 Winter Olympics] in Torino. We're required to create a new emblem in a competition we held across Canada. We have things we have to deliver on the marketing side and the communications side, and we have to build or arrange for all the venues that are required by the Games, but by and large in these early years, our focus has to be on planning and then 'venuization'.

Venuization? "That's the process of taking over a venue, where we actually have to start delivering something. Many of the venues will be controlled by us through others. For example, the speed-skating oval venue will be controlled to a large part through 2010 after it's built. Same with [the venues in] the Callaghan Valley and the bob-luge track. We have to impose on them, we have to make them our own, through a process we call venuization."

VANOC, Kulich says, will also have to hold test events, and Torino's Winter Games are just finishing up most of them this season. "In Vancouver, the test events will start in earnest during the winter of 2007/2008, when most of the key venues will be completed, but work is being done now to get ready for the World Junior Hockey Championships in December in Vancouver, where the ice is being expanded to international standards and new seating it be in place for it.

As for other test events, Kulich says, "These will be most times, but not always, some kind of world-class events. Like the world championships of figure-skating, or a key downhill skiing race, a snowboard event, like the kind of world snowboard championships we had in January. Those we have to hold in advance. And that's when we'll really start to ramp up, in terms of our delivery. If you can picture a graph, we'll start out really slow and then move upward rapidly in the last two years in our deliverables. Once we've begun holding test events, that'll tell us how well our plans worked. The national [sports] federations will tell us. Each one of them will be involved in a test event, and they'll tell us, 'This worked, this didn't, the volunteers did this, they didn't do that.' Everything will be tested; all of the systems all the way down to the scoring you see on the television screens."

Kulich says the information distribution will be a good example of the kind of testing going on. "When you have thousands and thousands of pieces of information, on scoring, for instance, and everybody wants to see the results right away, we have to be all over the place electronically, and then get the information out all over the world. We'll be asking, during the test events, how that scoring did; did we do a good job? The test events will position us for the final runs, the final tweaking, for the actual delivery of the Games. All of this massive work is designed to get us to the point where we can deliver the Games. It's kind of like staging a play. We're going to be spending years rehearsing because we've got one shot, one chance, one window of time to get it right. Everything comes down to that moment of delivery."

Kulich puts all of this planning and developmental work in perspective: "We're doing all this for 17 days of the Olympics, and 15 days of the Paralympics and two weeks in between. That's all."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 16, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #833
AMERICAN CONSTRUCTION FIRMS EYE 2010 VENUES AND RELATED WORK

Next month, Lynwood, a city in Snohomish County, an area of Washington State just south of Greater Vancouver, will host a Construction Business Opportunities Breakfast Conference to give regional U.S. construction companies a better idea of the available projects and the bidding process for work in Vancouver, including the 2010 Winter Games venues.

Tania Fernandez de Castro, an international-trade specialist for the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development told Seattle Times reporter Judy Chia Hui Hsu that British Columbian construction firms need U.S. help to work on all the construction in the Greater Vancouver area the 2010 Games is either funding, driving or catalyzing: "When it comes to building infrastructure projects, from labor to actual materials, they will not be able to build it on their own."

Seattle-based LMN Architects, which will send a speaker to the Lynnwood conference, is designing the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre expansion on Vancouver's downtown waterfront, which is to become the International Broadcast and Media Centre for the Games. LMN was working on the design for the expansion when B.C. won the bid to host the 2010 Games. The firm is working with Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership and Downs Archambault & Partners, two Vancouver firms.

Conference organizers hope that's the kind of partnership and contractual connections that American firms will hear more about during the event. So far, they say, about 20 companies, including firms from Idaho and Oregon, have signed up for next month's conference in Lynnwood.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) organizers expect to be tendering the Whistler Sliding Centre and the Whistler Nordic Centre this spring, with several other venue jobs to get to the construction stage later this year.

BACKGROUND

Construction Business Opportunities Breakfast Conference
Time: 7:30 am to noon
Location: Embassy Suites Hotel, 20610 44th Ave. W., Lynnwood
Fee: US$50

RESOURCES

Information and registration: 425.921.3423
http://www.worksourceonline.com

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 16, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #832
PATTISON JOINS 2010'S CANADIAN TELCO-BROADCASTER BOARD; INTERNET WEBCAST ON 2010 OPPORTUNITES TOMORROW; BC'S FITNESS-LEVEL GOALS SORTED OUT

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

Jim Pattison of Vancouver, one of Canada's most successful businesspeople and the former chairman of Expo 86, an international trade fair in Vancouver in 1986, has joined the board of directors of BCE, Inc, the company that is sponsoring the telecommunications and broadcasting the 2010 Winter Games. Pattison, who is also CEO of the conglomerate Jim Pattison Group, Canada's third-largest privately owned company, will also be a director of Bell Canada and Telesat Canada. The Pattison group has assets of C$3.4 billion, sales of C$5.5 billion per year and 26,000 employees.
Maxine and Marvin Turner, owners of Cuisine Unlimited in Salt Lake City, Utah, are the keynote speakers in a live Internet webcast presented by British Columbia's 2010 LegaciesNow organization. The webcast is scheduled for tomorrow at 7:30 am Pacific time. They'll be talking about the experiences and insights they gained from being involved with three Olympic and Paralympic Games: 1996 Summer Atlanta, 2002 Winter Salt Lake City and 2004 Summer Athens. As the caterer for USA House in the recent 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, they and their staff of 40 prepared more than 1,200 meals during the games. The webcast is part of a province-wide tour by 2010 LegaciesNow with several international speakers who have Olympics experience, and the Turners are expected to talk about some of the opportunities that exist for B.C. businesses and communities about how to get local produce, wine and seafood products in front of an Olympic crowd. “We used our food business to get into the Games, but the opportunities don’t stop there,” Maxine Turner said at one point. “The key to success is to start small and build your reputation – success will come from that.” The Turners will be travelling to Vancouver, Abbotsford and Powell River, all in B.C., as part of the tour.
Premier Gordon Campbell said on Monday that B.C. would be aiming for an increase of 20 percentage points in the fitness level of British Columbians between now and 2010 as one of his government's goals in leveraging interest in the 2010 Winter Olympics. But budget support documents released yesterday talked about a 10 percentage point goal in planning by the B.C. ministry responsible for the government's Olympic Secretariat. Rena Kendall-Craden, a Ministry spokesman, says the premier's target is the government's target. "The 10% target identified in the 2005-08 service plan reflects the national target that federal, provincial and territorial Sport Ministers set in February 2003 at their annual sport minister's conference... In BC, building on the momentum of the 2010 Games, the Premier has set a specific target for this province: 20%. [Provincial Finance minister Colin] Hansen... announced that 2010 LegaciesNow will implement a number of health and physical activity-related programs to help ensure British Columbians reach the goal.

BACKGROUND

Here are the main current and new programs that have increased their resources in the B.C. budget associated with the 20% goal:

The Physical Fitness and Amateur Fund was doubled from C$22 million to C$44 million; that was part of the increase in the core budget for sport, from the additional accrued interest.
Monday's announcement of an additional C$15 million to the 2010 LegaciesNow Society to develop opportunities to participate and excel in sport, ranging from participatory to elite levels
Olympic Live Sites funding of C$20 million in capital construction is for facilities, including those for sport and recreation, scattered around the province
ActNow - a new health promotion program which has C$100 million in funding in yesterday's provincial budget. Part of this is earmarked for physical activity programs that includi Action Schools BC, but there will also be other "community initiatives to be announced."

RESOURCES

To hear the 2010 LegaciesNow webcast, go to the organization's main web home page and follow the links:
http://www.2010LegaciesNow.com

The Jim Pattison Group:
http://www.jimpattison.com/

The Canadian Medical Association's 10% increase in fitness challenge was accepted by B.C. in October. Here's the release:
http://www.2010legaciesnow.com/pdf/10-08-2004-CMARelease.pdf

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 16, 2005

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #831
OLYMPIANS LOBBY OTTAWA AGAIN TODAY; 55 BC TOWNS HOST 5-YEAR EVENTS; CHILLIWACK SCHEDULES 2010 BUSINESS FORUM

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

Olympians and members of Canada's Olympic sport community were back on Parliament Hill in Ottawa again today lobbying the federal government to increase funding for sport in the February 23 budget, using the argument that the money would help more Canadian athletes reach the podium at upcoming Olympic Games. Four Olympic medallists -- Eric Bédard (Short Track Speed Skating), Therese Brisson and Cheryl Pounder (Ice Hockey) and Annie Pelletier (Diving), joined the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Sport Matters Group, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and representatives of some of Canada's national sport federations to urge parliamentarians to increase sport funding by C$60 million per year. Half of that would support the Own the Podium winter program and a similar program currently in development for summer sports. The remaining C$30 million would increase support to the federations for coaching and training. The British Columbia government committed C$15 million to coaching and development in its budget, tabled today. As part of its effort, the COC has also launched a government
letter-writing campaign, asking members of the sport community and the public to write letters to their local member of Parliament, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister to request additional funding for sport.

All told, 55 communities around British Columbia, out of a maximum of 90 (or 91, or 92 -- we've heard all three numbers from officials in the last few days), hosted events to celebrate the five-years-to-go mark for the 2010 Winter Games. That included 400 people who paid to be part of a larger event in Prince George, where the CEO of Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), John Furlong, spoke Friday.

The Spirit of B.C. Committee in Chilliwack, a city east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley, has scheduled a business forum that will probably be held April 8. Co-chair Terry Bodman says the idea is to invite business people to talk about economic opportunities in attracting 2010 teams to practice in the area's facilities, so business can encourage their use of accommodations.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 15, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #830
BC'S LATEST BUDGET USES 2010 GAMES AS SPRINGBOARD FOR "HEALTHY LIVING" GOAL

British Columbia finance minister Colin Hansen, in his budget speech for the upcoming fiscal year, only touched briefly on the 2010 Winter Olympics, and it was more to focus attention on the government's healthy-living priority.

"We are investing an additional C$100 million in public health promotion and prevention initiatives, including Act Now, a health and fitness program designed to make BC — by 2010 — the healthiest place to ever host the Olympics," he told the B.C. legislature, to some heckling from the NDP's Joy McPhail. "Act Now will encourage choices that improve people's health and reduce their risk of illness. Over the long term, that will take some pressure off the health care system, so it can meet patients' needs even more effectively."

Meanwhile, in supporting information to the budget, the B.C. Ministry of Small Business and Economic Development, headed by John Les, continues to expand its 2010 Secretariat, according to the Ministry's service plan between now and March 31, 2008. That's the section of government that's administering the province's interests the 2010 Games. From a small office with only a handful of people this time year it's now become one of the Ministry's six core areas.

The government expects to devote considerably more resources to it over the next two fiscal years, to about C$145.9 million as B.C.'s portion of 2010 venue funding moves through the books, and 34 staff (full-time equivalents) are to be dedicated to this core business area of the Ministry. It, according to the Ministry, "focuses on representing the province as a member partner in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, implementing 2010 related strategies, administering the Physical Fitness and Amateur Sports Fund and the Olympic Arts Fund, supporting the BC Arts Council and providing transfers in support of cultural industries, amateur sport groups and sport and recreation projects."

The latest estimates for the provincial government's expenditures through the Secretariat during the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, is C$30.5 million. Next year, fiscal 2005/6, it's estimated it will be C$145.9 million, in fiscal 2006/7, it will drop to C$50,902 and then grow again, in fiscal 2007/8 to C$60.4 million. It expects the staffing level of 34, however, will stay steady through the next three fiscal years. In addition, it expects that the Secretariat will also be doing some capital expenditures during that time: C$70,000 this year by the time the fiscal period ends, C$640,000 next year, C$334,000 in 2006/7 and C$289,000 in 2007/8. Those are just for the Secretariat itself; it doesn't include B.C. government contributions to the expanded B.C. Trade & Convention Centre, which will be the 2010 Games's International Broadcast Centre from the summer of 2009 until April, 2010. That funding over the next three years: C$71.3 million by the time this current fiscal year is finished, C$88.5 million for the upcoming fiscal year, $C61.1 million in 2006/7, and C$25.2 million in 2007/8. Nor does it include the general marketing and promotion fund for B.C. of between C$2 million and C$3 million for this year and the next few years.

The Ministry's game plan over the next three years also focuses on small business connections to the 2010 Games. For instance, as it expands its 2010 Commerce Centre website, it's hoping that by the end of this fiscal year, 5,000 businesses will have registered for updates on 2010 opportunities at the site, another 5,000 will have done each year for the next three years, with an accumulated total of 20,000 businesses by the spring of 2008

The Ministry sees the Secretariat's goal as creating "economic and social development opportunities before, during and after the games in an environmentally sustainable manner. The Secretariat's primary role is to provide the strategic leadership, coordination and oversight to ensure the province meets its financial, infrastructure and service commitments for the 2010 Games. The Secretariat also has a key role in ensuring that the social, economic and environmental opportunities associated with hosting an Olympic event are identified early and realized before, during and after the 2010 Games and evolves into enduring legacies for communities and businesses around the province." It's executives say they have two performance measures to judge whether those roles are met. The first, "The 2010 Games are delivered on time and within approved budget," and that "100% of procurement opportunities [from the 2010 Games through its web-site system] are available to BC businesses."

There will also be increased focus on 2010 LegaciesNow, now that the provincial government has transferred much of its physical health and cultural responsiblities to the non-profit agency, that works closely with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) . It says "this new structure will help promote innovative leveraging of government funding with the private sector. The Sport Branch will support the sector by providing policy and strategic planning, identifying and monitoring trends and research, and developing and maintaining inter- and intra-government partnerships to promote sport and physical activity. Key strategies include: transferring funding and program responsibilities to a third-party agency (2010 LegaciesNow Society) in order to promote innovative revenue-generation for the sector, developing policy and strategies to contribute to public priorities (e.g., education, health, economic and social objectives), and maintaining and developing partnerships with other ministries and governments in order to bring more resources to sport and physical activity."

The ministry says it has four performance measures for 2010 LegaciesNow:

1. "The number of communities designated "Active Communities": Communities that participate in healthy and active programs such as Fort St. John's Walk to Whistler will receive formal designation as "Active Communities". This designation will allow communities to benefit from future programs." The ministry expects that five per year each year, for a total of 15 by the spring of 2008 will be named.

