Find Your Way Around Fleet Center

Here’s what I’ve found so far, here at the Fleet Center.

There’s a large temporary stucture beside the Fleet Center. You will know it by the yellow tubes running out the side and the snack bar at the front. This is the (or at least a) Media Center. Large news organizations — NBC, USA Today, AP, Reuters, NPR, and the like — have sectioned off areas here, filled with monitors, edit bays, and other tools. Other than the hallways, there doesn’t appear to be any “unassigned” space here. But there is plenty of WiFi. I post this, for example, using the open WiFi of the Washington Post (thanks!).

In the Fleet Center proper, the third level does, indeed, contain an “unassigned press filing center.” I peeked inside the door: it looks like the boiler room on the Queen Mary. There are desks and (it is said) wired Internet up for grabs here.

Way, way up on the seventh level (take the escalators, or the elevator), in section 320 (look for the signs over the doors), is the “blogger area.” There’s WiFi up there, but if you have a Mac you have to do a little voodoo to get it to work (the DHCP server doesn’t appear to work with Macs: manually assign yourself an IP address in the 10.128.21.* range and things might work; maybe Panther only). There’s also power. Which I’m going to need in 38 minutes or my iBook will die.

The bloggers are very friendly.

On the ground level there is a Mcdonalds and Dunkin Donuts.

Watch the elevators: if you get off on the wrong floor, you may get castigated by the Secret Service (I saw this happen).