#L2012DAYS - They were the happiest of times

One last video.  Little more to say than, it’s a montage - don’t quite have the silks of the Beeb but hopefully you will get the jist…

Watch, enjoy.  Citius, Altius, Fortius dear viewer…


S.

N.B. Piece includes an excerpt from “Salut D’Amour” performed by Julian Lloyd Webber, London Symphony Orchestra and STOMP, which featured in the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony.  The audio is taken from the OST album without permissions - but used entirely for non-commercial purposes to reminiscence, remember and have a damn good sob.  If any issues, please let me know directly..!

#L2012DAYS - Hoy’s Final Word

It was the last race of Olympic competition at the Velodrome. Late afternoon, 7 August 2012.

A passionate, sell-out crowd were reeling from Victoria Pendleton’s defeat in the Women’s Sprint Final. And so it was left to Sir Chris Hoy, the ultimate British track cycling hero to bring the curtain down proper in London 2012. He headed into the Men’s Keirin Final as defending Olympic champion, but amongst a very strong field.

The race itself saw him dominate in stretches only for German rival Max Levy to threaten at the death. But willed by a passionate support, Hoy edged it at the line to become Britain’s greatest ever Olympian, winning his sixth Gold in all Olympic Games in what was his last race for Team GB.

It was an epic victory, and a fitting finale for a man who helped build this insatiable house of fervour and passion.

Here we see the final laps of the race.

Close imitation: the Telegraph, the Olympics and my blog

As tempting as it to be emotional from the get-go, I shall leave it at the door - or at least park it as an addendum item. 

I’d like anyone - ideally - who reads this blog to make their own judgement before reading the rest of my commentary.  In doing this it perhaps best encapsulates the spirit of what I’m trying to put across.  The facts are as follows:

  1. I have - for over a year - been writing a series of blogs, based on my own personal experiences, on getting official tickets to attend the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
  2. The latest addition to my blog on this matter went live in the very early hours of Thursday, 28 June 2012.  You can read it here: http://goo.gl/xS09b
  3. Some 24 hours later, The Daily Telegraph went live with a piece on their Olympics 2012 section, on tickets.  You can read it here: http://t.co/GBdWnNkN

I should add that on the morning of June 28, my piece was shared by a third-party with a Telegraph writer called Alice Philipson on Twitter.  As it transpires, Ms. Philipson was the writer of the piece that went live on the Telegraph website on Friday morning.

That same morning, as I headed to the office from a client meeting I found my Twitter feed full of references to my piece and something to do with the Telegraph.  Much of this had been flagged by a large core of the Olympic ticket-hunting community who’ve read my work.  In their eyes, an act of plagiarism had taken place.  I had a limited view until I had a chance to review and consume myself.

Indeed I did compare the pieces - and I cannot escape the fact that both from a content and structural perspective, the pieces are very similar.  Naturally I was stunned.  As flattering as it could be considered, the fact that neither Ms. Philipson nor anyone else at the Telegraph sought to speak to me to either gain permission, clarify facts or even engage in a sense of collaboration brought a compounding sense of disappointment.

News of this spread amongst other ticket hunters, as well as friends and family on a number of social networks.  As opposed to baying for blood I wanted to escalate in the proper fashion - e-mailing their editorial team and even dropping a Tweet to their Editor, Tony Gallagher.  I had no idea if I had recourse from a legal perspective - I guessed not - but I certainly expected the Telegraph to respond in a respectful, transparent manner seeing that I purposefully sought to avoid sandbagging their social media channels with irate Tweets and posts…

This was my initial e-mail to Telegraph editorial:

Dear Telegraph team,

I’ve signed-in this morning to find that one of your reporters has lifted a significant amount of content and structure from a blog I have written about Olympic tickets.

My piece went live on the early hours of Thursday morning - and today I note that Alice Philipson has had a piece go live this morning which reads as a virtual copy of my original.