2. "In partnership with LegaciesNow, British Columbia's physical activity level increases to meet the national 10 % increase target by 2010: The Federal Provincial-Territorial Sport Ministers have set a target to increase Canada's physical activity levels by 10 % by 2010. The biannual Canadian Community Health Survey monitors these levels. The Ministry's partnerships with other ministries and levels of government will help develop strategies to promote physical activity in various settings (e.g., community, schools, organized sport)." During the next three years, it expects to have that number up to 57% from the current level of 55% by this time next year, 58% by the following year and 61% by the spring of 2008. Interestingly, premier Gordon Campbell yesterday doubled that target percentage to 20% because he wanted B.C. to lead the nation in physical fitness, and since the ministry's budget performance targets are still saying 10%, this may have been done either without consultation, or so recently that the administration's response hasn't yet caught up. Certainly it means that this will become a higher priority, simply because of the amount of effort that it will take to achieve twice the planned goal.

3. "In partnership with LegaciesNow, British Columbia's athletes excel, demonstrated by Team BC placement in Canada summer and winter games: The performance of provincial-level athletes at Canada Games is an indicator of the health of high performance sport in this province. National success will contribute to a provincial goal of putting more British Columbians on the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games podium."

4. "In partnership with LegaciesNow, British Columbia has a high quality sport infrastructure as measured by the proportions of nationally-carded athletes training in the province: The number of national athletes training in British Columbia is an indicator of the strength of British Columbia's sport development system. The more athletes living and training in British Columbia then the greater likelihood of British Columbia podium performances at future Olympic and Paralympic Games." That measure is used because the ministry says the number of nationally-carded athletes attracted to BC provides evidence of the quality and range of sports facilities and training capacity. Of 1,331 athletes funded by Sports Canada, 18%, or 235, currently train in BC. That's consistent with the province's share of the national population. The ministry figures it will have that up to 19% by March 31, increasing by a percentage mark each year between now and the spring of 2008 until it's at 22%.

Part of the 2010 Olympics project is a "cultural Olympiad" which will essentially start a year from now, after the Olympic torch and flag are passed to Vancouver at the end of the 2006 Winter Games's Closing Ceremonies in Italy. The Ministry doesn't seemed to have thought much about any performance measures for this aspect as for its main strategies in arts: providing policy, program and administrative support for the BC Arts Council, managing the new Olympic Arts Fund, supporting a new Centre for Not-for-Profit Sustainability, and undertaking a review of the sound recording industry.

The performance measures for the Olympic Arts Fund is simply to "realize creative projects that contribute to the development of arts and culture in British Columbia," and, for the Centre for Not-for-Profit Sustainability "to show progress in encouraging the development of a sustainable arts and culture sector across the province."

RESOURCES

The B.C. government Small Business Ministry's service plan for the next two fiscal years is here:
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/sp/sbed/default.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 15, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #829
ADDECO HIRED TO SET UP JOB-TRANSITION PROGRAM FOR RETIRING OLYMPIANS

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has hired a large, international human-resources firm to work on "The Athletes' Career Program", which is designed to help high-performance athletes get a job at the end of their sporting careers.

IOC President Jacques Rogge and Adecco Chief Executive Officer Jérôme Caille outlined the program, accompanied by Olympic speed-skater Ådne Søndrål,, who is an IOC member and member of the IOC Athletes' Commission, along with five athletes who have already obtained jobs using the program.

Adecco is a public company headquartered in the IOC's home country of Switzerland. Its working involves staffing, career services, executive search and e-recruitment and it has over 6,000 offices in 71 territories, with 28,000 employees. It's listed on the Swiss Exchange (ADEN/trading on Virt-x: 1213860), the NYSE (ADO) and Euronext Premier Marché (ADE).

President Rogge says, "Sports competition requires such a huge personal investment from athletes that it leaves them very little time to prepare for their professional future. Many of them finish their sporting careers and find it difficult to move on with their professional lives. The Athletes' Career Programme will provide professional career development services on a worldwide basis for athletes during and after their sporting careers.

"Athletes are at the core of the Olympic Movement," says Rogge. "They dedicate their lives to sports and it is only right that sports should give them something back at the end of their sporting careers. We believe this is a great step for the Olympic Movement ."

Caille says: “Since 2000, we have helped more than 800 former athletes find a second career in various countries such as Spain, Italy and Norway. Through our more than 20 teams across the globe and our methods -- which includes professional assessment, career planning, training, coaching and placement, -- we aim to help an additional 2,000 athletes manage their career transition and successfully access the labour market. The abilities developed by the athletes during their sporting career are extremely valuable, and it is our responsibility to contribute to their success in the world of work."

RESOURCES

A look at Adecco's business:
http://www.adecco.com/Channels/adecco/investor+relations/investor+relations1.asp

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 15, 2005

Monday, February 14, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #828
SVP OF VANOC TECHNOLOGY HIRED; MORE NEWS COMING ABOUT VANOC SPONSORSHIPS; VALENTINES FOR 2010

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), John Furlong, says the eighth and last executive for his roundtable of senior vice-presidents has been hired, but the person's name won't be released until after the choice is confirmed at the next Board of Directors meeting. Furlong says the executive will be in charge of all technology for the 2010 Winter Games.
VANOC's Furlong says that if you thought you were taken aback by the size of the Bell Canada telecommunications sponsorship for the 2010 Winter Games, you should sit down for the news about additional sponsorship category announcements in the next little while. No details yet, but banking and automotive products have been bruted about as being ready to for signature. By the way, March 1 is the deadline for entries to the first Sponsorship Marketing Award from the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada. "There are a lot of talented people who work extremely hard to bring value to their brands, companies or corporate initiatives through the innovative use of sponsorships," said Jo-Ann McArthur, president of Molson Sports & Entertainment and chair of the SMCC and the Sponsorship Marketing Awards. "The SMCC has been established to identify best practices in our industry and recognize those who are leading the way to deliver value and results with their use of sponsorship marketing." The awards are for the use of effective sponsorship marketing strategy, whether for small business-to-business activities or large public sports events, like the 2010 Winter Games. "It's important the industry recognizes that sponsorship marketing is not just about how much money you spend or how broad the public awareness, but how efficient and effective that investment is for your business," says McArthur. Entries will be judged in four categories: Sports; Arts & Entertainment; Cause; and, Special Interest. The Awards will be presented April 28 at The Westin Prince Hotel, Toronto. Naturally, there are sponsors of the awards: presenting sponsors are "Strategy" and "Media in Canada."
Joel Connolly, a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, today offered a batch of Valentine's Day gifts for a number of celebrities and organizations, including one for VANOC, after being pelted by questions ad nauseum by reporters wondering what it would do if the region was hit by another two-week warm, wet spell as happened in the latter part of January as IOC president Jacques Rogge was touring: "To the planners of the 2010 Vancouver, B.C., Winter Olympics: a mountain snowstorm timed to the next Whistler inspection trip by the president of the International Olympic Committee."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 14, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government, Torino| #827
BC PUTS UP C$4 MILLION TO DESIGN, BUILD AND SHIP BC HOUSE TO 2006 WINTER OLYMPICS IN ITALY

British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell says the provincial government will spend C$4 million this year to build BC House, a large showcase building that will be a focal point for B.C.'s involvement in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, which includes being part of the Closing Ceremonies in Torino, Italy.

“With the close of the Torino Games, the spotlight will shift to B.C. and 2010, and our presence in Torino will provide an important first impression for many members of the Olympic family,” Campbell says. “B.C. House in Torino will provide a base for B.C. athletes and their families. But it will also show Italians, tourists and potential investors all that B.C. has to offer and why this is the best place on Earth to live, work, play and invest.”

The building will be designed and built almost entirely out of British Columbian wood in B.C., using log-home construction techniques that will be coupled with a modern design, then dismantle it and ship it to be set up on land provided by the City of Torino, Italy, which is hosting the 2006 Winter Olympics a year from now.

B.C. House in Torino will be used to showcase British Columbian and Canadian goods and services and will be used as a gathering and meeting place to highlight Canadian culture, and to promote the trade and investment opportunities B.C. and Canada offer, according to the premier.

Government sources say the contract for the project is expected to be awarded in early April, and all aspects of the building, delivery, installation and operations will be complete by mid-December. The project, however, is expected to cost more than the C$4 million the province will be putting into it, but it isn't yet disclosing how much it thinks it will cost, so the provincial government says it "will work with the federal government and partners to find sponsors in a number of product areas to offset anticipated costs."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 14, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #826
BC COMMITS ANOTHER C$15 MILLION TO BC ATHLETES AND COACHES FOR OLYMPIC SUPPORT

British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell says that his province's budget tomorrow will contain a request for C$15 million in additional money to be spent on supporting Olympic-bound coaches and athletes in B.C. in the coming fiscal year.

Campbell received a standing ovation from about 900 executives attending a Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon speech marking the beginning of the fifth countdown year until the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Games. Left unspoken was the concept that the premier and his B.C. Liberal party will have to be re-elected to government May 17 in order to fulfill the allotment, unless it is approved by the Legislature before it dissolves April 19 to make way for the election.

Campbell says the funds will be in addition to the C$10 million the province had pledged as part of its promises to the International Olympic Committee to support B.C. athletes and athletic infrastructure.

The funds will be funnelled through 2010 LegaciesNow, the non-profit agency that was set up to work in partnership with the B.C. government and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to spread the benefits of the Winter Games throughout the province.

The president and CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow, Marion Lay, says the $C15 million in additional funds will be spent on:

Double the current financial support to provincial athletes
Creating additional Regional Training Centres in the province, which can be used by high-performance athletes
Increase the funding to provincial sport organizations
Increase the salaries of high-performance coaches
Improve coaching-support systems for specific sports, likely those identified in the "Own the Podium" program
Provide new technology to support coach and athlete development
Increase technical support to B.C. athletes and coaches through regional PacificSport Group and the Canadian Sport Centres.
Increase "efficiency" in the sport-delivery system
Expand the BC Games agency's mandate to become the organization that co-ordinates all provincially funded games involvement "to ensure that participation delivers strong economic return on investment to the province". These would include the BC Winter and Summer Games, and the Northern and Seniors Games held around the province.
Support the Paralympics "and other targeted-population sport-support programs. "
Expand the services and funding provided by GamePlan BC to "targeted podium sports in winter and summer sports."
Improve sport science and medicine by increasing sport-science research at B.C. universities "and continue to reinforce B.C.’s leadership in this area", and
Expand the HostingNow program throughout B.C. "to ensure a co-ordinated approach to bidding and managing hosting opportunities at the community level, and to provide knowledge and support to ensure that each event delivers back to the economic agenda of the province."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 14, 2005

Friday, February 11, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #825
DETAILS OUTLINED OF BELL / ROGERS CANADIAN BROADCASTING COMMITTMENT FOR 2010

Here are the main points of the Bell Globemedia - Rogers Canadian broadcasting agreement with the International Olympic Committee of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and the 2010 Summer Olympics. Although many of the commitments apply equally to the 2012 Games, here we focus specifically on the 2010 aspects, particularly in the sections involving broadcasting hours. The partnership says its commitments represent the minimum it will do, and it may decide to do more.

Here are the TV platforms are expected to provide coverage: CTV, TQS, OMNI.1, OMNI.2, TSN, RDS, Rogers Sportsnet, RIS Info Sports, Outdoor Life Network (OLN), the Aboriginal People's Television Networks and ATN, a South-Asian national cable and satellite service. Other services that will be used: Discovery Channel, CTV Newsnet, Report on Business Television and The Biography Channel. There are to be Olympic specials, documentaries and news serials before, during and after the Olympic Games. Some of the focus is to increase the profile of Canadian sport federations and amateur athletes. On radio, coverage will be carried on Rogers Radio, currently with 46 stations across Canada, all broadcasting to local audiences, including seven in the Vancouver-Whistler corridor.

Coverage is expected to be in both French and English 24 hours a day, for a total of 1,767 hours for 2010; about half will be shown live; about 25% of the total will be in prime time.

The over-the-air services (CTV, TQS, OMNI.1, OMNI.2) will provide a total of 653 hours for 2010.

Here's how it breaks out:

CTV is to provide coverage 22 hours per day, pausing only for local and national news. CTV's total commitment is 352 hours for 2010
French-language TQS will provide 201 hours for 2010, and will carry an average of 12 hours per day including live and primetime coverage of every sport.
OMNI.1 and OMNI.2 will provide multilingual coverage for the first time anywhere as of 2010 using over-the-air television to about five million Canadian households. It will provide programming in more than 40 languages over about 100 hours for 2010.

Quebec's TQS can currently be seen by 95% of francophone Canadians across Canada, including Quebec. And sports specialty RDS is available to all francophones across Canada on satellite and cable, and is distributed to 86% of all Québec homes. Together, TQS, RDS and RIS Info Sports will deliver the most hours of French-language coverage of the Games than ever before with 550 total hours in 2010. Bell / Rogers confirms it will make francophone coverage available for free to the CBC's french version, SRC Radio Canada in an effort to reach 100% of the French-language market; similar to the deal the two networks have to transmit French-language National Hockey League coverage.

Here's the language breakout for the 2010 Winter Games
English: 1,117 hours
French: 550
Other languages: 100
Total: 1,767

Here's the breakout for specialty broadcasting for the 2010 Games:

TSN - 304
RDS - 304
Rogers Sportsnet - 378
RIS Info Sports - 45
TOTAL: 1,114

The coverage by TSN and RDS for the 2010 Games will be mostly live. TSN will focus on sports and athletes of interest to English Canada, RDS will focus on the same but for francophone Canada. Rogers Sportsnet: (RSN) will work with TSN to provide "wall-to-wall" events coverage. RIS will provide 15-minute Olympic updates in French every hour and 45 hours of live event coverage. OLN will have 38 hours of live daytime coverage of sports that fit its adventure-based programming focus, such as Nordic skiing, and it will provide prime-time recaps of various events that follow its mandate.

Rogers's 46 radio stations across Canada will have dedicated news and Olympic updates averaging 2.5 hours per day during the Winter Games. Programming on the seven stations along the Vancouver-Whistler corridor will become "totally Olympic-focused." For example, Vancouver's CKWX News 1130 is to tailor its 24-hour-a-day programming to have an ongoing Olympic flavour, with Games updates every 30 minutes, including event coverage and results, athlete interviews and profiles, local Olympic information and features capturing the Games atmosphere throughout the Lower Mainland region. "It's our intention to also make our Games coverage available on radio in French and other languages of importance to Canadians," but how this will be done is not specified.

