US Olympic Committee Passes the Torch to SharePoint 2010

Greetings from Vancouver, host city of the XXI WinterOlympics, February 12-28, 2010!

I arrived here on Sunday to support the broadcast of theOlympics on NBC, which will share the Games with US audiences in highdefinition on its many networks and online at NBCOlympics.com. If you’ve readmy columns and articles over the years, you know I was lucky enough to act asthe Microsoft Technologies Consultant for NBC at both the Torino and Beijinggames. In fact, it was during Torino that I fell in love with SharePoint andits ability to support rapidly deployed, “big win” solutions to collaborationin an enterprise.

I am looking forward to sharing with you some of the thingswe’re doing with SharePoint here in Vancouver, but I am pre-empted this week bya really cool announcement from Microsoft itself, also about the Olympics andSharePoint 2010.

I’m particularly thrilled to share with you that Microsoftand the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) have teamed up to bring WinterGames content and information to reporters through a new press portal poweredby SharePoint 2010.  That’s right, the USOC’s PressBoxsite  is powered by the beta version ofSharePoint 2010 which, among other things, is a real testament to the strengthof the product even in its pre-release state.

Through the site, the USOC is able to provide journalistscovering the Games a single destination for accessing information about events,participants, and venues. The site features articles, statistics, photographs,and athlete information, adding depth and color to coverage. Building the siteon SharePoint 2010 technology, the site exposes RSS feeds to enable real-timeaccess to breaking news and personal updates from athletes who are usingTwitter, Facebook, and blog posts.  SharePoint’s enhanced search enablesrich sorting of athlete information, sporting events, article authors, andmore.

Deploying content for an event like the Olympics is ahigh-stress, big-stakes undertaking.  The USOC is able to leverage thecapabilities, manageability, and scalability, of SharePoint 2010 to tackle thechallenge.  And journalists can take advantage of the content in new,dynamic ways. 

It’s pretty amazing to me that all of this is beingentrusted to a version of SharePoint that is so new, it’s not even “finished” yet. In the midst of a week that was characterized by hype around unreleaseddevices, here’s an enterprise putting a tremendous amount of faith in aproduct we can all get our hands on today.

Join me again on Monday for more news from Vancouver!

Dan Holme