Venue Training: Week Two

The second week of our training at the venue has been intense, invaluable and sometimes frustrating.

It has been good to further get to know the team, particularly the Chinese volunteers and the ONS Reporters.

This week we have focused mostly on practical skills in workshops run by the ONS Reporters.

Aurelia, an ONS Reporter, ran a most useful session on shorthand for note-taking.

She copied out pages of symbols for us to learn and organised activities in which we could practise using them.

Compared to what I have heard about some training at other venues, our recent sessions have been very worthwhile.

Later on in the week, we did some simulations in the Mixed Zone.

These covered issues such as moving through packs of journalists and where to stand on the Mixed Zone barrier that will enable you to best hear the athlete’s statements.

This gave me a much better idea of how the area functions and how to use it successfully.

We have been told that journalists there may be hard to handle but that we should stand our ground.

We, as ONS volunteers, have as much right to be there as they do.

I have become a little frustrated at my venue due to my lack of real interview opportunities.

I am yet to interview an athlete at the venue when most of my colleagues have done at least one.

I am hoping this will be remedied over the weekend training sessions.

Another issue at the Water Cube is access to athletes on pool deck.

Some of our team have had trouble being admitted to areas that our accreditation allows us to access.

We noted that this seems to be a problem for some other team officials.

This is most definitely something that the Organising Committee needs to address.

I have learnt a lot this week and I hope that I can put my skills in to practise in a real situation soon.





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