Working towards the 2010 Winter Games, amateur sport coverage is to grow by 50% averaged over all of Bell Globemedia/Rogers's' stations, including a combination of prime-time and comprehensive coverage of a more Olympic sports, even though the partnership's bid says it "delivers twice as many total hours of amateur sports coverage in French and English than any other broadcaster, including the public broadcaster. Moreover, a significant portion of this coverage is presented live and fully 60% is in prime time. BGM-Rogers have invested in, among others, women's and men's hockey, women's and men's soccer, women's and men's curling, figure skating and cycling, resulting in a tremendous increase in awareness of these sports and their athletes."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 11, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #824
ITALY TO CHANGE ANTI-DOPING LAWS TO GIVE IOC PRIORITY IN TORINO; AUSSIES SET UP PROGRAM FOR 2010 SNOWBOARD MEDALS; U.S. ATHELETE EYES THREE SPORTS IN 2010

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, says he has received assurances from the Italian government that it will adjust its criminal code to ensure the IOC and World Anti-Doping regulatory processes for athletes will take precedence during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino next February. Under Italian anti-doping laws, athletes caught by the IOC system could face criminal charges, but Rogge says that while he feels those laws should be maintained for the pushers, athletes are "not a danger to society." Italy says its laws will be adjusted "in due course", but before the Games begin. The IOC's sophisticated testing usually results in a formal and quasi-judicial hearing process that can result in athletes found taking performance-enhancing drugs will be barred from competing in their field, often for several years if their national Olympic Committee is involved.
Australia's New South Wales Institute of Sport is developing a program to move gymnasts, surfers and skaters into half-pipe snowboarding, with the aim of winning medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The program is too new to have an effect at the 2006 Winter Games in Italy. The program, similar to those successfully developed by the Aussies for other Olympics sports, will select three or four young athletes from acrobatic sports backgrounds to train with three or four elite snowboarders, so they can learn from each other in hopes of increasing the riding ability of newcomers as well as the acrobatic ability of established competitors. Meanwhile, several members of the Australian performance-analysis science group are now in Torino to film and analyze Olympic snowboarding and skiing venues during a series of test events this month. The group's reconnaissance of the road cycling course at the Athens Olympic Games last summer helped to win a road race gold medal for Sara Carrigan. This time they will survey the snowboard half-pipe, mogul and aerial skiing hills, as well as the bob/luge track for the skeleton and bobsleigh competitors.
A Quebec-born winter athlete expects to attempt something for the U.S. Olympic team in the 2010 Winter Games that nobody else has yet been able to do. Sabrina St. Marie, who is 17 and was born in Beupré, Quebec, and moved with her parents to Florida when she was 2, says she hopes to makes history when she competes in halfpipe, boardercross, and the alpine events of parallel giant slalom and parallel slalom. Her home training base is Vail, Colorado, but she was in Whistler last summer as part of her training schedule. Her family is back in Quebec now, but she had changed her nationality to American in the meantime and has decided not to switch back.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 11, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #823
B.C. LAUNCHES "SPIRIT OF BC" WEBSITE AS FIVE-YEAR COUNTDOWN TO GAMES IS ABOUT TO BEGIN

The British Columbia government has launched a new website as its public centrepiece for the Spirit of B.C. Committees, organized by 2010 LegaciesNow in the past few months out of a number of ad-hoc committees that spontaneously formed to figure out how their community could benefit from the 2010 Winter Games after the bid was won. It's launch its timed to coincide with Saturday's five-year-out mark to the opening of the Games.

The new website, SpiritOfBC.com, is expected to eventually show users what a particular community's Committee is doing, but at the moment, there are only a handful of dates in the coming week where there is information available (although the information about events is quite extensive for some dates), and the information under each community's listing is simply the name of the chairperson of the particular committee and, in some cases, the person's contact information. Users can sign up for a Spirit newsletter, and the site also has a password-protected area for committees to use.

The site also has an area, currently empty, of best practices. As the site explains, "This section will highlight businesses and community groups that have benefited from recent Olympic and Paralympic Games in other countries and about those gearing up for the Games at home. Profiles and best practices of spirited committees and communities will be featured here along with important information regarding the 2010 Winter Games, and the ideas and observations that our Spirit of BC team of Gordon Goodman, Ian Tait and Scott Allen gather from each community."

The site also has links to the websites of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), 2010 LegaciesNow, the 2010 Winter Games federal and B.C. secretariats -- the government sections that act as a central clearing house for areas of their government that are working on aspects of the 2010 Games -- and the 2010 Commerce Centre.

RESOURCES

The Spirit of B.C. website:
http://www.SpiritOfBC.com

--

You can see what various communities are doing to mark the five-year anniversary by surfing to his address and clicking on a date of interest in the coming week:
http://www.spiritofbc.com/Content/Calendar%20of%20Events/CalendarofEventsMain.asp?langid1

BACKGROUND

The new website currently offers "feature stories" about:

ArtsNow
Community Update
Inclusion
Legacies Speaker Series
Premier's Summit
Volunteer Interest Growing

--

So far, there are 92 communities or community groups in B.C. with a Spirit committee. Here's the alphabetical list.

Abbotsford
Ashcroft
Boundary
Bulkley Valley-Stikine (The regional district is co-ordinating resources from towns such as Terrrace, Smithers and Kitimat, among others)
Burnaby
Cache Creek
Campbell River
Castlegar
Chase
Chilliwack
Clinton
Columbia Valley (This is a region of small communities)
Comox Valley
Coquitlam
Cranbrook
Creston
Dawson Creek
Delta
Duncan
Fort Nelson
Fort St. James
Fraser Lake
Fruitvale
Gold River
Golden
Haida Gwaii - Queen Charlotte Islands ("Haida Gwaii" is the aboriginal name for the Queen Charlotte Islands)
Harrison Hot Springs
Hope
Hudson's Hope
100 Mile House
Kamloops
Kaslo
Kelowna
Kent-Harrison (This is a regional district in the eastern Fraser Valley)
Keremeos
Kermode
Kimberley
Ladysmith
Lake Cowichan
Langley
Lillooet
Logan Lake
Lumby
Lytton
Mackenzie
Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows (two adjacent towns in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver)
McBride
Merritt
Mission
Montrose
Nakusp
Nanaimo
Nelson
New Westminster
North Cowichan (This is a region of small communities)
North Okanagan (This is a region of small communities)
North Peace (This is a region of small communities)
North Thompson Valley (This is a region of small communities)
Oceanside (This is an area of small communities centred on Parksville, Vancouver Island)
Oliver - Osoyoos (two towns not far from each other)
Peachland
Pemberton Valley (This is a region of small communities)
Penticton
Port Alberni
Port Hardy
Port McNeil
Powell River - Ayjoomixw (The town is working with the local aboriginal group, hence the combined name)
Prince George
Prince Rupert
Princeton
Quesnel
Revelstoke
Richmond
Rocky Mountain
Salmo
Shuswap
Slocan
Squamish
Stewart
Summerland
Sunshine Coast
Surrey
Tahsis
Tofino - Ucluelet (two towns not far from each other)
Trail
Tri-Cities (This is a group of three large neighbouring municipalities -- Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody -- that often work together)
Valemount
Vanderhoof
Vernon
Victoria
West Vancouver
Williams Lake

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 11, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #822
IOC EXECUTIVE BOARD HEARS BRIEFLY ABOUT 2010; PARKSVILLE, B.C, CONSIDERS 2010 SPORTS HOSTING; COC LEADS FUNDING CHARGE TUESDAY

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

It appears that the meeting of the International Olympic Committee's Executive Board in Torino, Italy, yesterday, was fairly perfunctory when they finally got around to hearing about the state of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. The Board's time was largely taken up dealing with one-year-to-go issues and ceremonies for the 2006 Winter Games in Italy, and the status of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Gilbert Felli, IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, reported on the development of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) this time, as well as on the Canadian Olympic Committee’s “Own the Podium” program for athletes in the lead-up to the Vancouver Games. IOC President Jacques Rogge also noted the warm welcome that he had received during his visit to Canada.
Directly west of Vancouver, across Georgia Straight, is the town of Parksville on Vancouver Island. This week, Janis Cookson, who is the director of the Sport Tourism & Active Legacies section of 2010 LegaciesNow, and the industrious Laura Plant, from Tourism British Columbia's Industry Development branch, hosted a workshop for Parksville business at the request of Geoff Corbett of the Oceanside Tourism Association. The 2010 Olympics were part of the discussions, but other things were talked about as well. The group started a community inventory of facilities and how to set up a volunteer group, as well as hosting opportunities for events, in order to capitalize on the economic spin-offs sports events can have, including the 2010 Games. They were told that visiting teams need a reason to bring family members and friends with them, and the community has to get sports teams to spend some time away from their venue so they'll spend money in the area. Those who attended included representatives from the Regional District of Nanaimo, tourism operators, various area municipalities, parks and recreation and sports organizations. A follow-up meeting is expected to be held in March or April to see if there's willingness to increase the number of sporting events and tournaments hosted in the area, and whether the tourism sector is interested in making ti work.
On Tuesday, you'll be able to find a who's who of the Canadian Olympic Committee in Ottawa at the Parliament Buildings. The senior executive of the COC, along with several winter and summer sports Olympians, Sport Matters, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and representatives of several of Canada's national sport federations will be on Parliament Hill to lobby for increased funding for sport in Canada. The federal government's 2005 budget will be tabled in the House of Commons February 23. The group intends to meet with ministers, government members of Parliament, and opposition sport critics to request additional funding in the budget to help Canadian athletes reach the podium at upcoming Olympic Games in Torino, Beijing and Vancouver. Those in the campaign include Richard Pound, who is one of the IOC Members on VANOC's Board of Directors and who is also an COC Executive Committee Member; Michael Chambers, the president of the COC and his CEO, Chris Rudge and Mark Lowry, their executive director of sport; Brian MacPherson, the director general of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, Victor Lachance, the senior leader of the Sport Matters Group and three Olympic winter athletes: Eric Bédard Short Track Speed Skating, 1998 / 2002 (two gold and bronze); Therese Brisson, Ice Hockey, 1998 / 2002 (silver, gold and Cheryl Pounder, Ice Hockey, 2002 (gold); they'll be with Annie Pelletier, Diving, 1996 (bronze) and Anne Merklinger, the director general of the Canadian Canoe Association.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 11, 2005

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #821
WHISTLER ATHLETES VILLAGE TO INCLUDE 50 "MOVEABLE HOUSES"; WHAT'S IN VANOC'S MASTER BUSINESS PLAN?; HOPE SPRINGS FOR TWO 2010-RELATED MEETINGS

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

The Whistler Athletes Village, one of the venues the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is funding, although a Whistler municipal corporation is looking after the construction, is still in the early stages of working out the design, but there are two interesting concepts that'll will be built into it. The first concept: 50 "moveable houses" are to be part of the Village. The B.C. government is contributing toward the cost of these houses under its overall C$600 million Olympic funding envelope, so no specific value has yet been attached to this, and VANOC has committed to spending C$6.5 million on native housing by the time it's through. After the Games, ownership of the houses is to be transfered to the Lil'Wat and Squamish aboriginal bands. They will have the option of using the homes, or selling them and using the proceeds to support their own housing. Neither B.C. nor VANOC is responsible for paying the cost of moving, establishing the infrastructure or paying for the servicing should the houses be moved. Here's another concept that is to be built into the project: Once the 2010 Games are finished, 216 rooms of the Athletes Village will revert to an Athletes’ Training Centre, so there will be permanent accommodation for athletes to train and to support Whistler when it wants to host World Cup events after 2010. About half of the rooms are to be designed to accommodate athletes with disabilities. The rest of the Village, at least at the moment, is expected to become low-cost housing for Whistler employees, since land and housing prices are bid quite high by wealthy residents for recreational purposes. The proposed site plan for the Olympic Village includes a variety of permanent housing, such as apartments, townhouses and dormitories. After the 2010 Games, the new residential neighborhood is expected to have a daycare, recreational facilities, convenience shopping, community meeting space, community gardens and recycling facilities.
VANOC is now working on a master business plan that will be subject to approval from its own Board of Directors, as well as the federal and provincial governments, who will require notice if anything changes by C$5 million. The plan, originally expected to be completed before Christmas, then in April, but now in May, has quite a few major components. The Financial Plan will estimate all sources of funding as well as provide financial and cash flow projections. The Sponsorship Plan outlines how VANOC intends to achieve its sponsorship revenue and value-in-kind targets. The Operating and Capital Budgets section is to include updated budgets for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Project Control Strategy is to outline a "deficit avoidance plan" -- a requirement of the B.C. Government, which is on the hook for any overages -- and it is to detail VANOC's internal progress evaluation mechanism. The Risk Management Plan is to identify major sources of risk, and a system to monitor and mitigate them. The Plan for Acquiring Services is said to be a strategic plan for planning and procuring services. The Human Resources Plan is also a strategic plan to deal with how VANOC will build the team of at least 1,200 employees and up to 40,000 volunteers to deliver the Games. The Environmental Plan is another strategic plan for achieving the Games environmental and sustainability goals. The Venue Plan is to be both a strategic and operational plan for acquiring and developing the venues, sporting and support, required to deliver the Games. The Marketing Plan is going to be based primarily on the Marketing Plan Agreement with the International Olympic Committee, which has been ready to sign "any day now" since last September; there will be a Communications Plan to accompany it. The Security Plan is VANOC’s concepts for integrating its operations with the RCMP’s security planning. The Cultural Plan is to deal with the cultural component of the Games. And there is also to be a Health Plan included. That's for delivering the Games' health services, and for integrating VANOC's aspects with the B.C. government's health-services plan.
The Spirit of B.C. Committee in Hope, at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, is one of the 92 communities in British Columbia that are now organized under the 2010 LegaciesNow system, and it will hosting the town's first annual Celebration of Volunteers on Saturday night as its nod to the 5-years-to-go mark for the 2010 Winter Games Opening Ceremonies. But it's also planning to hold a series of public meetings to winnow down the batch of ideas it's collected over the last year or so to get some of the expected 2010 largesse to rub off on it. Committee co-chair, Peter Duhault figures they have about three dozens ideas, and they need to get that down to three or four that can be implemented. There are going to be two public sessions, one in the day and one in the evening, and they are to be lead by Gary Young, the former recreation director of North Vancouver who was the guy who came up with the idea that Vancouver could host the Winter Olympics. The first session is planned for Tuesday evening, at the district hall council chamber from 6:30 - 9:30. The second session is planned for the Wednesday, Feb. 16th, from 1 - 4:30 p.m.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 10, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #820
SNOWBOARDING PROGRAM FOR "DISADVANTAGED INNER-CITY" PEOPLE IN GREATER VANCOUVER ESTABLISHED

A 2010-related Olympic agency, a major 2010 corporate sponsor and three levels of Canadian governments have struck a deal to set up an American social snowboarding program's first operation in Canada, in Greater Vancouver.

