In Beijing

It’s Monday morning in Beijing and I’m getting ready to head over to NBC’s broadcast center. I arrived late in the day on Saturday and immediately headed over to Tianeman Square, hoping I might have the chance to catch a protest. Instead, I found the Square teeming with happy Chinese families, clearly very excited about the Olympics. Vendors sold Chinese and American flags to wave; teenagers sported red stickers on their faces, babies wore red cloth headbands. It was almost a carnival atmosphere, and strangely enough there were almost no Western faces in the crowd. I was clearly a bit of an attraction for them, and several families asked me to pose with their children so they could take photos of me.

China Mobile has done a good job blanketing the country with cell phones. Although you can’t drink the water in the hotels, everyone has a cell phone. Despite the drinking water, the infrastructure in Beijing is impressive. Though much has been made over the polluted skies, nobody has observed at how spotlessly clean everything else in the city is. I have not seen one piece of litter in the roads or on the sidewalks. China has also spent a lot of energy on greening the city and there are beautiful displays of roadside topiary, flowers, trees and plants.

I did make the obligatory trip to the Great Wall and didn’t find the huge crowds predicted. That, and the modestly sized Western crowd in my centrally located hotel does make me wonder about the number of foreigners who did make the trek to Beijing for the Games.

I will be at NBC Broadcast Center today, interviewing some NBC executives, and taking a closer look at the workflow, which begins with an array of digital cameras (Sony XDCAMs and Thomson cameras among them) and progresses to an all-Avid editorial process.

I’ll also be posting additional stories related to the Internet and mobile component at www.MobilizedTV.com.

So enjoy the journey with me!