Lessons From Beijing

As a key part of the IOC’s transfer of knowledge programme, the IOC Official Debrief of the Beijing 2008 Games will take place from 24 to 27 November 2008 in London. This event, which will be attended by members of the Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010, London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Organising Committees (OCOGs), as well as representatives of the 2016 Candidate Cities and other Games stakeholders, will give these future Games organisers the chance to learn from the experience and knowledge gained by their Beijing counterparts during their seven years of preparation.

Experience
The event will consist of a combination of plenary discussions and side meetings, which will look at the planning, operational and technical elements of organising an Olympic Games, such as sport, accommodation, transport, culture, education and logistics. There will also be elements of the debrief addressing the various stakeholders’ experience, for participants at the Games such as athletes, spectators, workforce and the media. A full technology debrief will also be held in London the week before. A highlight of the week will be IOC President Jacques Rogge giving the 2008 Pierre de Coubertin Lecture on 24 November. Presented by London 2012 in conjunction with the Royal Society of Arts and the British Olympic Foundation, the President will deliver a speech entitled “Advancing the Games: the IOC, London 2012 and the future of de Coubertin’s Olympic Movement”.

The OGKM Programme
The Beijing Debrief is a key component of the IOC’s Olympic Games Knowledge Management (OGKM) programme, which consists of three main elements: services, personal experience and information. The services include workshops, seminars and a network of experts with Games experience on a range of Olympic topics that the OCOGs are able to call upon throughout their lifecycle. The OCOGs are also able to gain personal experience on Games preparations and operations through the Games-time observers’ programme, the official Games Debriefing and a secondment programme, which allows staff members from future OCOGs to work on the current edition of the Olympic Games. The final element of OGKM is information, which includes the Official Games Report, technical manuals, knowledge reports, a range of useful documents and publications and the IOC’s visual transfer of knowledge of photos and films. All this information is available to the OCOGs through an extranet that is managed by the IOC.

The History of OGKM
IOC President Jacques Rogge initiated the Olympic Games transfer of knowledge process in 1998 with the assistance of the IOC administration. This project was to become part of a vision that the President would drive forward following his election in 2001 to streamline the Olympic Games and to ensure that future Games organisers can apply successful practices to their own projects. The initial project led to the creation of a company called Olympic Games Knowledge Services (OGKS), whose services were subsequently regrouped under the responsibility of the IOC’s Olympic Games Department in mid-2005 under the name of OGKM.