Bell Canada and 2010 LegaciesNow have set up a partnership arrangement to import "Chill" -- a snowboarding program for young, disadvantaged inner-city people that's been available in 10 American cities, including Seattle, in some cases for more than a decade -- so that it's available in the Lower Mainland.

The Bell arrangement is the first corporate program for 2010 LegaciesNow. Bell won the 2010 telecommunication sponsorship last November with a bid worth C$200 million to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), and paid C$192 million earlier this week to be the Canadian broadcaster for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games.

Bell is paying C$25,000 and The Vancouver Agreement, a deal between the federal, B.C. and Vancouver City governments, will pay C$10,000 to fund the Chill initiative, which will offer access and instruction to people ranging in age from 12 to 24. In other areas, Chill supports children from 10 to 18, and the cost ranges up to US$35,000 per year. Chill Vancouver is set up to provide up to 100 people with everything they need to snowboard: equipment, transportation, clothing, lift tickets and instruction. In addition, Burton Snowboards of Burlington, Vermont, which has been involved in the Chill program elsewhere for years, is providing the snowboarding equipment; West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain will supply lift passes and access to the mountain’s facilities; and Schenker Logistics of the U.S. and Canada, is helping with the shipping and customs clearances necessary for the program to work. Several Vancouver agencies are taking part in the Chill program, as well, to ensure the program gets to the people being targeted: the Broadway Youth Resource Centre, Dusk to Dawn, MoreSports, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, Vancouver Parks Board and Urban Native Youth Association.

Each week, the inner-city people in the Lower Mainland who take part will be introduced to a theme that integrates snowboarding with what the organizers suggest are the challenges of every day life for them. The themes: patience, persistence, respect, courage, responsibility and pride. Burton says the program has proven results. "Ninety-six percent of our partner agencies across all eleven cities tell us that most or all of our kids show improved self-esteem well after the six-week program is complete; 80% of our partner agencies tell us that most or all of our kids show an improved attitude well after the snow melts, and 57% of our partner agencies tell us that most or all of our kids improve their academic performance as a result of their time with Chill."

Burton says that the social agencies pick the people to take part. "Chill works with kids who have a multitude of issues: kids in group homes and foster care, kids in alternative schools, kids on probation, kids who have run away and are grappling with problems at home, kids from low-income pockets, kids at-risk for drugs, gangs, violence, and depression, kids with emotional and behavioral problems. Partner agencies select their Chill kids based on whom they feel can most benefit from the Chill experience based on their professional experience and history with each individual kids."

Marion Lay, the president and CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow, says the pilot program follows the ideas of programs with similar concepts that, as she puts it, have"experienced great successes in other North American cities since [their] inception in 1995, and we anticipate the same here in Vancouver.”

Paul Healey, President of Western Canada for Bell, "The program fits perfectly with Bell’s commitment to connect communities by supporting initiatives that enrich the lives of youth across the country.”

The B.C. government's representative in the Chill program, Murray Coell, who is the minister of Community, Aboriginal and Women’s Services, says, “We know that access to sport activities makes a positive difference in the lives of our young people. Young people who are healthy and confident grow up to be adults who make valuable contributions to their families and their communities.” And Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell says the program, "Illustrates our commitment to inclusivity.”

RESOURCES

Burton Snowboards:
http://www.burton.com

Schenker Logistics:
http://www.schenker.ca

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 10, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #819
"FAST TRACK" FUNDING SOUGHT IN FEDERAL BUDGET BY OLYMPIANS; ENGLAND EMULATES VANCOUVER 2010'S PARALYMPICS MODEL FOR ITS OLYMPICS BID; WELLS HOOPS IT UP

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

Yesterday, we told you that Canadian coaching representatives were in Ottawa to lobby for funding in the upcoming federal budget to include support for coaching high-performance athletes as part of the federal government's first commitment to the year-long preparation of the "Own the Podium" program, designed to get Canadian athletes to top medal spot by the 2010 Winter Olympics, and to improve Canada's medal count so that it will be at least third at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy. Here are some examples of on what the money, focused in the so-called "Fast Track" program aimed at Canada's Torino performance, would be spent. Canada's skeleton team has a coach, Wilfried Schneider, who has a full-time job in Germany. Of the five World Cup events this season, Schneider has been able to meet with the Canadian athletes only three times. They don't have the funds for wind-tunnel experiments necessary for equipment improvement. In addition, more padding to protect short-track speed skaters as they practice would be used to reduce the chance of injury before the Olympics. That kind of protection would cost about C$100,000.
The city of London, England, is citing the strength of Vancouver 2010's bid involving Paralympic Games as one of the major factors it's emulating as it readies itself for inspection next week by the International Olympic Committee's panel evaluating it and several other major cities who want to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The decision will be made in July, and, as of 2012, holding the Paralympics is no longer optional for a city bidding on an Olympics. In an interview today with BBC Sport, British Paralympic Association chairman Mike Brace says, "All of the bids are very good and we will each be looking for something that will give our bids an extra edge," Brace said. "We believe the Paralympic element of the London bid strengthens it further. For the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver was widely believed to have had a very strong Olympic bid but it also had a very strong Paralympic bid and that obviously had an effect on the final outcome."
Alex Wells, from the Stoney aboriginal band near Cochrane, Alberta, is back on the pinnacle of world hoop dancing, after a bit of a slump the last couple of years, where he dropped to sixth place. Wells captured his third world title in the past five years at the 15th Annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest in Phoenix, Arizona, thanks to a schedule of four hours a day of practicing. He won in front of thousands of spectators, and he beat out 16 other competitors in the adult division, winnowed from 64 dancers overall from across Canada. And why are we telling you this? Well, Wells was a feature performer in Vancouver in front of Olympic committee delegates in the city’s bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, which of course, Vancouver won, and the IOC delegates never actually say why they are voting for a city when they vote. Should you be interested in his secret, Wells apparently does almost all of his training at the Chiniki fitness centre next to the Chief Chiniki Gas Bar.

RESOURCES

The World Championship hoop dancer web site
http://www.heard.org/hoopwinners.php

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 10, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #818
SAMPLING OF 5-YEARS-TO-GO EVENTS SHOW B.C. STARTING TO WARM UP TO 2010 WINTER GAMES

2010 LegaciesNow and the provincial government, which is up for election on May 17, have flagged the seven days starting this Saturday as "Spirit of BC Week". Here's a sampling of some the events -- from a large conference to a simple flag-raising -- to offer a look at the range of things communities are doing in British Columbia to mark the five-year-out anniversary for the 2010 Winter Games, which is Saturday:

Summerland is celebrating with its member of the legislature, Liberal Rick Thorpe, by raising the official Spirit of BC flag to commemorate the week. This event will take place at the Summerland Chamber of Economic Development and Tourism office on Highway 97 on Saturday at 10 a.m. Following the flag raising, at 11 a.m. the Sumac Ridge Estate Winery is officially re-launching the new label for Olympic skier Kristi Richards's fundraiser. A wine at Sumac Ridge Estate Winery and a coffee at The Beanery will carry the new labels to help support the skier. The Summerland Spirit of B.C. Committee had suggested the old labels, which featured the phrase "Olympic Dream" shouldn't be used for trademark purposes.
On Monday, Australian Olympic businessman Graeme Hicks will speak at a lunch hosted by Opportunities 2010 Okanagan, the Spirit of B.C. Kelowna Committee and 2010 Legacies Now. Hicks, from the Albury-Wodonga region of Australia when Sydney hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, will be talking about the approach his area took to encouraging economic development leveraged by those Games. Hicks was the mastermind behind the successful efforts to set up the infrastructure for the Albury-Wodonga Festival of Sport, and he co-ordinated it for ten years, initially voluntarily, and then on a professional basis. He also developed Olympic business opportunities, pre-Olympic and Paralympic training situations, and cultural reunions connected to the Olympic Games. This resulted in more than 400 athletes and officials from seven countries training in the area in the lead-up to the Sydney Games. His speech is part of a tour he's talking of the province, backed by 2010 LegaciesNow. He is also scheduled to speak in Prince George tomorrow as part of this week's 2005 Winter Opportunities Summit, that features a number of 2010 Olympics-oriented events, including a keynote speech by the CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), John Furlong, tomorrow at noon. Hicks's expertise is part of a 10-day tour of B.C. by 2010 LegaciesNow, which is also going to the Comox Valley towns on Vancouver island of Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland, as well as Nanaimo. It will also hold events in Kelowna, Kamloops, Keremeos, Penticton, Abbotsford, Powell River and Vancouver.
Also on Saturday evening, Prince George will feature fireworks to mark the five-year countdown outside at Exploration Place as the Winter Opportunities Summit ends. Guest speakers include Shirley Bond, who is the B.C. government's minister of Health Services; Prince George mayor Colin Kinsley and councillor Don Bassermann, who are co-chairs of the Prince George Spirit of BC Community Committee. The event will include family-oriented “Snow Frolics” with the mascot of the B.C. Winter Games, and hot chocolate and popcorn will be available.
Saturday morning, the mayor of 100 Mile House in the Cariboo region, Donna Barnett, who is also chair of her town's Spirit of B.C. Committee, will be raising a Spirit flag at noon at the South Cariboo Visitor Info Centre. With her will be Bev and Jeff Kendy, co-chairs of the 2006 B.C. Northern Winter Games, which will be held in 100 Mile House.
On Vancouver Island, Port Hardy is marking Saturday aimed at providing fun for kids, according to the northern Island town's Spirit 2010 chair Donna Gaul, who will be raising a Spirit of 2010 flag at noon followed by a skateboarding demonstration. At 1 p.m. a public swim will feature games, pizza and pop for $5. At the arena, peanuts will be offered to children playing hockey. In Port McNeill, the only other North Island community with a Spirit 2010 committee, the Spirit flag will be raised at the cenotaph.
There will be a flag-raising ceremony Saturday at Chilliwack's City Hall in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver, to kick-off the community's Spirit of BC Week celebrations. Mayor Clint Hames and members of Chilliwack's Spirit of BC community committee will take part in the event event that starts at 10:30 a.m, and the flag will go up about an hour later, after speeches by Terry Bodman and Bill Davies, co-chairs of the community's Spirit committee, and Hames. Previous Olympians who live in the area, and representatives of 2010 Winter sports events have all been invited to attend.
In Kamloops, there will be a three-hour ceremony on Saturday at noon at the city's Memorial Arena that includes a "Kamloops Opening Ceremony", figure skating, speed skating, hockey, free public skating, ice painting, face painting and local Olympic athletes will hand out pins and sign autographs, and there will be cake and hot chocolate available. The first 175 people get a free toque and special seating during the ceremony.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 10, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Torino| #817
A YEAR TO GO TO THE 2006 TORINO WINTER OLYMPICS OFFERS A LOOK AT WHAT'S IN STORE FOR VANCOUVER 2010

It's exactly one year to go until the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, and the marketing machine of those Games is running strongly and smoothly as events throughout the day are designed to continually increase the sense of anticipation throughout Italy and the rest of the European Union. It's a preview of what's likely to be in store for Vancouver four years from this month.

Sponsors at all levels of the Italian Games are today executing a wide range of events designed to co-promote their products and services with the Olympic logos and other symbols.

TV and radio stations, magazines and newspapers, as well as a range of Internet sites are all focused on coverage, either of the planned events or feature background material on the state of preparation of the Games.

Even the senior vice-president of Sport for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Cathy Priestner, has drawn attention to the 2006 Games by worrying aloud that delays that led to a late opening of the Italian speed-skating oval have the effect of giving home-field advantage to Italians because it prevented other international teams from trying out the so-called "soft" ice of the oval. And VANOC's Communications department has been relaying one-year-to-go news releases from TOROC, the Italian equivalent of the Vancouver Organizing Committee, to Canadian and U.S. reporters.

A large part of the emphasis for TOROC in the last few months has been the roll-out of the so-called "Look" of their Games, which features the lines of a classic Italian "piazza", a string of archways often seen in the classical designs of the bridges that support Roman aqueducts, but using a black-blue-orange colour palette in addition to the standard Olympic colour scheme found in the Rings logo. The towns, the mountain villages, the editorial products, the official uniforms, everything is beginning to take on the Look of the Games, as are the hours of broadcasting devoted to the Olympic events and their preparations.

The idea of the piazza in the Look of the Games is also featured in a number of modern arcades, a symbol of Torino, projecting towards the mountains. Nine areas of Torino have been fitted out for the occasion: in the centre piazza Castello, piazza Carignano, via Po, via Pietro Micca and via Roma, plus corso Giulio Cesare, corso Unità d'Italia, via Bologna and the exhibition and commercial centre of Lingotto.

Several standards featuring the Games' mascots, Neve and Gliz, have been mounted on supports in various locations, such at the entrance to several highways: the Torino-Milano road, the beginning of corso Giulio Cesare, the Torino-Savona highway and the Torino-Piacenza route, both with entrances to corso Unità d'Italia. Triangular, vertical, horizontal and rectangular flags and banners are all over the city, bearing Olympic symbols.

In a meeting that's designed to lend emphasis to the concept, but which won't be entirely ceremonial, Olympic President Jacques Rogge and the senior executives of the International Olympic Committee are meeting in Torino to hear officially that the US$200 million operational budget shortfall has been covered in various ways, but ultimately by the Italian government. Reports on the status of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are also on the agenda. But it took a break for a large symbolic and ceremonial function during the Italian lunch hour to formally invite, again, nations around the world to take part in the 2006 Games.

There are also a large number of parties this evening, featuring the IOC and underwritten by sponsors. For example, Omega, one of the International Olympic Committee's so-called TOP Sponsor for time-keeping, scoring and results, paid tribute to athletes from the past with a montage by famous photographer Peter Lindbergh, with a stop watch counting down the time remaining until the Games, as a backdrop. President Rogge; the president of TOROC, Valentino Castellani; Piemonte regional chairman Mario Pescante; Torino provincial premier Enzo Ghigo and the mayor of Torino, Sergio Chiamparino took part in the Omega soiree with the CEO of the Swatch Group, Nick Hayek, and his Board of Directors chairman, Stephen Urquhart.

And, tickets for the Torino Olympics, which were on sale in a kind of TOROC pre-planned test event for several months leading up to the key Christmas retail period to determine demand for various events, but which then took a break to adjust the pricing and package structures, went back on sale today as expected via the Internet and 3,000 retail outlets in Italy, and through a wide range of outlets in Europe, the United States via contractors approved by the IOC through the national Olympic Committees. During the Christmas sales, the competitions that were predicted to have the highest demand in Turin including the men's gold medal ice hockey match and the ladies free figure skating events, sold well.

