London 2012 blog

As our 8 minute handover show marked the official handover of the Olympic Games to London on Sunday a similar shift of attention was taking place online.

Since the start of the Beijing games traffic levels on london2012.com have increased sixfold. Since Sunday our traffic has shot up to twenty times the norm. 500,000 unique users have visited the site and we have recorded in excess of 3.5 million page views. Around 75,000 new subscribers have signed up to London 2012 updates this month.

Read more of “Using new media to create everyone's Games”

I came back from our brand launch late last night, a little the worse for wear, with a big smile on my face. I was, and remain, extremely proud of a first rate group of colleagues who have worked tirelessly for the past two months to stage a major event for two audiences of 700 key stakeholders and members of the world's media that went off without a hitch, to release a brand that wasn’t leaked despite intense media interest and to deliver a huge amount of physical and digital material to stakeholders, staff, the media, and partners faultlessly. The spirit here is fantastic.

What we hope people will appreciate in time is that we have embarked on one of the biggest branding projects in this decade. We have built a brand identity which has over 40,000 elements, which will evolve over the coming months and years in many smart ways. A brand that unites the Olympic and Paralympic Games and which can work with partners, stakeholders, and for the first time ever, non-commercial stakeholders too. A brand which is flexible enough to render in multiple different formats on multiple platforms.

It's not about the shape. It’s not about the colours. It's about what we can do with it - there is a lot more to see, and you'll see it soon.

Read more of “Being bold”

I went to Switzerland yesterday to visit FIFA in their brand new headquarters next to Zurich's zoo.

Charles-Henry Contamine, FIFA's Head of New Media, was extremely helpful and gave us lots of useful insight.

FIFA's World Cup new media team was 60-strong at peak and reached 40 million users during the 2006 World Cup tournament.

The meeting dovetailed with our site visit to UEFA's very impressive new media production facility in London, where they produce live Champions League coverage for 36 mobile operators, a broadband service and an extensive digital library.

Football has invested significant resources in building new media platforms and will reap the long term rewards. We cannot afford to be left behind.

Read more of “Putting the ball in the Net”

This morning I attended the first meeting of the London 2012 Technology Advisory Board (TAB), held at Imperial College in London.

The TAB will help us access the best thinking so we can work with our partners and use the Games as a path to create disruptive technologies that will have wider application after the Games.

Today we were assisted by the talents of Tidu Maini, Rector of Imperial College and Chairman of the TAB and Sir Robin Saxby, Chairman of ARM.

Yesterday I travelled to Lausanne with two of my colleagues from the legal department to meet with our counterparts at the International Olympic Committee.

On the agenda were digital rights. The fast-changing media landscape is very challenging for both us and the IOC. Our games are five years away, which may seem a short time to the team at the ODA building the Olympic Park, but in digital media terms it's an eon.

Read more of “On a bicycle made for two...”