Summer Olympics in Paris: The first app-based Olympics!

Boy how things have changed in a short amount of time. Even the Tokyo Olympics which were only 3 years ago (delayed a year because of the pandemic) had paper tickets, paper sign-ups for high demand events, and press buses to take us everywhere. Now, as I make all the final preparations for the Summer Olympics in Paris, the impact of all the changes has become very apparent. Sure, we have used the web for a lot of the applications and scheduling, but now most everything is app-based. 

As always, my goal is to share with you all what it is like to be a photographer at the Olympics. As part of that, I wanted to share some of the preparation I have gone through this week. 

Oh - and before I do that, I should share with you one more interesting pre-Olympic story. Two weeks ago, and the night before my trip to Peru, I got a call from my contact at Team USA asking if I could photograph a press conference on the morning of July 24th. The problem was, my flight landed at the same time as the press conference. So I spent the first couple of nights in Peru changing airline tickets, hotel reservations and changing all the info on the Olympic websites to show my new arrival times. It was hectic, but all worked out. Now I am heading to Paris a day earlier than originally planned, which means that I can photograph the presser and get one extra day to get time adjusted before the Opening ceremony. OK, back to the subject matter at hand.

I have a whole slew of Olympic applications on my iPhone, some meant for everyone and many for the media only.  And I am going to have to rely on these apps everyday.

As I mentioned in past blog posts, these Olympics are the first to go paperless for all tickets. All spectators will be using the Paris 2024 app for their ticketing.

I am going to use this app to keep track of the schedules, but nothing more.

For the media, we are all using an application called SEAT (Stakeholder Experience and Access Tool). This is where we will have our tickets to show to enter each venue for high demand events (HDE). These are the events like Opening Ceremony, Swim finals, Closing ceremony and some others that may be over crowded. In the past, we would have to go to the main press center (MPC) to our NOC (in my case the USOPC) 24 hours in advance and physically sign up for these events. And then a day later, if we got the ticket, we would have to go back and get the ticket. If all goes as planned, this means that I can get my HDE tickets electronically without having to make the multiple trips to the MPC. I have already requested my ticket for the Opening ceremony, so now it is a waiting game to see what I get.

Transportation is always a huge challenge at the Olympics! It usually takes me 4 or 5 days to figure out the best routes to each venue. This year there is a transportation app which should help with that. Not having a dedicated fleet of press buses (for the first time), it is going to be essential to figure it out.

I mapped out the best way to get from my press hotel to the MPC. With no traffic it looks like this,but with traffic can take more than an hour. Now I need to figure out how to get to the metro station from the hotel. What you don't see if that the same trip via taxi is only 8 minutes. If this is true, I may be taking taxis more often than not (depending on the availability and cost).

Team USA has their own app for information on the athletes and news updates. I will be using this to keep up-to-date on current stories.

Although there does not appear to be an app for the USOPC media hub, there is a web site where we can keep track of press conferences, request one-on-one interviews, get press releases, and apply for the high demand events.

It will be very interesting to see how everything pans out. This digital way could be amazing or a huge challenge, and only time will tell. But like everything at the Olympics, I have to stay flexible and patient in order to survive the 3 weeks!

I am starting to pack everything now and will share the "Olympic gear shot" soon.

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