In Canada, the COC was required to deal with a company called CoSport,, and its offering individual Olympic
event tickets, and various packages that include tickets. The company says it has an inventory of more than 20,000 individual 2006 Olympic Winter Games event tickets and 1,200 ticket packages. For instance, Canadians are offered ticket and accommodation packages in six different hotels in and around the Turin area. Each hotel will have packages consisting of three to six night stays, providing 29 different ticket and accommodation options that vary in content and price for a total of 572 combinations. These packages are designed to give Canadians a full range of amenities from the top end with an all-inclusive experience that includes meals, bi-lingual hosts, ground transportation, accommodations and tickets, to base-level packages that include tickets and bed-and-breadfasts.

Back in Italy, there will be a strong focus on sport with still more test and pre-Olympic trial events in various sports this month: From today until February 13, the World Cup heats for the biathlon, snowboard, Nordic combined and ski jumping are to take place.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 10, 2005

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #816
TRANSLINK TO WARN ITS RETAILERS ABOUT 2010 DISRUPTION POSSIBLITIES; CANADA'S COACHES LOBBY FOR FEDERAL FUNDS; TORINO 2006 TV STRIKES "VIRTUALLY NON-EXISTENT'

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

The documentation for proposed and renewing retail business licenses on TransLink's Greater Vancouver public transportation system are now carrying wording that warns shopkeepers with businesses on Translink facilities that transit operations throughout the Greater Vancouver area, including the SkyTrain rapid-transit system, "may be subject to restrictions, possible black-out periods, closures and interruptions from time to time, which will affect retail operations. [These effects] may include prohibitions or restrictions on signage, sponsorship and advertising (including within retail locations) and system-wide or location-specific shutdowns which may prevent or curtail all or some retail operations. Details are not known at this time. These may be in effect before, during and potentially after the Olympic and Paralympic Games." The pro-forma operating licence and the pro-forma kiosk licence contain now contain specific provisions to prevent affected storeowners from complaining they didn't know it might happen to them, or that Translink didn't warn them.
Representatives of Canada's high-performance athlete coaches were in Ottawa today to lobby for improved funding of coaching over the next few years in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. They've got their eye on the fact that the federal budget will be released February 23. Since the budget documentation is at the printers now -- the budget-making process is largely accomplished in the fall -- it's unlikely their pressure will have any practical effect, although it's always possible that some changes could be made at the last minute and incorporated in the speech of Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, with some extra sheets printed up for the budget books. Prime Minister Martin did, however, talk about such a plan last fall, as the "Own the Podium" program was circulating in government offices. Ian Bird, who is the executive director of the Canadian Professional Coaches Association, was looking for at least C$180 million per year in federal funding in the years leading up to the 2010 Winter Games. The Association is a national non-profit organization that provides services to career coaches.
From our Famous Last Words Department: It's now one year to the day when the 2006 Winter Olympics start in Torino, Italy, and Evelina Christillin, the deputy president of the Torino organizing committee, TOROC, spent part of it explaining why broadcasting strikes couldn't happen during the Games, as occurred with a wildcat strike at a Milan production facility just before the Alpine World Cup races at Borimo today. International Ski Federation president Gian-Franco Kasper, a member of the International Olympic Committee, says he was so concerned about the possibility of strikes affecting the Olympics, he pushed to have temporary anti-strike legislation approved by the Italian government. "Are strikes possible at Torino? Of course they are. The right to strike exists in every civilized country," he said to reporters today. "As a member of the IOC, I've tried to raise concern about this possibility next year and I've even pushed for a special dispensation in the law [so] it will not happen. But to my knowledge, nothing has been done." Arthur Hachler, an executive from the European Broadcasting Union, which is the main broadcaster of the Games, noted that: "In Torino it will be a different host broadcaster, and there will be several production teams including some from Sweden and Canada. And when they signed the contract they will also sign a disclaimer ruling out the possibility of strike action." Christillin, also notes, "Our situation is very different from the one [in Borimo]," even though RAI, the broadcaster involved in today's action, would televise the opening and closing ceremonies and the alpine events next year. "TOROC has contracts with 23 departments from different countries who will broadcast at the Olympic Games, and the threat of strike is virtually non-existent."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 9, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #815
"THE OLYMPIC GENERATION" TAGGED BY VANOC; WILDCAT TV STRIKE POSTPONES WORLD ALPINE IN ITALY; TORINO 2006 TV COVERAGE LAUNCHED TOMORROW

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has laid claim to an additional trade-mark. The latest is the phrase "The Olympic Generation." The new mark was registered for VANOC by the Vancouver law firm, Borden Ladner Gervais.
A wildcat strike by TV production workers in Milan, Italy, forced a 24-hour postponement of today's men's giant slalom race at the 2005 World Alpine Ski Championships in the mountains of Bormio. The strike against the European Broadcast Union occurred about an hour before race time as hundreds of athletes, coaches, fans, volunteers and journalists were all ready to go this morning. The EBU estimated the strike would affect about 60% of the broadcast and, within an hour of the postponement, to what was supposed to be a non-race day, hundreds of fans were seen wandering in the streets of Bormio, and dozens of athletes were seen returning to their hotels. Canadian skier JP Roy noted, "I can't say that I'm angry, because this strike is out of our control. It's too bad, because we were facing smaller crowds at these World Championships and this problem with the TV broadcast is not helping the overall image of this event." Thomas Grandi, another Canadian racing in the men's giant slalom added, "I was ready to go, and had it been just for me, I would have held the race because the athletes, fans and volunteers were also prepared for the competition. But our sport is driven by money, and that money is derived from television, so we just have to deal with that reality and patiently wait for tomorrow." Gian-Franco Kasper, the president of the FIS, the international governing racing body, added, "It is the second time in the history of ski racing that a race is affected by a television strike. The last time was in 1985 at the World Championships held on the same slope."
With one year and one day to go before the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics opens, Eurosport, the official broadcaster, says it will do what amounts to a full day of programming devoted to the Games tomorrow. About 10 hours of programs will be dedicated to Torino, and they'll all be dressed in the official look of the Games. The programs include biathlon, figure skating and ski-jumping, along with a number of cultural features. Between now and the start of the Games, Eurosport says it will produce 1,000 hours of programs dedicated to Torino, including live coverage of major winter-sport events, a new show following the progress of famous European athletes as they prepare for the Games, and a weekly report on the progress of the Games' Torch Relay. Two new monthly magazines have also been launched. One, called Casa Italia, will feature news from Torino 2006, the other, Olympic Magazine, will feature reports, interviews and news features.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 9, 2005

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Torino| #814
2006 WINTER GAMES TO OPEN IN 368 DAYS; CANADA AIMING FOR THIRD SPORT OVERALL

This Thursday will mark the one-year countdown to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, which will be held on February 10, 2006.

The goal for the Canadian team, as set by the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada's winter sport federations, is for Canada to finish in the top three countries in the medal count in Torino. This would require the Canadian team of approximately 200 athletes to come home with about 25 medals. Canadian athletes are expected to compete in all sports over the 17 days of the Olympic Games in Torino, which will end with closing ceremonies that will include a section run by the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC). VANOC will celebrate its five-year-out mark on February 12.

The Canadian Olympic Committee says that Canadian athletes have been posting better results on the World Cup circuit and at World Championship events this season over last season, which, according to Stacie Smith, the COC's manager of Communications, "bodes well for the Canadian team in Torino."

Canada has been slowly improving its performance at Olympic Winter Games since Calgary in 1988, where the team placed 12th overall, to the last Games in Salt Lake City where the team placed fourth behind the United States, Germany, and Norway. "Canada won a best ever 17 medals in Salt Lake City - seven gold, three silver and seven bronze," notes Smith.

The final event of the 20th Olympic Winter Games in Turin is the gold medal men's ice hockey game on February 26, 2006 at 2 p.m. local time (7 a.m. Pacific Time) at Palasport Olimpico. The women's gold medal game will be played on February 20, 2006 at 8:30 p.m. local time, 11:30 a.m. Pacific.

RESOURCES

A summary in PDF format of Canadian results as of February 7 is available at
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/games/olympic/winter/turin/files/worldcup.pdf

A breakdown of the Canadian medal winners for the 2002 Games and previous Olympic Games:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/games/olympic/index.shtml.

General Information on the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin:
http://www.torino2006.org or http://ftp.torino2006.it/uploads/pdf/Fatti_Cifre_0712_eng.pdf

Turin Olympic Games Schedule (Short)
http://www.Turin2006.org/evento/content.php?idm100100

Information in PDF format on Canadian performances during the 2004 / 2005 World Cup season:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/games/olympic/winter/turin/files/worldcup.pdf

Selection criteria for the Canadian team:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/games/olympic/winter/turin/overview.shtml

Historical Games information for the Canadian team:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/games/olympic/winter/turin/historical/index.shtml

National sport federation website links:

Alpine Canada: http://www.canski.org
Biathlon Canada: http://www.biathloncanada.ca
Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton: http://www.bobsleigh.ca
Cross Country Skiing: http://www.cccski.com
Canadian Curling Association: http://www.curling.ca
Skate Canada: http://www.skatecanada.ca
Freestyle Ski: http://www.freestyleski.com
Hockey Canada: http://www.canadianhockey.ca
Speed Skating Canada: http://www.speedskating.ca
Luge Canada: http://www.luge.ca
Canadian Snowboard Federation: http://www.csf.ca

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 8, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #813
B.C. LIBERALS OFFER 2010-THEME TO ELECTION-READY THRONE SPEECH

The British Columbia Government's Speech from the Throne, a document written by the government of premier Gordon Campbell to outline it's agenda during the coming legislative session, says today that one of its major goals by 2010 is to make the province "the healthiest jurisdiction to ever host the Olympics." In fact, the 2010 Games was a theme to which it returned on several occasions during the Speech.

The speech, read by the Queen's representative to British Columbia, Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo, says that, "Without a doubt, we can achieve the great goal of leading North America in healthy living and physical fitness. Your government will establish a sweeping new health and fitness program for all British Columbians. A major new initiative called Act Now will soon be launched in partnership with others. Act Now will be the most comprehensive health promotion program of its kind in North America. Your government will act now to increase by 20% the proportion of British Columbians who are physically active. It will act now to reduce by 20% the proportion of British Columbians who are obese or overweight. It will act now to reduce by another 10% the prevalence of tobacco use. And it will act now to increase by 20% the proportion of British Columbians who eat the recommended daily level of fruit and vegetables. Through these measures, by 2010, B.C. will become the healthiest jurisdiction to ever host the Olympics."

The Speech from the Throne, traditionally heavy on positive news and light on specifics, which will be introduced during the legislative session itself, adds that there will also be additional money budgeted for 2010-related tourism marketing in 2005. "The 2010 Olympics will open that gateway to literally billions of visitors and viewers around the world. Your government is making the most of that opportunity. It is doubling the funding for Tourism B.C. and giving the Union of B.C. Municipalities a further C$25 million to draw new tourists to every region of our province. It is creating new Circle Routes and a Spirit of 2010 Trail system to provide visitors with additional opportunities to see more communities and all the regions of the province. The goal is to double tourism revenues within a decade. New steps will be taken this month to benefit regional tourism across our province and to showcase the best of B.C. to the world."

There will also be funding to start work on the 2010-related "cultural Olympiad", which involves the arts in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Speech says, "New investments and programs will be launched to support and celebrate our diverse heritage in music, art, culture and sport. New initiatives to encourage support for arts and creative endeavours will build on recent investments to prepare our province for the Cultural Olympiad in 2010."

The government even invoked the spirit of the Olympics in the conclusion of its speech today in Victoria, "The 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics will help connect us all within our province and to other nations around the world. It has helped launch us forward into a decade of unsurpassed promise. The spirit of 2010 is the spirit of British Columbia. It is the spirit of global harmony, and pride of place and heritage. It is the spirit of aspiration and human endeavour. It is the spirit of achievement and possibility that now burns bright within our province and will light the golden decade ahead. Look ahead, to 2010 and beyond, to the province we will build together."

The B.C. government is facing an election on May 17 and whatever work on the goals of its Throne Speech it can get done before the Legislature is dissolved April 19 will be aimed at aiding its re-election possibilities.

RESOURCES

The full Speech from the Throne is here:
http://www.legis.gov.bc.ca/37th6th/4-8-37-6.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 8, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #812
CBC OFFERED US$90 MILLION FOR BROADCAST RIGHTS; VANOC MASTER PLAN PUSHES INTO BC ELECTION ENVELOPE; VANOC SUPPORT SO FAR ALL LOCAL

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The CBC, which has broadcast the Olympics to Canadian audiences since 1996 and will continue to do so until 2008, offered US$90 million for the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Games, on the basis that it didn't think the Olympics would be "auctioned off to the highest bidder," according to one CBC source, saying that the public broadcaster gambled that "competence and quality of coverage [would have] been the main factors in the IOC's decision." A CTV/Rogers consortium won the bid yesterday for US$153 million. As Rob Brodie, a reporter for the Ottawa Sun newspaper put it, "In the end, money didn't just talk, it shouted." By the way, we mentioned the initial coverage for the CTV/Rogers bid at about 4,000 hours for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics; the actual amount in their proposal was 4,158 hours over both Games on multiple networks. The coverage in 2010 involves 22 hours per day on the main CTV network, with the rest of the coverage coming from The Sports Network, Rogers Sportsnet, the Outdoor Life Network, the Omni multi-cultural channels and the Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network. Included are 550 hours of French-language coverage on the French-language RDS and TQS networks.
For those of you keeping track of who's on time and who's not, and with what, the latest word from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is that it's master business plan is now likely to be completed by sometime in May. As of last November, the plan was to have been completed by April, a tight, but comfortable deadline for the provincial government. If it's delayed it will be interesting to see the timing of its completion, because that will determine who will be approving it. The provincial government, which is on the financial hook if things go over budget, has approval over the business plan (as does the federal government), and there's a provincial election May 17, with the B.C. Liberal Party unlikely to get the same kind of landslide result over the opposition New Democratic Party the Liberals obtained in the last election. Even more intriguing is the fact that there will be political urgency to get the provincial government to sign off on it before the election, to hedge Liberal (and VANOC) bets on the outcome of the election. But that means Victoria's review of the document will become election fodder, as the provincial election campaign will be in full swing starting April 19. Speaking of the election, keep in mind that there are several political appointees from the provincial government on the VANOC Board of Directors, who will also be eying their jobs as the election looms. In any event, once VANOC's business plan is approved, VANOC will be responsible for providing quarterly updates to the plan, including forecasts of revenues and expenditures. Any changes of C$5 million or more to the business plan will require the prior written consent of both governments.
From the Bank Rolls R Us Department: So far, the support of VANOC is all B.C., despite the legendary largesse of the Canadian government. According to figures released by the B.C. government's Olympic Games Secretariat, Victoria has turned over C$106 million in capital contributions to VANOC; C$51 million of that went to venue spending, and C$55 million went to the Legacy Endowment Fund, which will be used to operate the Whistler Sliding Centre, the Whistler Nordic Centre and the Whistler Athletes Village complex after the Games are over. That's about a third of Victoria's total commitment in those areas. It's also turned over C$200,000 on security aspects, but it's commitment over the next few years in that category is C$87.5 million, so it's only just getting started. Total equivalent federal commitment in all of these direct-cost categories is C$410 million. Total amount turned over to VANOC by November from the federal government: C$0.00.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 8, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #808
HQ SPACE REQUIREMENTS EXPECTED TO BE 180,000 SQUARE FEET BY 2008

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has revamped its strategy for dealing with its office-space requirements over the next five or six years, and it's now looking for a "tenant representative" service to help it implement its new strategy, with the request they use traditional and "non-traditional creative solutions" in doing the job.