I am very disappointed that I have not been credited in any way in her article despite providing nearly all the inspiration and content for it!  I did not give any permission for the piece to be reproduced.

I would ask that the piece be corrected appropriately, either giving me due credit or be removed completely from all of your channels henceforth.  If you cannot do this, I would be very interested to hear what you can offer by means of compensation.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, being London 2012, this is a very social issue and I see commentary has been made on various channels this morning.  I am flattered your publication deemed my work so useful - and would’ve been happy to have been approached and produce from scratch a piece as a paid writer - perhaps this is a route of compensation you and your team should consider!  Instead, it is sad such a fine institution has to resort to copying other people and failing to disclose and recognise it.

I look forward to hearing what action you plan to take very shortly.


Yours faithfully,


This was the response I received from Chei Amlani, the Telegraph’s Digital Olympics Editor:

Dear Sri Sritharan,

Thanks for your email earlier about our last-minute ticket guide. This is a piece Alice has been working on for a few days. She has been in contact with a number of people on Twitter with questions about tickets and has been pointed to a number of places, including your blog, for further information.

You clearly have an understanding of the ticketing process and Alice has used some of the information in your blog to help build her piece, which is very much her own work. She has not plagiarised your blog and she clearly has no trouble in crediting sources when required. She has equally directed users to other Twitter accounts whom she deemed useful to the process. The fact that she did not link to you was an unfortunate oversight that was rectified very quickly this morning by adding a link to your Twitter page.

Like you, we are passionate about the Olympics and have covered the ticketing process, along with many other subjects, comprehensively for some time.

I trust this is of assistance.

Sincerely


This was my response back to Mr. Amlani:

Dear Chei Amlani,

Thank you for your e-mail.

In fairness much of what you have outlined below was to be expected from someone in your position.  But no one can escape the structural and content-based similarities between my piece and Alice’s.  I’m not going to list these ad nauseam; if you do cannot see it then I fear any amount of direct communication is going to be a waste of time.

Add to the fact that were it not for social media intervention this morning I wouldn’t have got any recognition at all – which in turn speaks volumes for the proactivity and responsibility shown by your team.  One wonders how many bloggers and contributors the Telegraph are “researching” at any given time to harvest free content.

Personally, I hold no ill-will toward Alice – she has clearly been let down by a team that far from offering any recompense or formal recognition (note the hyperlink to my Twitter handle is incorrect – an “oversight” indeed) cannot even bring themselves to apologise to me for the matter.

I look forward to sharing this experience with Olympic ticket hunters and bloggers alike soon.  Like you say Mr. Amlani, we both share a passion for the Olympics, and this experience will not perturb me from writing more pieces in future and collaborating with responsible providers.

Regrettably for the Telegraph, enough people on social media channels are intelligent enough to recognise plagiarism when they it.  The fact that it was brought to my attention by people who are readers of your output should make it clear that it is your readers who have marked you as plagiarists, not just me.

Best,


And this was Mr. Amlani’s final response to me:

Dear Sri,

We have looked at your blog. The structure and content are not the same as Ms Philipson’s, which is very much her own work.

Sincerely

Whilst I never expected Mr. Amlani or Ms. Philipson to concede full complicity in an alleged act of plagiarism, I certainly expected more recognition and more class from those representing a publication that’s 157 years old.  Mr. Amlani’s conceited attitude is perhaps endemic of large organisations who believe they can harvest content for free from those actually doing the work and gathering the data.

To stress, I hold no grudge toward Ms. Philipson, as made clear in my communications above.  Had she reached out to me formally I’d have been happy to help her as I have with other journalists and publications previously.

What is abundantly clear in all of this is the fact that had no red flag been posted in my direction, the Telegraph team would have not even extended the courtesy of posting my Twitter handle in their article.  Which perhaps anchors the view of plagiarism in this instance.  That Mr. Amlani could not even bring himself to apologise for the errors underscores the Telegraph’s attitudes to both bloggers and readers everywhere.

