Were You Inspired?

The end of a successful London 2012 Olympics, heralds a return to reality not least for the people of London who played host to the world for two straight weeks. Numerous events, achievements and incidents occurred during the week, but a critical factor for me was the superb organisation which provide some great lessons for any business to embrace and emulate.

Sunset at the Olympic Park

Below are four great lessons from the London 2012 Olympic Games:

1. Never promise too much – the organisers of London 2012 did not promise more than they could deliver. In fact, the closing ceremony performance at the Beijing 2008 Games gave little hint of what was to come as the Olympic flag was handed over to London Mayor, Boris Johnson
2. Wow them with your opener – The opening ceremony for London 2012 was a real eye opener for people on just what the Games could deliver, and they did not disappoint.
3. Deliver the goods – The most important part of the Olympics are the games, and London 2012 successfully delivered in terms of: organisation, audience participation (apart from early issues with rare tickets vs. empty seats), television coverage (the BBC coverage was outstanding), and a remarkable medal haul for the host nation.
4. Be gracious in your exit – The games concluded with a music laden closing ceremony, and the Olympic flag was passed with some aplomb to Brazil, the next host nation which also gave a taste of what to expect in Rio de Janeiro come 2016. Even the departure experience at Heathrow Airport was something to write home about.

“Successful”, “fantastic”, “enjoyable”, “brilliant” were some of the descriptive words used by athletes, volunteers, organisers and spectators at these last Games, and those are words that any business should like to hear coming from their clients, customers, employees and partners.

When does protection becomes disruption?

Two recent articles, pointed out to me by a couple of colleagues, serve to highlight a flaw in the over zealous application and misuse of some DRM based content protection mechanisms; basically when does content protection become disruption?

The first article, thanks to Brian Runciman, deals with Games DRM, and describes the fallout of presenting legitimate gamers with ever more complicated DRM schemes which effectively prevents some users from enjoying their legally purchased products. It also highlights some unintended consequences of Games DRM, and concludes with the now old mantra that any good DRM solution should be transparent to legitimate users. We still live in hope!

The other article, thanks to Ian Cole, is really an alert notification a SANS newsletter about multiple vulnerabilities (e.g. buffer and integer overflows) in a critical ActiveX control within Microsoft’s DRM system. According to a Security Focus entry, this control could allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a users machine – talk about content protection becoming a threat in itself!

Conclusion: The continued perception of DRM remains that, at best, it is intrusive and potentially unsafe. This in spite of the fact that DRM is slowly and quietly becoming embedded in the fabric of more and more digital content, including streamed content (e.g. music, movies and electronic games). Oh, and this will have an even bigger impact on the pre-owned or after market for digital content as discussed in a recent post on the BCS Games Blog.