Last December, VANOC expected to be moving its 20,000 square-foot headquarters from the two floors of an office tower in downtown Vancouver when its lease expires at the end of this coming December, because it'll be too crowded (there are now 75 staff at the headquarters). It still expects to be moving under the new strategy, so it needs to start looking now for somebody to help it find new office space. A couple of months ago, it said the new space should preferably be contiguous, but it was willing to look at various floors in a cluster of nearby buildings somewhere in Vancouver's downtown core. Basically, that part hasn't changed.

Now, though, procurement manager Jim Birnholdt says that as it will be growing to about 900 people at its headquarters (plus another 300 full-timers in various other places), it will need about 180,000 square feet of office space by 2008, which, he says, will be the peak requirement for office space leading up to the launch of the Games in February, 2010. Just after the end of the Paralympic portion of the Games, by the end of March, 2010, virtually all of those people will be out of a job, and only a wind-up staff requiring about 8,000 square feet of office until the end of 2010 will be needed.

Birnholdt adds, however, "As the team moves closer to staging the Games in 2010, it's anticipated there may be additional space requirements above and beyond corporate office space... for volunteer teams, warehousing, public/retail space and raw land for parking and/or temporary staging." And, he notes there may be even more types of space required as the need becomes more apparent. In addition, there is now a desire that the office space, according to Birnholdt, "be close to the federal, provincial and city [of Vancouver] secretariats, as well as the RCMP security planning group."

That's a relatively difficult set of circumstances to satisfy. The federal secretariat is headquartered in Ottawa and the provincial one in Victoria, although they both have Vancouver offices in the downtown core, not far from VANOC's current office location in the 1000-block West Pender St. The RCMP's headquarters is in an office tower in south Vancouver, about a 20-minute drive from the downtown core, although at last word, there were just over a dozen RCMP officers working on security and planning out of an office in VANOC's headquarters.

Birnholdt says, however, the new headquarters space for VANOC needs to be within an eight-kilometre radius of the "Burrard [Street] business corridor" and that it's essential that it be close to public transit lines, for pragmatic reasons, and also because of VANOC's commitment of sustainability and environmental responsibility that it made to the International Olympic Committee when it was bidding to host the Games.

Birnholdt says that the current schedule calls for VANOC's strategic master business plan to be completed by May, and it will be provided to the tenant representative to help them arrange space. It will include the standards and requirements, the adjacency needs, furniture standards and typical office-layout plans.

For efficiency, the tenant representative will also be allowed to provide sub-leasing services so other firms can temporarily use premises VANOC doesn't immediately need, providing, of course, that they fully understand they need to be out when VANOC needs the space. There's also a batch of consulting work that will be available in connection with administering the leasing once the requirements are sewn up, so the work could go on for quite a while.

In addition, Birnholdt says, some of its corporate partners -- the major firms with which it will be doing business via sponsorships or other arrangements -- will likely have a need for space during the lead-up to the Games, and they'll likely need that space close to VANOC's headquarters. So, the tenant representative could also end up with additional work, depending on how things go.

The Request for Proposals closes on February 18.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 8, 2005

Monday, February 07, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #811
PART 3 OF THE SERIES "60,000 MILESTONES" - HOW VANOC'S DIVISIONS LINE UP AND SHARE ITS 64 FUNCTIONS

This is part 3 of a detailed look inside the planning process of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The series will provide an overview of the planning process as well as outline the distinct organization and life-cycle of the 2010 Games in Vancouver. It's based on comments by Marti Kulich, the director of Project Management for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).

VANOC's project-management department manages the benchmarks of most of what the organization will do over the years from now throughout the lead-up to the Games, during the Games themselves, until it begins to decommission the Games in the latter part 2010, and as it either turns over or returns the venues to those organizations that will be responsible for them after VANOC winds up. "The current master plan has about 60,000 milestones during the course [before, during and after] the Games," he says. "We look at the plan, the actuals, and the corrective action that needs to be taken if there's a deviation, and we report that back to senior management."

In this part of our series, Kulich talks about VANOC's eight divisions, all of which are represented by a senior vice-president, or soon will be, and who report to CEO John Furlong. They include:

Services & Planning (the senior vice-president is Terry Wright), which includes such service functions as accommodation for the Olympic family, as well as ceremonies, but also such mundane items as cleaning, waste removal at the like;
Sport & Paralympics (Cathy Priestner), which deals with everything an athlete or supporting staff encounter;
General Counsel (Keith Bradshaw), which deals with all legal aspects;
Human Resources (Donna Wilson, which includes volunteers & accreditation;
Revenue, Marketing & Communications (Dave Cobb), which involves revenue generation, such as sponsorship and ticketing, and every aspect that deals with the look, feel and image of the 2010 Games;
Venue Development (Steve Matheson), which deals with all aspects of getting all the sport and non-sport venues ready for the Games and returning them, after the Games, to their legacy functions if that's the plan for them;
Technology (hiring underway now, not yet appointed), which will oversee networking and telecommunications, and the technical aspects of broadcasting; and,
Finance (vice-president John McLaughlin).

Kulich, in this part also talks about how VANOC's 64 functions -- such as security, transportation, ceremonies, etc. -- are apportioned within the organization, and how time affects both the activity within the functions and the delivery of the products and programs by those functions.

"Over the course of the Games, functions move between divisions. I'll give you an example. In the 1994 Commonwealth Games, I was responsible for the Opening and Closing ceremonies. First we reported to Communications for about six weeks, then we reported to the vice-president of Finance. That was because he was, during Expo 86 [a Vancouver transportation exposition] had a keen interest in ceremonies and was the perfect person for the job. So, what happens in an organization like VANOC, over time, the functions will move back and forth as necessary between divisions, so we can deliver Games to the best of our ability, using the resources as best as possible," he says.

Kulcih notes that Paralympics, in Cathy Priestner's brief, is dealt with by VANOC as a single unit. "All the planning for the Paralympics goes into this Paralympics portfolio, and each one of us, whether they're working on Culture & Ceremonies or Catering, if it has something to do with the Paralympics, our input goes to that portfolio."

The planner says Accreditation is a major function all on its own, even though it reports to Human Resources's Donna Wilson. "All the athletes, all the media, all the volunteers, all the security forces -- thousands of people -- get accredited, so we've placed that, currently, under Human Resources because, for one reason or another, all these people end up dealing with Human Resources."

Kulich says that VANOC, like other similar organizations, will use some in-house people to oversee contractors and those contractors, in turn, will oversee subcontractors. "Within a Games structure, there are certain things you bring in-house for deliver, as opposed to contracting out. We'll build an in-house creative department that does the design and development of the huge amount of things we have to produce. Publications for example, such as programs for all the events and ceremonies that we'll do. There will be all kinds of guides -- spectator guides, and they have to be done in more than one language -- English and French at least, and probably another language or two. All of that has to be designed. Every day, they have to have a new start list. They have to look great, they have to be clear and easy to read, they have to be correct. Every day, all the information has to be collected and input -- it's a massive task. And the in-house creative will be responsible for designing the "Look" program -- anything you see, every design element of what makes you identify something with the Games -- comes out of [the function] Image & Creative. They in turn will work with graphics houses and other merchants in the community, but we, as an organization, retain control over the look."

Steve Matheson's Venues division looks after all the aspects of the venues -- "building, operating, maintaining. Fitting them out. Doing what we're engaged in planning right now, the Olympics overlay. It asks questions such as, where does the media go? Do they have a separate entrance? Where are the press areas in the building? Where are the spectators areas? How do we fulfull all the audio-video requirements? Where does television go? Where are the judges going to sit? What's the field of play? Who accesses the field of play? All of those questions and hundreds more are involved in the overlay. All of those requirements are literally overlain atop the venue, so we have an understanding of how that venue is going to operate."

Kulich points out that millions of dollars will be spent on technology for the 2010 Games. "Everything from cellphones, pages, computers -- and you can guess that the wireless applications that we're seeing now, well, five years down the road, in 2010, are going to be far more significant. I don't know what they're going to be; I just know that I, as a planner, will be subject to them and they're going to come to me through the Technology division. With broadcasting, interestingly, the Internet opens up a whole can of worms. Broadcasting on the Internet is a totally different thing than over the air, or over a cable channel, and you're seeing broadcasters struggle with it. What can you do, and what is not allowed, on the Internet?"

He smiles when he talks about the Finance division, which deals with the organization's significant money flows, from governments as well as from sponsorships and ticketing, and bill payments. "This is how we get paid, and how we pay people. And, within Finance, you have the whole payments side and its logistics, so the money is there are the right time and the right place, when we're dealing with construction of venues, for instance."

Kulich notes that even though there are 64 functions, not all of them are in operation at any given time, and not all are in operation now. "For example, we don't care about cleaning and waste-removal right now. We've got nothing to clean. Sure, we're planning for it, but it's far too early for us to worry about the detailed planning of it, or work out the supply requirements for it, other than in a broad way, using examples from previous Games. Why spend the money now, and do it when it's much closer to when we need those supplies and those arrangements."

Kulich says the management of information within VANOC is a massive task overall. "We have a responsibility to the IOC to provide a lot of information to the Games Knowledge Service. It's a benefit to us at this point, because it allows us to access information about how previous Games were run, but we're also required to give them all of our information, and we're designing our information system from the ground up. We've been working with all of our Games users to find out what works for them, what are their information needs, so we can build something they can use, for procurement and other levels, that actually meets the needs of the people out in the field. And I know how important it is, because I curse whenever I try to use a system that's not designed for my needs. We don't want to go top-down with this. We aren't taking the approach where senior management has told us to go out and buy some big-box, whiz-bang, do-all, be-all system that will be of absolutely no value to people who are going to be using it. Instead, our system will be churning out reports, management reports, daily, monthly, annual reports.

In the next part of our series, Kulich talks about VANOC's road map for getting to the 2010 Games.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 7, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #810
BELL WINS 2010/2010 BROADCASTING RIGHTS IN CANADA FOR RECORD-SETTING US$153 MILLION

So far, it's Bell's 2010 Winter Games.

Bell Canada and its CTV television network, leading a consortium of private broadcasters that include Rogers Communications, has won the Canadian broadcasting rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games for C$192 million. That's the second major sponsorship Bell has won in connection with the the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC); last November, it won the 2010 telecommunications sponsorship for a record-setting deal worth C$200 million to VANOC.

For the first time in Olympic history, a Winter Olympics, with the broadcasting deal, has commanded a higher proportion of the bid than a Summer Games. Of the C$192 million, C$113 million, or 59%, will go to the 2010 Winter Olympics and, at least for the moment, 49% of that amount will become available to VANOC . That traditional percentage breakout has yet to be negotiated with the IOC by VANOC.

Also, Bell expects the 2010 Games to be the first Olympics to be fully broadcast in high-definition television, noting that it is the leader in high-definition production in Canada, and "likely" the leader in high-definition transmission now. Also, for the first time, Internet broadcasting rights have been bundled with the Canadian package, though it is not yet clear how that will be reconciled with Internet broadcasting rights assigned to Europe and US broadcasters, but Bell said that was an important consideration for it in negotiating the bid. When the CBC broadcast the Athens Summer Olympics, it was obliged to halt Internet transmission of its broadcast feeds because it clashed with NBC's Internet rights, which were negotiated several years ago.

The Canadian broadcasting bundle is worth about C$6 per capita for the two sets of Games, compared with about C$9 per capita that NBC paid for the U.S. rights, and about C$2 per capita that Europe paid for the rights in 51 countries, except for Italy. So far, VANOC has netted about C$419 million for broadcast rights, 5% of which placed into an IOC retention fund, now at about C$22 million. That fund will be held by the IOC (with its accumulated interest) until the Games are completed, and will form part of the clean-up in funding exchanges between the IOC and VANOC when the 2010 Games are wrapped up.

The consortium outbid the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, although the amount of the CBC's bid was not immediately revealed. However, the CBC paid $160 million for five Olympics the last time Games packages were available, with C$35 million of that going to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, which will be held a year from now. That multi-game agreement with the IOC ends with the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008. The Winter Games in Calgary in 1988 were worth C$4.3 million.

The Bell bid is backed by CTV, Rogers, The Sports Network (TSN) and their French-language equivalents, RDS and TQS, as well as a wide network of 47 Rogers radio stations and a handful of magazines, such as Outdoor Life. Bell says it will broadcast a minimum of 22 hours per day of 2010 Olympic coverage on CTV affiliates during the Games, with a strong focus on following the development of the type of winter sports that will be featured during the Games throughout the years leading up to the Games. It is committing to providing cash and support to national sports federations, along with broadcasts of World Cup events and Olympic trials, spotlighting athletes and their sports federations involved in the 2010 Games. All told, Bell says it is committing to broadcast a total of about 4,000 hours of Olympic coverage in the 2010 and 2012 Games, which will be awarded to one of five cities this July by the IOC. By comparison, NBC's coverage of the much larger 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, using its stable of cable channels, aired about 1,200 hours of Olympic television.

The thrust of the coverage will attempt, according to Bell, to provide each sport that Canadians want, in its entirety, live. To that end, it will aim to provide the Opening and Closing ceremonies live to air, and as much of the major 2010 Games coverage live and within prime time as possible. It will do this by devoting digital channels, which Bell expects will be much more robust in Canada by 2010, to specific types of sports in the Games, and make those channels available to all parts of Canada via cable networks. In addition, it expects much more robust broadcasting by cell phone technology of breaking sports news and medal alerts.

