Led by LOCOG Chair Sebastian Coe and Chief Executive Paul Deighton, the LOCOG team has identified four key areas in which Vancouver excelled.

1. Sport: Vancouver shared London’s desire to ensure that sport and the athletes are at the heart of the Games and this inspired the athletes to deliver some world-class performances.

2. Service: The volunteers played a huge role in the success of the Games, demonstrating outstanding customer service and providing valuable insight on how volunteers will be recruited and trained for London 2012.

3. Stadia: The stadia in Vancouver and courses in Whistler were full of knowledgeable sports fans and passionate followers of the home team but also enthusiastic supporters of all teams. The full stadia demonstrated how right the organising committee got its ticketing strategy. Tickets for London 2012 will go on sale in 2011 with more details on LOCOG’s ticketing approach issued in due course.

4. Sites: The Games were brought to life in Vancouver with the streets and sites full of supporters, creating a party atmosphere in the city. The big screens in Vancouver provided superb hubs for community activity, enabling everyone to see the sport itself and crucially to celebrate victory ceremonies.

The LOCOG observers will return to London for a full debrief of learnings across all aspects of putting on a Games. A team will also remain in Vancouver to observe the Paralympic Games.

Seb Coe said: 'The Olympic Games in Vancouver will leave enduring memories where the athletes, organisers and people of the city came together to stage a truly memorable event. Over the last two weeks, the streets of Vancouver have been like theatres where people gathered to celebrate this fantastic spectacle of sport and culture.

'The four ‘s’s we’ve identified – sport, service, stadia and sites – give us real food for thought and an added level of detail to our planning as we become the next taxi off the Olympic Games rank.

'Over the next two and a half years, we will use this information to ensure that we stage a Games for everyone in London.'

The Four Ss - and not one was Social Media. ;-)

As an estimated 3.5 billion viewers in 200 territories did during the worldwide fortnight in Vancouver, it is likely that we'll all be viewing the upcoming Games in England, Russia, and Brazil digitally. Through last Monday night, the NBC Olympics mobile site and iTunes app generated 58.2 million page views, according to the network, up 68% from the entire 17-day total of 34.7 million for the Beijing Games. Yahoo! (YHOO) saw 18.1 million unique users and 103 million page views, far outpacing NBCOlympics.com.

Interesting stats.

I don't know about you - but I found it very hard to download and watch content online. Firstly, my laptop (and iTunes account) is geared up to the UK so I can't get the opening and closing ceremony downloaded. However, because I'm accessing content with a Canadian IP address, I can't tune into the UK versions either! The nation state governs the internets.

Secondly, the Internet is so slow. Bandwidth is still an issue. If they want most of the Games to be available online (starting with London), we are going to need more than a organizational network to deliver the games. There is such a thing as an Olympic fibre network - but outside of that exclusive, accredited zone, we're still dealing with expensive, poor quality broadband in many regions.

Of course, there are ways and means to get round these difficulties - most of which are considered illegal and challenge IP rights. If the viewing figures are true, it'd make perfect sense for the IOC, LOCOG and broadcasting partners to find a way to make it easier for people to view content online. Whatever country - and in the case of the UK, invest in speedier methods of carrying the information during Games time (and as a potential legacy)...

For me, experiencing the Olympics through the actual thoughts of Olympians has been the most enlightening and enjoyable part of these "Twitter Olympics". 

They have allowed us to follow their Olympic experiences through their words and photographs, recording their anticipation while travelling to Vancouver, their participation in the opening ceremony (together with many, many photos), the atmosphere in the Villages and the excitement when Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived for breakfast with the US athletes (cue more photos).

We had views of their accommodation, news on how their training was going, their nerves in the build up to their events, their delight at just being involved, their sheer pleasure when a team-mate competed well, their awe at the most memorable performances from disciplines different to their own, and their own feelings after their competitions had finished: how they dealt with what they perceived as success or failure. 