While I would never put this scenario in the league of the Tatty Devine/Claire’s case, or Paperchase/Hidden Eloise saga, this incident highlights a number of issues with today’s media.  Once upon a time, TV and print news would actually pay money to have people investigate properly - perhaps a member of Mr. Amlani’s team would have actually bought tickets and talked to the ATRs directly in this instance.  But why bother doing that when you can troll on Twitter for a while and get the story completely gratis?

To go 360 on matters however, and as someone pointed out to me on Friday, the fact that the Telegraph had to borrow so heavily from a number of sources via social media indicates that in the most very real sense, newspapers are becoming increasingly irrelevant.  The group I referenced heavily in my piece - the 2012Tweeps - have been helping people around the world get Olympic tickets, safely and legally.  This is the same group that has helped Olympians like Zac Purchase, Dai Greene and Laura Trott get tickets for the Games.  One has to ask, what has the Telegraph done for our Olympians in this respect?

I now consider the matter closed.  I look forward to writing more about the Games over the next couple of months and collaborating with some great people in the process.  I have said all along that my objective with these blogs was to help those who are without tickets get to the London Games. 

To that end, both the Telegraph and I share a common objective.  But moreover, I am a writer - an antiquated one at best - but one who strives to put himself out there when he can.  IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin once said “The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.”  Perhaps the guys in SW1 should remember that next time they do some research.

London 2012: Tickets do not maketh the man

Reading the LOCOG statement on Friday to announce the suspension of the Resale site, my thoughts were with a ticket agency called The TicketSellers.  Seeing Ticketmaster held to account in such fashion must have given them a certain sense of schadenfreude.

To explain: The TicketSellers, a modest operation based in Birmingham, were appointed by British Swimming to sell tickets for their marquee event - the British Championships - at the Olympic Aquatic Centre, which takes place in March.  Whilst not part of the official London Prepares series of test events for London 2012, the Championships are the full dress rehearsal for swimming events at the site in Stratford and all the big names are scheduled to participate.  Throw in the fact that the tickets were going for an absolute steal (around £10 a pop) and demand was expected to be high among an expectant public of Team GB, Olympic and swimming fans.

When it came to launch day, it was a catastrophe as demand overran technology and thousands of potential customers were left frustrated.  The problems grew and manifested, causing British Swimming and their reseller to put the sale on ice for several days until they could sort out the technical problems.  Like LOCOG, British Swimming had to issue a mass e-mail communicating the suspension of sales - laying the blame firmly at the door of the Birmingham outfit.  Sadly, for reasons unknown to most, The TicketSellers could not resolve their difficulties and British Swimming a week later issued another mail to subscribers confirming that they proudly appointed Ticketmaster as their new reseller.  The e-mail was somewhat of a public slap for The TicketSellers.  Sure, they were probably too small an outfit for what was being asked of them, but you couldn’t help but feel a degree of sympathy for them.  One man’s entrepreneur is another man’s fall guy.

The same can’t be said for Ticketmaster.  British Swimming, like LOCOG before them, chose them for their global track-record, their infrastructure and expertise.  They sell tickets for a variety of events, globally, every day.  They are a recogniseable, respected brand.  Yet, with Resale to add the issues experienced with the live sale last Summer, the American outfit are fighting for their lives in the face of a furious customer - and potentially a million stakeholders.

Ticketing and London 2012 has been a dominant area of discussion for the last year.  Time will provide the ultimate statistics, but at face value the London Games feel like the most anticipated in the modern era.  It is both a credit to the city and the organisers, and a curse.  Huge expectations nearly always lead to disappointment in certain areas - and with many outlets and groups (certainly at a domestic level) keen to seize on errors and mistakes made, the slightest issue becomes a prominent one.

