August 2004 Archives

This is a very important question for management people. And a lot is to be learnt everytime such events happen. Studying events like Olympics can help us understand the way people form a committee or forum where they decide on events, or the way people coordinate between each other coming from different cultures, the problems of language, the problems of skill, and so on.

The International Olympics Committee is the body which coordinates the idea of olympics with the hosts. And in clear terms they call it 'The Olympic Movement' rather than an organization or a company. The committee is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that works in partnership with various sports associations and similar movements.

As said, the IOC is,
* Non-governmental (so no biasing)
* Non-profit (so no commercialization intended other than promoting the olympic movement itself)

The IOC organizes the event with a simple idea:

--Vote a host,
--Get into an agreement with the host for maintaining the committee's interests and policy of the event,
--Allow the host to plan and organize the event at his cost,
--Help the host in getting all resources for hosting the event.
--Supervise and monitor the process, while checking whether the agreement is breached.

And this explains how the IOC has been successful in the whole process (at least satisfactorily, respecting the scale of the event), organizing the event everytime in different coutries, different cultures, and with a totally different event schedule and plan..."Everytime".

And if you thought that was great.. The IOC hosts the Winter Olympics also once in 4 years, and the Paralympics (for the disabled) also every 4 years. While the Paralympics happen just a few months after the normal Olympics (for example Athens Olympics 2004), the Winter Olympics happen two years after this olympics.

That means,

2004 Athens Olympics (in August)
2004 Athens Paralympics (in September)
2006 Torino XXth Winter Olympics
2006 Torino Winter Paralympics
2008 Beijing Olympics
: :
: :

TORINO 2006	BEIJING 2008	VANCOUVER 2010

Read more : (click link below for the following)
1. The Paralympics Comittee,
2. The event hosting process, and
3. References made for making this blog entry.

Its another 10 days, and we will have the "Olympics" at Athens, Greece. Once every four years the grandest of all sport campaigns unfolds into a fantastic sporting month.

This time its a little more special since its being hosted at Athens, Greece, going back to where it all started first with a marathon race a century back and later into a multi-sport festival which later came to be called the olympics, as it is today.

Well.. everybody knows all that..isn't it. I am just trying myself a bit hard to look like a nut who knows a lot about things. Anyway, its worth the few sentences because possibly you didnt read an article on olympics until now. Yes, the olympics is a way too silent this time round.. atleast for asia I think. Europe though might be having some noise. For some strange reason, the olympics is not promoted as big as it was two coupla years back.

Reasoning is varied: Some say Greece is cash-strapped being the host, and have gone into severe economic problems due to infrastructure development for the olympics. "C'mon call the sponsors please... we have a meeting"

Some say they are making it non-commercial for the true spirit of sporting. "Ah, Heard that before!"

I didn't go way up to finding which one was the right of the reasons. But i wanted to know details of the olympic schedule, its mascot, Sponsors (the money guys), and the Venues. I could not see enough news broadcasts on all these things (probably becos i go home only to sleep and bath).

Ok. Here's some information on aaaaaall that..

But before that, a disclaimer...
If you are looking for information on the olympics, visit http://www.athens2004.com for thats the only official website for the Athens olympics.

Fine. Getting to terms!
Read more on the schedules, venues and the mascot in the next page through the link below, or go searching a sack of information at the above website.