Now the Games are closed we get to share in their return home, and we are seeing the photos of large crowds that have come out to greet medallists in countries as distant as the Netherlands and South Korea. We can share with the Olympians as they plan their next competition or maybe their imminent retirement, and how they deal with what one tweeting athlete referred to today as "Post Olympics Depression".

From fevered discussions about who might light the flame at the Opening Ceremony, through general amazement at snowboard cross and ski cross - both terms trended on Twitter showing just how successfully these new sports engaged the public’s interest - to terms such as "tomahawk" being used in general conversations - these Games have been the most accessible to the viewing public ever. 

The established broadcasting and news media now has two years to understand how best to compete with the real-time, first-person experience that social networks have shown they can give, and how to embrace that competition, so that London 2012 is truly the most inclusive Olympic Games yet.

The response from Inside the Game's social networking manager, Louisa Gummer reiterates that the Vancouver Games could be best described as being the "Twitter Olympics".

Interestingly, she dedicates much of her reflections to the verified twitter accounts of the athletes, potentially a symbol of the IOC policy turn-around relating to blogging guidelines. It was less than 3 weeks ago where we were still debating whether the participants would be allowed to use social media during their time at the games.

Her final comment confuses me slightly, I'm trying to understand the link between using social media and the notion of "inclusion" - there seems to be several strains that need to be examined here:

a) Separating the participants/talent (ie. the athletes) from the audience (those who subscribe to facebook pages or follow verified accounts)

b) How does "allowing" (as in, not punishing them) athletes to use twitter/facebook under the identity of an "olympian" equate to social inclusion? This is especially important when we haven't even scraped the surface as to what was actually happening here. The notion of the Twitter Olympics is far more complex than for pure entertainment purposes.

Nevertheless, it's good to see different locations reflecting on their own experiences of the social media use during Games time.

I found this video featured on the Huffington Post site. It is a compilation of funny moments, most of them representing sport failures/injuries (such as skiers falling and ice-hockey players hitting each other). The combination of sound effects with the images has indeed a laugher factor but while watching it I had several questions:
1. If anyone at VANOC or IOC would see this, how would they react? Probably there will be no legal action initiated as the video seems to be created for non-commercial purposes. But still, the images it uses are mainly taken from outlets that paid to obtain that broadcast rights.
2. If someone would want that video down who would be contacting LiveLeak - the tv stations from whose feeds the images were captured, the athletes featured, the NOCs (as in National Olympic Committees) to whom the athletes belong, the public?
3. Moreover, if advertising would be displayed on the video page would that make is commercial or does the content producer needs to actually cash in in order to be considered as such?
2. And finally why is it failure/injury/violence funny?

According to this article, another protest took place in Vancouver on Feb 23, this time aimed to contest Coca-Cola's presence in the city and mainly its encouraging the population to drink its bottled water instead of tap water. Bringing in the example of liquids (not only water - my note) being confiscated by security staff from visitors of Olympic venues (and pavilions as well in Vancouver - my note) the protesters consider the move a clear example of "commodification of water to the benefit of large corporations". While their argument is indeed valid and it makes sense in an environment where tap water is still customary (from my knowledge in Europe bottled water is more popular due to health safety concerns), the protesters however disregarded and excluded the authorities (as in security forces, VANOC and city of Vancouver) announcement according to which "airport-like security measures" were imposed all over Vancouver at all Olympic venues. This means, that all liquids, irrespective of brand were not allowed in the Olympic venues.

While the argument of selling bottled water when tap water is still healthy and readily available is a valid one, I still wonder whether protesting a company with a visible name and a strong market position as well as bringing up claims of human rights infringements are a strategic choice aimed at grabbing headlines (be they of traditional and new media, be they online or offline).

A alternative story about the aftermath of the Vancouver Olympics. It depicts the struggles of low-income communities and how the Olympics helped further their causes by providing the increased visibility due to their presence in town but also how some projects were delayed or changed due to the arrival of the Games into town.