If interviewing Olympic legend Bonnie Blair wasn’t exciting enough, I had a conference call with Kevin Neuendorf, Public Relations Manager of the United States Olympic Committee. He was joined by a few members of Microsoft Office’s PR team who have had the overwhelming task of coordinating the Microsoft Office Winter Games Contest.
I’m not sure what was more shocking: who I was speaking to or the fact I managed to sound like an intelligible human being.
They had emailed me the Vancouver 2010 Media Handbook, a 139-page pdf detailing my media accreditation, venues, accommodations, shuttle specifics, competition schedule and information about the Main Press Centre.
(Note: Be warned. I shall be reverting back to Canuck-speak where words are spelled with “re” and sentences end with “eh.”)
Never before in the History of Amber has there been a need for Cliff Notes and that is what this conversation was all about. They answered my many questions but also posed a few new ones. Namely, who was this guy “Robin” on the call and why was he talking about his “filming?”
That’s when I was in for a surprise of my own. Robin has been assigned the very dubious task of filming me for the first four days of my Olympic experience. He and his film crew will be taping me on the move: Chatting with athletes. Publishing stories to my blog using Microsoft Office ’10. Using my Windows® phone. Getting lost. Losing my mind.
You know. The usual occurrences in this Murphy’s Law life of mine.
The good news: Their goal is to create a 5-minute video that will capture Microsoft’s technology in action that they hope to use when they launch Office ’10 in June.
The bad news: It looks like I’ll have to sound like an intelligible human being for more than just that one phone call.
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I am flying to Vancouver this morning and my next blog post will be from the 2010 Winter Games! Be sure to subscribe to my feed so you can receive my regular updates and follow my play-by-plays on Twitter.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 