The Paperless Office

A day off today, so again some time to write about the experiences of the previous days without having to check my watch every few minutes.

As stated before, the Athletics desk is a one hectic place to work. Most of the other Sports Information Desks have very little to do. The Baseball desk is serving only 8 NOC's, the Modern Penthatlon desk is mostly vacant (but whenever it isn't, there's a cute German girl sitting there) and I think the girl from the Softball desk must've have finished at least 8 books by now.

Some desks are also closing now as their events have finished. Luckily for us, the Archery desk closes today and since it is next to ours, we will claim the space as soon as we can. Athletics have started, so representatives from 187 NOC's are passing by at least once a day to get start lists, results or to ask often difficult logistic questions.

Since the games are "coming home" and athletics is the most traditional sport, some events have been planned to be outside the usual Olympic Stadium. The two most notable being the Shot Put in the ancient Olympia (5 hours driving from here) and the original marathon course from Marathon to the Panathinaiko Stadium. This results in many logistical issues as athletes, coaches, officials and material have to be transported and obviously some NOC's decided to stay outside the Village...

Efficiency is also a concept not invented over here (sorry Greece). Or is it because volunteers are volunteers? Meaning, they're cheap and therefore any investment in efficiency is a waste of money? Interesting business proposal...

I think by now we must've gotten rid of at least half of the Brazilian rain forest with all the paperwork going on. Whatever happened to computers, email and printers? Well actually, all NOC's have an office with a computer, a printer and there is an internal email network and an intranet with all the latest info. Still we keep printing out everything 200 times and my guess is that at least 50% of the information is unwanted. Many NOC's with only one runner are not interested in the Hammer Throw start list, as an example. So these papers go straight from their mailbox into the paper recycling bin.

The argument used is that they want to make sure everybody actually gets all information. Better safe than sorry, and there is a valid point in that. Oh well, it's a good thing they actually do recycle paper over here...

Roberto