Adventurers worldwide will be able to share the expectations, exhilaration and exhaustion of three Calgarians trying to make history on Mount Everest this spring — all with the click of a mouse.
“I have a feeling this will get to be big news across the country,” says 36-year-old Calgarian Dave Rodney, who will attempt to become the first Canadian to twice reach Everest’s 29,035-ft. summit.
Rodney will be joined by longtime climbing companions Leo Kelly, who will turn 50 during the expedition, and his son, Deryl, 25. If successful, the Kellys would become the oldest and youngest Canadians to summit Everest, and the only North American father-son team to do so, says Rodney.
At the same time, Kelly’s son Steven, 23, diabetic since he was a toddler, hopes to climb to the 17,620-ft. base camp with his twin sister, Shanna, to raise awareness for the Canadian Diabetes Association.
Helping tell the story to Internet users across the globe is Jet Stream Digital Media Inc., a Calgary company that will use the newest streaming media technology available.
“It won’t be TV quality, but with the technology we’re rolling out, it will be the best possible,” says Jet Stream co-founder Paul Bzeta. “You’ll watch the team discuss challenges, train and prepare, listen to interviews and at the same time we hope to learn about the mountain.”
Jet Stream will make about 40 streaming media clips in advance of the expedition. The 90-second clips will be posted on the team’s emeraldodyssey2001.com Web site beginning in February. The clips will discuss training methods, gear, team fears, logistics and other concerns.
Dubbed Emerald Odyssey, Everest 2001, the name is a salute to the Kellys’ Irish background. (Coincidentally, the team leaves Calgary on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, and emerald is the gemstone of adventurers and travellers, says Leo Kelly.)
“It seems like a really neat fit,” says Jeff Bradshaw, Bzeta’s partner in Jet Stream which started in business a year ago and is a “natural extension” of their past work backgrounds at the CBC and CTV television networks.
“If we can take something as unique as an Everest expedition, tell a compelling story and be able at the same time to demonstrate a technology we’re involved with that is really in its infancy, it’s a great situation for everyone.”
Streaming media from Everest isn’t a first, says Bzeta, but a prior effort he’s aware of “was herky-jerky, fuzzy, soft and out of sync.”
One of the drawbacks to streaming media on the Internet is that the images are small and resolution isn’t the best, says Bzeta. But that is changing as users gain access to high-speed broadband access where picture size and quality improve dramatically.
In streaming media, audio and video content have to be compressed into microscopic files and then squeezed through telephone lines or cable wires. To do this, the content is sent in slower continual packets or “streams.”
A better explanation, says Bzeta, is to imagine the audio/video content as a basketball and the line to your Internet access as a garden hose. You can’t push the basketball through the hose, he says. So the basketball is put through an encoding process, essentially cut into 10,000 pieces and streamed through the pipe like water. When the pieces reach your desktop, they are reassembled for viewing.
“The garden hose has to get fatter,” says Bzeta, who adds that the rapid growth of broadband access is solving that problem.
For the Everest expedition, Jet Stream has developed partnerships with bandwidth providers in the U.S., and will be able to syndicate their streaming video with major Web site portals. The company is talking to about 25 sponsors.
While the Web cast will have slower 56K streamed segments, Jet Stream believes most people watching will have broadband access, a key for advertisers who stand to gain from their association with the expedition and the high number of “eyeballs” it’s expected to attract.
The streaming segments sent from Everest will come from base camp. The technology carried in to camp will include a digital camera to record interviews. The camera will be wired into a laptop computer, or an encoding machine. The information will be fed through a satellite phone and beamed to Calgary.
Jet Stream has grown from two employees — Bradshaw and Bzeta — to nine, and focuses on corporate work, putting audio and video content on to the Internet. While the Everest expedition is more in the field of “entertainment,” it will give the company greater expertise and international exposure, says Bzeta.
Jet Stream became involved in the expedition at Dave Rodney’s request. Rodney, who reached Everest’s summit on May 13, 1999, had used Jet Stream to create his own corporate streaming media and was impressed by its quality.
The Canadian Diabetes Association and a project called Light up Nepal will receive international exposure, says Rodney. Light up Nepal is an effort by Dr. David Irvine-Halliday at the University of Calgary to give poor, rural people of Nepal safe, simple and healthy lighting for their homes.
The attempt to the summit will likely be made in May. The Kelly twins, Steve and Shanna, will face their challenge in April when they hope to join the expedition at base camp. Steve, 23, an insulin-dependent diabetic since he was two, will face a struggle making the 10-day, 8,600-ft. climb into the base camp.
“A lot of people have died in the past on the way to base camp because of altitude sicknesses,” says Rodney.
But Leo Kelly, a Calgary chartered accountant, says his children (all are post-secondary students) relish the challenge.
Steve, who takes six insulin injections a day, has been working out in the gym four times a week, watching his diet and working with a specialist, says his father. Because there is little known about the impact of altitude on diabetics, Steve will come back home with a great research project, says his dad.
In addition to the physical challenges ahead, Rodney says the team has also faced some financial setbacks, losing some sponsors when the stock market began melting down last fall.
“We’re going, that’s for sure, it’s just a matter of how much we have to dig into our own pockets,” he says.
With one summit on his resume, Rodney hopes he and the Kellys will beat the long odds of climbing to the top of the world this spring.
“I’m praying for a happy ending,” he says. “That would include coming back as friends with my buddies and a successful summit for the three of us.”
Web Watch:
www.jetstreammedia.com
www.daverodney.com
www.lightuptheworld.org/
www.emeraldodyssey2001.com
