Getting tickets 1/08/12

After arriving in London at 12pm, first point of call was claiming a bed to stay in for the next few days. The BSU team had separated themselves into two groups and set up a rota so they can interchange between London and Worcester effectively. We all gathered in the hallway once everyone had grabbed their luggage from the coach. Leader of the project, Ryan Sparrow, handed out keys to rooms.

Aaron and I had both been nervous about what we were going to say on air and had discussed it on the trip up. The show went out to over 1 million people so we didn't want to mess it up!

We went up to meet Chris Taylor, known as CT - the BSU sports leader and Alex Kartman. The interviews themselves were conducted via telephone and broadcast live on air. CT rang up the producer of the station 102.5 WMDH, Indiana. It was 9am in the mid west on "The Morning Brew Show" a que was given for when he would be live, he passed the phone over to us... Bang, just like that we were on air to over one million people.

In the interview we spoke about the our favourite athletes from the United States, what it felt like to have the Olympics in Britain. Several times we were asked to repeat words and do American accents. CT told us we'd be able to access a recording online which we could use for our portfolio and/or blog. Aaron had also planned a trip to the States next year, including going through Indiana, 102.5 WMDH invited him in for work experience, a fantastic opportunity. 

You can listen to it here http://rope.wmdh-fm.fimc.net/Brew-Podcasts/londoncalling.mp3

Next up was collecting the tickets that CT, Alex and myself had ordered in the previous week. We headed straight for the Olympic Park. This was the first time we had headed into town on this trip and we knew that much of the Olympic area was cornered off due to the amount of people passing through attempting to get to events. 

Luckily we were collecting tickets and therefore allowed through to the box office. The first thing that stuck out for me was the friendliness and helpfulness of the volunteers who were interacting with crowds, starting chants and really adding to the atmosphere. All tickets for the Olympic Games are being sold online so there are no horrendous queues but we still had a bit of a wait - as a result I got talking to a volunteer who I originally had asked for directions to the box office. It wasn't an interview as such but he went on to tell me he personally was being paid just over minimum wage and had really enjoyed the first few days despite the long hours working almost 12 hours each day. 

Once we had collected the tickets we headed straight back to the flat where we were met by PR student Kait Buck, she was helping us with outlets for our stories which we got to work with straight away.

Tomorrow our plan is to look for tickets for any event in Olympic Park so that we can and get stories from athletes, fans and volunteers within the grounds.