The International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who made the announcement today in Lausanne Switzerland, says that, separate from the broadcast package, Bell is also making a $25 million commitment, apparently out of its telecommunications sponsorship, to supporting the "Own The Podium" program of the Canadian Olympic Committee, largely written by VANOC senior vice-president of Sport, Cathy Priestner. That appears to be the first time that figure has been released.

Rogers says that the seven radio stations it currently owns that are in the Vancouver-Whistler-Squamish corridor will likely be broadcasting Olympic coverage 24 hours a day, starting in February 2010.

The Bell bid also focused on French-language coverage, both throughout Quebec and through its French-language facilities, which it says currently reach 98% of French-language speakers both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, but adds that if CBC's French-language service, Radio-Canada, is interested, it is willing to offer a deal that would allow Radio-Canada to carry Olympic coverage in the same way that it currently makes hockey broadcasts available to the network.

Richard Carrion, the IOC executive who negotiated the deal, will now turn his attention to similar broadcast rights for Australia, followed, in order, by Asia (Japan, Korea and, apparently as a group, the rest of Asia's countries), Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, a process that he expects will take another two years to finalize.

Perhaps ironically, the announcement of the Bell deal was made via an IOC international teleconference that was full of whistles, pops, echoes and feedback.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 7, 2005

Friday, February 04, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #809
GROUP LOSES FIRST COURT SKIRMISH OVER USE OF "2010" TRADEMARK

The first court challenge of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC)'s ability to trademark the number "2010" has been dismissed, but it might yet appear in another court.

The EcoTourism 2010 Society of Prince George, an organization that's in the process of becoming incorporated, asked a small-claims court in that north-central B.C. city to allow the organization to use the number in its name, after VANOC said it couldn't. But Provincial Court Judge K. D. Skilnick said a small-claims court doesn't have the jurisdiction to deal with the matter.

The case showed that the provincial government's Name Registry office was given orders by VANOC to prevent registration of non-profit or charitable organizations that have the number "2010" in the name. The Eco-Tourism Society, according to the judge, made "no claim to anything related to Olympics or even anything to do with the southern half of BC," and lawyer C. Bester, representing the group, said it should be registered because he didn't think VANOC had the right to block it.

Judge Skilnick, besides saying he didn't have the jurisdiction and noting that the B.C. Supreme Court does, also pointed out another problem -- a kind of Catch-22. He noted that the case involved an attempt to register the society, and that it was blocked from being registered with 2010 in the name, but until it was registered, he said it wasn't a legal entity, and so it didn't have standing in the court to prosecute its claim.

On the other hand, the lack of incorporation actually helped. As the judge put it, "Normally, the successful party to an action is awarded its costs. In this case I choose to depart from that practice. The individuals representing the Claimant [the Society] appeared to be motivated in bringing these proceedings, not out of a sense of financial gain, but by a sincere desire to benefit their community. Although they may be misguided in matters of law, the sincerity of their motives was not questioned by any of the defendants [VANOC and the B.C. government]. The defendants have also acted properly, and with courtesy and civility throughout, and no criticism of them should be inferred. However in light of my comments about the claimant's motives and the economic imbalance between the parties, I choose to exercise my discretion in this matter by ordering that each party be responsible for their own costs under the Small Claims Act. An order for costs against the Claimant would be of no use in any event, given that I have found that it is not a "person" at law."

There's no word on whether the claimants intend to further challenge the trademark as individuals
RESOURCES

The full decision is here:
http://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/judgments/pc/2005/00/p05_0023.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 4, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #807
FURLONG TO START VANCOUVER CONFERENCE ON SECURITY, TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY

A half-hour speech by the CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), John Furlong, on February 16 in Vancouver will kick off a day-long conference break-out session on geotechnology and how it's used for security, transportation and land-use planning in the Olympics, including the 2010 Games.

The session is part of a three-day conference of the geotechnology industry, which focuses on acquiring, analyzing and providing information about geography and geology to others, and particularly focuses on the use of GIS satellites and receivers to pin-point the location of various geographical features and locations.

Following Furlong's speech -- which is expected to be a generic overview of the 2010 Winter Games -- the conference will get down to business, starting with a presentation by Dave Busser, director of Corporate and Business Development for a company called ESRI of Redlands, California about security systems. Busser was chief information officer for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Those Games used GIS, but he expects that there is a greater role GIS can be expected to play in future Olympics. But also involved in the presentations that morning will be Michael Fene, the senior scientist in charge of Science Applications International Corporation of San Diego and Ron Langhelm, the GIS Coordinator for the department of Homeland Security in Bothell, Washington, an American city just south of Vancouver. During the Salt Lake Games, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a former independent American agency that became part of the new Department of Homeland Security in March 2003, was on site as part of the security set-up. A small team of GIS specialists supported FEMA's geospatial requirements for the event. They'll be talking about how they were used.

That's to be followed by a session on 2010 Planning that includes Peter Fuglem, the director of the HPR Protection Program of Victoria, B.C., who will be talking about real-time emergency management via satellite; David Tudhope from the B.C. government's ministry of Sustainable Resource Management office in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb, who will be talking about land- and resource-management planning on the Sea-to-Sky Highway, which links Vancouver with Whistler. And the session includes a discussion about cross-order Security from Ian Becking, the geomatics manager for the federal government's Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada in Ottawa.

The afternoon session will focus on Olympics transportation and logistics, and the roles maps play, as outlined by Paolo Orione, who is the head of Transportation for the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, next year. He suggests that "in an extremely complex project such as the Olympics, it is a strategic issue to maintain coherent information and to show the different levels of dynamic data visually on a map for the decision makers. He notes that it's the first time that middle manages in Italy have used geospatial technology to support a wide range of decisions in organizing the Games. "Our daily routine is the massive production of maps with the different transport networks for management, the location of areas for holding, parking, snow removal and emergencies. Special projects are the production of the guides and booklets that can be put on the Organizing Committee's intranet, showing the location of volunteers for transport networks, the location of official accommodations to support the arrivals and departures plans for the Olympic family, the exact position of the underground network of sensors along the ski tracks, the huge effort of our studies on the environmental impact of the Games."

W. Brandt Howard, the president and CEO of CompassCom, Inc., from Centennial, Colorado, says geotechnology is now a key component for automatic vehicle location and managing vehicles. One of the first implementations of a truly interoperable AVL system used simultaneously by multiple organizations occurred during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Throughout the games, security and police tracked the real-time locations of 150 local police cruisers and up to 500 shuttle vans carrying athletes to and from venues across Utah. Equipment in each vehicle transmitted precise location information to digital maps on dispatch centre computer screens at several locations. If any athlete shuttle strayed from its assigned route, an alarm went off in the dispatch centre. Howard says no problems arose, but if there had been an emergency, dispatchers could have sent the nearest police cruiser to the shuttle in trouble.

Compass's system is still being used; in the run-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics, it was bought by the Utah Highway Patrol and Valley Emergency Communications Center, but now tracks several police fleets in the Utah Front Range, and the company hopes that eventually thousands of police vehicles from different agencies will be tracked so that the public-safety dispatchers of several agencies can track several fleets simultaneously to co-ordinate response to a major emergency. That session will also include more information on the Sea-to-Sky Highway planning from the provincial government's Tudhope.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 4, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #806
TOP COPS AT VANOC HQ; MORE 2010 VISITORS TO ARRIVE IN VANCOUVER; WHISTLER HUNTS FOR MUNICIPAL EXECUTIVES WITH 2010 ROLE

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The main executives of VANOC's burgeoning security force are two veteran police officers. The managing director of Operations and Integration is Guy Lodge, while Bob Herman is the RCMP's chief operating officer for the planning team. Lodge has been involved in a range of Olympic, Commonwealth Games and Pan-American Games since 1993. He's a venue-overlay specialist, also involved in venue operations and pageantry security, and he was also a consultant on the 2010 Commonwealth Games bid by Hamilton, Ontario.
Dr. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, is just the first of a parade of senior Olympics visitors to Vancouver during the next few months. Next month, VANOC will hosts Phil Craven, the president of the International Paralympic Committee, in Vancouver and Whistler; like Rogge, he will get an update on 2010 Paralympic Games planning. And the IOC Co-ordination Commission for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, led by Rene Faisel, who was with Rogge through the president's his trip to Canada, will be in Vancouver in April for its annual meeting and will also receive a detailed update on VANOC's plans. These commissions are set up for every Olympics, and conduct regular inspections of the franchises.
Whistler has started a job hunt for two senior municipal executives who will be influential in the planning of the 2010 Winter Olympics in the resort municipality, particularly during the development of the Whistler Athletes Village and the Whistler Media Centre. The Transportation & Drainage Manager will be involved, according to the job description, "in coordinating and administering the transportation planning, roads operation and draining functions of the Municipality. This position is accountable for the engineering aspects of all matters affecting the flow and safety of pedestrians and traffic. This position also provides managerial direction to the various functional areas within the Department and is involved in transportation planning for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games in Whistler." Meanwhile, the Manager of Utilities, the description says, "will oversee the municipal operations and capital projects in the areas of water supply, sewage collection and treatment, solid waste disposal and recycling... [and]... will be involved in significant infrastructure expansion projects to accommodate increased development in Whistler, including that associated with the 2010 Olympic Games." The window of opportunity closes February 28.

RESOURCES
The two Whistler municipal job descriptions and contact info for resumes are at the links below. The Transportation Manger job is at...
http://workopolis.com/job/work/7289020

... And the Utilities Manger position is detailed here:
http://workopolis.com/job/work/7289012

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 4, 2005

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #805
VANOC ORGANIZING SUPPORT FOR GAMES VIA SPORTS MINISTERS; BUDGETS TO SHOW CASH FLOW FOR SPORTS THIS MONTH; ROGGE RALLIES THE TROOPS

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has been working the phone lines to raise support in provinces of Canada outside of British Columbia. VANOC CEO John Furlong has held a teleconference with the sports ministers of every province about the importance of having each one involved in supporting the 2010 Games, to ensure it would be seen by the public as having national support. Furlong says, as well, that when he was with IOC president Dr. Jacques Rogge in Montreal on Monday, they met with Quebec premier Jean Charest, who, Furlong says, expressed strong support for the 2010 Games. Furlong says there will be more people from VANOC going to eastern Canada because of the strength of corporate support there. "Up to today," he says, "the largest potential corporate contributors to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games are all in eastern Canada -- the ones we've been talking to so far. This is very significant. But that corporate support is only going to come if the project is for the whole country. You can't expect large investments from Ontario and Quebec unless the Games are going to be for everybody [in Canada]." Furlong adds that, "It's challenging to take the story of the Games across Canada, because of how big it is. That's why it was so important for the president of the Games to go to Montreal first [on his Canadian trip] and talk about the relevance and how important is is for the Canadian spirit. We've been to eastern Canada since last March, one or the other of us, 20 or 30 times, talking with sponsors, speaking to groups, trying to really get the country inspired about the significance of the Games."
This month, VANOC and the rest of the high-performance sports industry will find out how much money will be flowing through their systems from the federal and B.C. governments. The fiscal years of both the B.C. and federal governments start April 1. The B.C. government's budget for the coming fiscal year is due to be make public February 15, and the federal government's will be table in Parliament on February 23. Buried in the numbers will be support for the Canadian Olympic Committee's "Own the Podium" plan for helping Canadian winter athletes achieve 35 medals at the 2010 Olympic Games. VANOC says it will raise half the C$110 million required over five years from sponsors and other interests, if governments will come up with the other half. If there is support from the government side, look for amounts in those budgets that total about C$20 million this month. "We're encouraging corporate Canada to be engaged in [supporting] 'Own the Podium' in every category of discussion we're having now, there's interest in doing that. Our view is that we will be able to secure quite a bit of funding from corporate Canada to support the program."
Every employee at VANOC's operations got a personal word with Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, during his visit this week. Rogge, when he had a few moments away from the spotlight, went from desk to desk at VANOC and spoke with each staffer. Then, a few minutes later, addressed them as a group for a pep talk, telling them about the unique opportunity they had to "serve their country" in organizing the 2010 Games.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 3, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #804
RCMP SIGNIFICANTLY EXPAND OFFICE AT VANOC HEADQUARTERS, SAVING "MILLIONS"

Just over a dozen members of the RCMP, Canada's national police force, are now working out of an office at the Vancouver headquarters of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), and they've already saved VANOC "millions" of dollars.

The Mounties are the command authority of an integrated security structure set up by VANOC that is dealing with security-related matters in all aspects of the development of the Games. Their role is to work with the Vancouver City police, West Vancouver police the Canadian military and Canada's spy agency, CSIS, as well as with various security consultants, in working out the protocols and reviewing the designs of VANOC's venues. The RCMP are also the police agencies that patrol Richmond and Whistler.

The section, which started with just two officers last fall, has expanded to 13 as the amount of work required has increased. Officers are now reviewing in detail, plans for the Whistler Sliding Centre and the Whistler Nordic Centre, which are now in the design stage in preparation for construction starting about June 1.

VANOC CEO John Furlong says that one of IOC president Jacques Rogge's major interests during his visit to Vancouver was how security was being organized for 2010, and he was fully briefed. "He likes the fact that [the RCMP] have already started to work with our planners, looking at venues. He liked what he heard, and felt we are taking it seriously, and that the security function is running [although] we're five years out."

As VANOC staff came to understand how security was handled at Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics, they decided there would be one central command over security for the 2010 Games. Furlong says, "That brings efficiency within the organization, provided they could pull all the other agencies together. So far, that's working well for us. We're focused on seeing security as an opportunity rather than the other way around. We don't want the Games to be about security; we want it to be about sport. So, there's a chance for us in how we organize this to really do something that's going to reflect well on Canada and the quality of the RCMP."