It’s not clear how much influence Ticketmaster have had on the overall ticketing strategy implemented for London 2012.  The first-round ballot posed more intrinsic questions rather than ones of technology - the feelings around the outcome have tended to be more emotional than factual.  The second round - which was a first-come, first-served affair, was a classic case of demand taking down the system.  This is not a problem exclusive to the London Olympics.  Talk to Take That fans who tried to get tickets for the Progress tour in 2010/11 - or annual Glastonbury festival-goers.  Excessive demand, spiked at a certain period nearly always brings down systems.  Ask anyone in IT administration, and they will tell you.  One of the crudest ways hackers look to invoke havoc for a certain website is to deploy an action which pummels it with requests over a number of seconds or minutes.  Most websites will yield in the end.

First-come, first-served always works best when demand can be staggered at manageable levels.  When people are seeking precious tickets for the foremost sporting event in the world, some difficulty is to be expected.  To the uninitiated, it should just work.  But there is always more to it than that.  The capitulation of the Resale site suggested that Ticketmaster didn’t resource the event appropriately - and you could understand why.  The window offered was for a month, and indications suggested reseller numbers would be low.  But as the old adage goes ‘fail to prepare - prepare to fail’, and they clearly didn’t count on a large number of resellers placing tickets back into the system and a very savvy buyer market keen to seize what they could.

You can be certain that Ticketmaster will have been working over the weekend to resolve the issues experienced to have things up and live for Monday.  LOCOG will be counting on it.  Resale feels very visceral right now, but before you know it this window will close, and thoughts will move to the much anticipated Spring sale of the estimated one million tickets.  This is where Ticketmaster will face its biggest judgement.

The feeling among many ticket hunters is why has it been so painful?  From the ballot process in round one, to the technology issues experienced in round two - and now Resale.  The experience has forced many to look abroad to secure tickets for the Games.  Ticket failures is not an alien subject for the Olympic Games - from Beijing to Sydney, the organising committee have had problems.  Advocates playing devil will point and scream ‘why haven’t we learnt!?’ - but look at the British public as stakeholder groups to see the problems.

You have local residents of Newham who feel they deserve entitlement, likewise those who are part of sports clubs and associations across the country.  Then all those people who like to say ‘I’m a taxpayer…’; then there are fans of individual sports, fans of the Olympic Games and fans of London staging a premier event in world class stadia.  Not forgetting those who have disposable income who can afford to buy, and those operating at the opposite scale.  And of course, those dirty, rotten sponsors who of course contribute no money to the organising and operation of the Games but somehow end up with all the plum tickets - for ‘free’!

No one - no expert, no newspaper, no independent group has dared offered an alternative solution as to how the tickets for London 2012 should have been sold - and by a solution, one that would placate all the stakeholder groups above.  And ensure an even spread amongst them all. 

The reason for this, of course, is that it’s not possible.  And the emotive nature of having, and not having will inform most of the arguments around ticketing right the way through to July 27.  Of course Resale should have worked properly the first time.  Of course the system should be able to handle a mass of activity at the same time.  But most people remember what it was like before supermarkets became 24-hour operations: everyone went on a Saturday, things sold out and there were massive queues and an awful shopping experience.  Expansion of operational times meant the experience could change exponentially and now Saturdays are nowhere near as bad as they used to be.

Different events offer different ticketing systems - some focus on spread, others focus on demand - some try to balance between the two.  LOCOG, of course, have the ultimate responsibility so are liable for the ultimate hit - but they haven’t done as badly as most may think.  And they cannot control how their suppliers operate and execute their operations.

Ticketmaster may in turn point to the fact that, unlike a lot of their daily activity, they are not profiting from sales in the way they would from a common concert ticket transaction - and this from an end-user perspective is true.  Had there been licence for booking and admin ‘fees’, who knows what enhanced operations they could offer - though we all know how it would have been received.

The hysteria has to be compartmentalised - the failure of the Resale website is no more an indication that the London Games are going to be a failure, any more than seeing a typo in a national newspaper indicate the articles are being written by monkeys. 

As for The TicketSellers - well, they are back to doing what they do best.  Who knows, they may get another shot at the big time sooner than they thought. 

Read more about me and London 2012.