Furlong says the impact of the RCMP's early involvement has already had a significant impact on the delivery of the 2010 Games. "When you look at a building site, and you're trying to make a decision about how to organize the site and how to place a venue, such as the [Vancouver Athlete] village on it, having the RCMP review the site and the plans in terms of how you secure it, and how you're going to manage security, so that you can, in effect, protect those spaces, it's very important. Our feeling is that based on their participation so far, millions of dollars have been saved, and we're in the very early stages."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 3, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #803
IOC TO SEE VANOC LOGO WHEN CANADA SEES IT; FURLONG HITS 5-YEAR-OUT MARK IN PRINCE GEORGE; VANOC PROCUREMENT POLICY ON ITS WAY

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:

The CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) says the International Olympic Committee will "formally" see VANOC's new Games logo in April "only hours before" the rest of Canada sees it. John Furlong. The logo, chosen during a controversial competition that ended last fall, is still being vetted by a wide range of legal authorities in more than 200 countries around the world, and so it's appearance has been a closely guarded secret. Furlong also says there will be a large-scale launch of the logo, likely to be one of the most valuable branding commodities in Canada for the next decade. Furlong says the logo is "spectacular." Asked if it has all the colours of the Olympic rings in it, his response: "Nice try."
There will be several major events supported by VANOC in some way throughout the province connected with highlight the 5-years-out mark, although they won't all be on Saturday February 12. John Furlong confirms he'll be the keynote guest on February 11 at "The 2005 Winter Opportunities Summit" conference in Prince George, in northern British Columbia. It's a combined set of four major business and government conferences from February 9 to 12, that will include discussions about the business aspects of 2010 procurement, sport-hosting and legacies, among several others. On February 14, there will be a Board of Trade luncheon, similar to the event held last year, in which several athletes will receive financial assistance to prepare themselves for the 2010 Winter Games. That event will feature B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, Furlong and Marion Lay, the president & CEO, 2010 LegaciesNow. The B.C. athletes who will be honoured include Carly Grigg of Victoria, Paralympic alpine; Alycia Matthews of the town of Robson, women's hockey; Denny Morrison of Fort St. John, a speedskater; Steve Larsen of Vancouver, bobsleigh; and Brooke MacDonald also of Vancouver, who's involved in skeleton. There will also be an event in Whistler to mark the anniversary. Although he's supposed to be at the Vancouver Valentine's Day luncheon, Furlong was unaware of what was being done in Vancouver to mark the day.
VANOC is expected to release it's formal procurement policies within a month or so. Although it's not the first Winter Olympics to publish a sterilized procurement policy since the mudslinging that occurred during the run-up to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics -- that honour goes to the Torino Winter Olympics, which has had its own unique brand of procurement antics. But VANOC is the first North American venue since Salt Lake, and so a lot of businesses that will want to be doing business with VANOC and its related organizations, or the firms that win the main contracts, will have a good luck at the the procurement policy -- and how closely VANOC's performance matches it.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 3, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #802
TWO MAJOR VANOC SPONSORSHIP CATEGORIES UP FOR GRABS; VANOC ACCOUNTANTS LOOK AT TORINO; FURLONG - NO QUALMS SUPPORTING CANADIAN SPORT FOR 2010

Here are more three moguls we ran into today:

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is now working on setting two major national sponsorship categories: Automotive, and Financial Services. The two categories were released by the International Olympic Committee during discussions between IOC staff and VANOC's CEO, John Furlong, and his senior VP of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, Dave Cobb. The negotiations between the IOC and VANOC over the Master Marketing Agreement, which governs every aspect of the relationship between VANOC and the IOC over use of the branding, still continues as of today. Although both Cobb and Furlong are back in Vancouver after their trip to IOC headquarters for a week last month, phone calls discussions about the deal were still be made yesterday.
A VANOC financial team has just returned from a trip to Torino, Italy, where they discussed how best to prepare aspects of VANOC's master business plan and operational budget for the entire Games, which has several layers of approval to go through before it eventually lands on the desks of the IOC. Why Torino? The 2006 Winter Games organizing committee, TOROC, last fall won approval of its budget -- a process that nearly cost its CEO his job. Once it's prepared -- following discussions with various levels of government -- and management is finished with it, it'll go to VANOC's Board of Directors, and, from there, to the Executive Committee of the IOC. The business plan and operational budget will include revised estimates of revenues -- such as Canadian sponsorship expectations in light of the Bell Canada blockbuster and ticket-sale hopes -- and expenses, such as what venues are much more likely to cost now that VANOC's senior vice-president of Venues, Steve Matheson, has had a chance to look at schedules and how venue-construction and reconstruction will actually happen. Furlong puts it this way: "All of that has to be included, verified and supported by our Board, then the IOC will look at it to see if those are accurate estimates." Once it gets to the IOC, the significant negotiations will begin, because VANOC needs to negotiate the actual split of broadcasting sponsorship revenues for its Games. By that point the revenue that will come from the key broadcasting markets -- the U.S., Europe and Canada -- will have been confirmed, and, while separate IOC talks to settle the smaller markets -- Asia, Africa and Latin America -- will still be underway for all of this year and into 2006, the split of the funding from the key markets will dwarf revenue from any other source. Typically, the IOC and an organizing committee split broadcast revenues 51/49 in favour of the IOC, so it can fund its international sports development programs, but VANOC will want as much as it can get to ensure B.C. taxpayers won't be out of pocket for all of its development work and, says, Furlong, "So we can deliver the Games to the quality that we said we will." Furlong says those broadcasting negotiations are still someway off. "It's not going to happen soon. It could start this year. It might. I think there might be some discussion this year, but I don't think it will be settled."
Furlong, speaking at length for the first time since the release of the "Own The Podium" program that offers a price tag and a blueprint for getting Canadian winter-sports athletes to the point where they can win 35 medals at the 2010 Olympics, says he has no moral or ethical qualms about using VANOC to raise money to support the plan, even though it's supposed to be putting on Games for the world. "Well, it's expected that the home country be properly prepared," he says. "The way I see it, our team sees it, our Board sees it, and, frankly, the Canadian Olympic Committee sees it, we have an obligation to try and bring about success for all Canadians. Canadians, across the country, will define success as how well prepared we will be, how we performed, whether we missed the opportunity. The focus is on Vancouver. We have some influence with sponsors and, we discovered, to be quite honest with you, that the whole country is really aware of this. In talking with sponsors, it's not a surprise. Everyone wants to be helpful."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 3, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #801
IOC TO CHOOSE 2012 CITY ON JULY 6; ROGGE'S NAME GAME; VANOC'S FURLONG PREDICTS THEME OF ROGGE'S VISIT

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The full session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says that it will meet from July 6 to 9 at Singapore's City Convention Centre. The first main order of business, on July 6, will be to choose the host city of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games from the five cities on the short list: Paris, New York, Moscow, London and Madrid. Each Candidate City will be given the opportunity to make a presentation in front of the session's delegates. Representatives of whichever city wins will come to Vancouver several times to work with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to see how it is preparing to host the Winter Games, and lessons that can be learned from those preparations.
For all the diplomacy that surrounded the Vancouver visit of Dr. Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, there was one thing that bugged him: nearly every broadcast reporter managed to mispronounce the Belgian's name. Rajee, Rawg and Roggee were heard from various parts of the reporter pack. Nope, nope and nope. He winced -- politely -- when one got it wrong twice in the same question. Finally, he said, In Flemish, my name means 'wheat.' You have to roll the r, and pronounce a soft g." R-r-r-r-r-oa-guh. "Sort of like the sound a klaxon makes when a submarine dives," speculated a scrum reporter sotto voce. Then Dr. Rogge, who is also fluent in English, Dutch, German and French added, "It's okay. You've got five years to get it right."
From our Whether Weather department: VANOC CEO John Furlong was asked, early in Dr. Rogge's visit, if he thought the relatively balmy, wet weather Vancouver has been experiencing during the last two weeks of January -- a month that featured about 10 days of an unusually cold, snowy snap -- would make a difference to the IOC president's view of Vancouver or Whistler's capability to host the 2010 Games. It was stunning how media interview after media interview, scrum after scrum, asked the question, hoping that Dr. Rogge might have some inkling as to what the weather would be like five years from now, when experienced local forecasters have difficulty with more than five days out. Mr. Furlong predicted, accurately, as it turned out, "The only difference it's going to make to him is in the number of questions he'll get asked about it."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 3, 2005

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #800
CANADIAN TV RIGHTS FOR 2010 SET FOR NEXT MONDAY; WHISTLER ABORIGINAL CUTURAL CENTRE PUSHED BY VANOC; IPC AND UN REACH SPORT-PROMOTION DEAL FOR DISABLED

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The International Olympic Committee is still on track to let Canadian broadcasters know on February 7 at IOC's headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, about which of essentially two broadcasting groups will win the bid for the Canadian TV rights to the 2010 Winter Games and the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. We should hear the news about mid-day in Canada. The IOC's team will be chaired by IOC President Jacques Rogge, who is in Whistler and Richmond on venue tours today, and led by IOC executive board member Richard L. Carrión. After the final meeting, the IOC will then announce who has been chosen for the lucrative rights. The IOC says it's using the same "fair and competitive tendering process for Canada" that it used to award the American broadcasting rights to the 2010 Games to NBC, and the European rights to a conglomerate of national TV stations. The process, says the IOC, is "designed to select the broadcasters that can best serve the ideals and interests of the Olympic Movement by ensuring that the coverage of the Olympic Games meets the highest possible standards and reaches the broadest possible audience." Rogge told Morgan:News:2010 while he was in Vancouver that he expects the balance of the awards for broadcasting rights for the 2010 Games to be completed by the end of this year, as negotiations with African, Asian and parts of Latin America are scheduled.
The Squamish and Lil'wat, two of the main aboriginal bands working with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) will announce a new partnership to support the development of the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. The announcement will occur as part of the Whistler tour for IOC president Rogge, who will be there as well. VANOC officials will take part because it is "facilitating" the partnership. The deal will outlined in the Fairmont Chateau Whistler's fancy Empress Ballroom . Among the VANOC people who will be on hand: John Furlong, CEO, VANOC and Chief Gibby Jacob of Squamish. Jacob is also on the VANOC Board of Directors. Other officials include Chief Leonard Andrew of the Lil'wat, who wasn't all that happy last month with VANOC's progress in resolving some of his issues with the recreational trail footprint of the Whistler Nordic Centre, and Whistler mayor Hugh O'Reilly.,
The International Paralympic Committee and the United Nations have reached a co-operation agreement to promote sport for the disabled. The president of the IPC, Phil Craven, made the announcement along with Adolf Ogi, the UN's special adviser on Sport for Development and Peace. Craven says the deal is designed, "to use the resources and experience of the UN and the IPC to promote the value of sport as a means for development for persons with a disability. [We] will also co-operate in developing sustainable partnerships for the IPC and the UN." The agreement, which comes as part of the UN's declaration of 2005 as the "International Year for Sport and Physical Education", will be signed Feb 11 at IPC's headquarters in Bonn, Germany. The two organizations are working on development of the first project under the agreement now, and they'll have more to say about it after the agreement is signed.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 2, 2005

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #799
ROGGE URGES CORPORATE SUPPORT OF 2010 WINTER GAMES TO PACKED BUSINESS AUDIENCE

The president of the International Olympic Committee urged corporate Canada to support the organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics, who are just now starting to open up their sponsorship categories.

Jacques Rogge received two standing ovations and five bursts of applause during a 30-minute speech to more than 1,000 executives and politicians who this afternoon packed a Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon meeting -- in the Hyatt Regency ballroom, sponsored by Bell Canada -- to the point where there was standing room only. And Rogge's presence was monitored by a dozen TV cameras and their matching national and international networks, along with about three dozen reporters representing radio, television and the Internet.

Those in the room listening to the speech included B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and his minister in charge of the province's 2010 interests, John Les; the head of the IOC's Committee overseeing the 2010 Winter Games, Rene Faisel, the chairman of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Jack Poole and his CEO, John Furlong; several members of VANOC's Board of Directors and several VANOC senior vice-presidents including Terry Wright (Planning), Steve Matheson (Venues) and Dave Cobb (Marketing, Revenue & Communications).

Rogge was quick to thank both the Board of Trade and Bell Canada, VANOC's telecommunications sponsor, for supporting the event, and said that it was because of corporate support, drawn to the marketing potential of the huge world-wide audiences who watched the Games on TV, that the Olympic Games was successful in being able to host the athletes from more than 200 countries, many of them developing nations that normally wouldn't be able to afford to send teams or equipment. Back in 1960, he said, the Olympics was what he called 'elitist', and only a handful of countries could afford to send athletes. Corporate sponsorship, he said, " allows for the democratization of the Games."

He also said that every person in the room to which he spoke would be called upon at some point during the next five years to be part of the team effort that he said would be required for VANOC to host a successful Games in 2010.

Security was also on his mind. As more than a dozen security officers in business suits patrolled the hallways and watched the proceedings, Rogge said, following discussions with Furlong about the status of the integrated security planning that is involved with the planning of venue construction, among other things, that security of spectators, athletes and organizers was one of the major keys to a successful event.

Rogge also referred -- and this is the second separate reference in advance of any announcement -- that Bell Canada had made what Rogge called "an extraordinary" donation to support the "Own the Podium" program, and he said that he was encouraged that, once budget discussions now underway were completed, that governments -- he wasn't specific about which levels -- would also be supporting the plan, which is designed to put Canada first in medal performances at the 2010 Games. He did, however, make reference earlier in the speech to the impending British Columbian provincial budget.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 1, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #798
ROGGE TO TALK WITH FURLONG ABOUT SECURITY, FINANCES

The CEO of the 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, John Furlong, says he will be talking about integrated security planning and budgetary matters with the president of the International Olympic Committee today.

Jacques Rogge is visiting Vancouver and Whistler today and tomorrow for the first time since awarding the 2010 bid, getting a whirlwind tour of some of the 2010 venues. He was met at Vancouver's International Airport last night, when he arrived from a day of meetings in Montreal, by Furlong, B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and the chairman of VANOC, Jack Poole, along with a host of news media and their cameras.

Today, he'll meet in private session with Furlong, meeting with Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell and city staff focused on the city's aspects of the 2010 Games, and speak to the Vancouver Board of Trade at a luncheon in his honour. Furlong says that he expects to talk with Rogge about security planning, report on the status of the Games -- construction of the first venues, he says, is on time -- and says that VANOC is also "working hard" on completing the VANOC business plan. He says, for instance, that he expects sponsorship budgets, at least in the national component, is expected to be met. That was helped considerably by Bell Canada's sponsorship agreement in telecommunications that was valued at about C$200 million by VANOC in equipment, co-marketing and about C$90 million in cash spread over the years between now and 2010.

Rogge is also the senior IOC person that approves changes in venues, and it's expected that some discussions will be held about how some of the Whistler-area skiing events are being moved to a single location, and the recent VANOC Board of Directors decision to make the ski jumps temporary, instead of permanent after discovering they would not be viable commercially after the Games are finished with them.

Furlong says that, once the VANOC budget is complete, he wants to talk to the IOC about TV-rights revenue-sharing. And, he also says, "We have a whole bunch of sponsorship elements that we're working on right now, and we're going to achieve all the elements."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on February 1, 2005

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