The Oregon Convention Center plans to place 160,000 square feet of solar panels on its roof by mid July. SolarCity will build and own the two-megawatt system and sell the power wholesale to the center in a 20-year deal.

Matt Uchtman, the center’s director of operations, told the Portland Tribune that the system will fulfill approximately 25 percent of the venue’s annual energy needs.

The convention center currently uses 7.6 megawatts to 8 megawatts of energy annually.

“Our utility usage is dropping, but we’re not done,” Uchtman told the paper.

The venue is one of only two U.S. convention centers to be certified LEED platinum.

“We are committed to ongoing LEED certification and continually looking at ways to drive positive change at the convention center, and always hope to be sustainable,” Scott Cruickshank, the center’s executive director, told the Tribune.

Does your venue operate at a loss? If so, how does your deficit compare with venues in your competitive set? Does your venue finance and budget for major construction or expansion costs the same way as other venues like yours?

The VenueDataSource 2015 Capital Funding Survey obtained the answers to those questions and many others from more than 150 of IAVM’s member venues. Here are a few of the survey results:

• In their most recently completed fiscal year, 64 percent of the venues reported they operate at a deficit – We know the average deficit, and we share that with you.
• Nine out of 10 facilities that operate at a deficit receive additional funding from non-operating revenue sources – And we tell you those sources.
• In the past 15 years, 62 percent have undergone major construction or renovation – We tell you how those projects were financed.

To learn more, contact Frank Ingoglia at frank.ingoglia@iavm.org to arrange purchasing the 2015 Capital Funding Report. You can also purchase informative reports on Management Salaries, Operating Expenses and Revenues, Sustainability and Safety and Security at the VenueDataSource website.

Our next recipient spotlight of the IAVM Foundation’s inaugural class of 30|UNDER|30 is Sarah Fieger, house and volunteer services manager at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio, Texas (home of the 2016 Performing Arts Managers Conference).

“What venue managers need to do is communicate the possibility and excitement of seeing a performance or game live so we can build that sense of community within our audiences and keep them coming back,” Fieger said.

Please watch the video above to learn more about Fieger, and thank you to SearchWide and Ungerboeck Software International for their generous support of the IAVM Foundation’s 30|UNDER|30 program.

“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” –Bruce Springsteen

No matter what type of venue we work in—whether it is a 1,500-person club, a 50,000-person stadium, or a 80,000-music festival—as venue operators, we all share the same goal: to deliver the world’s greatest guest experience for our fans attending the event. Whether you are a performer on stage or the first baseman for an MLB team, we all have a role in delivering that experience.

At Nationals Park, we recognized a culture needed to be developed that unified all our game day team members (over 2,700) that instilled passion and pride that everyone is part of the Nationals family. Our goal was to find a way to connect our staff with our guests for every event we hosted, so they would continue to come back every time. Every guest we seated, every cash transaction, every car we parked, and bag we search is an opportunity for our staff to make a memorable and lasting impression for our guests. How do you teach your team the importance of  this?

TEAM Service was developed to create a culture of service excellence for all Nationals Park game day team members regardless of the company they work for. We are one unified team whose members work together to satisfy and delight our guests, creating a memorable experience for each and every one. Part of this commitment to our guests is that we expect all team members, regardless of their individual department or company, to go above and beyond to satisfy our guests and handle any conflict with care and respect for the individual. Do you have a program that all departments are a part of, that your game day team is a part of?

As we are building our program and still continue to improve it everyday, we hold monthly meetings with the 12 different department managers that make up our different game day staff departments consisting of:

• Guest Experience team
• Box Office team
• Ticket Services team
• 50/50 team
• Grounds crew
• Scoreboard team
• Tour Guides
• Food and Beverage team
• Parking team
• Security team
• Housekeeping team
• Entertainment team

It is important that in our monthly meetings we are asking questions of what is working well and what we need to improve upon. We speak directly with our game day team, listening to what they are looking for and what we can improve upon as leaders, too. In defining this program, it was more than just an awards and recognition program, but creating a family, with a mission statement, core values, and logo that were separate, but aligned with our organization’s core values. We created a game day staff brand.

Our logo, mission statement, powerful quotes, and core values are in our game day staff entrance (called the TEAM Service entrance), every break room, our training programs we call “work shops” and “Spring Training,” and some of our rewards such as length-of-service pins and MVP awards. By creating this brand, we were able to see our guest comments rise and our guests becoming apart of our TEAM Service rewards and recognition program where they vote for the MVPs of the Year. How do you reward and recognize your team?

We continue to find new ways to create that service excellence we all strive for, but remember that each time our game day staff are in the building to recognize them for going above and beyond the call of duty to help deliver the world-class guest experience we want for every event.

(Image: Joseph Gruber/Creative Commons)

The world of venue management evolves constantly. How do facility managers keep up with the latest techniques to deal with an onslaught of issues that affect our ever-changing society and certainly the daily demands on our venues? In light of recent incidents that deal with issues related to crowd  management, cybersecurity, home-grown terrorism, Wi-Fi, severe weather, and more, our members are able to respond swiftly to address the growing demands on staff personnel and to ensure patrons are protected. IAVM members are equipped to implement strategies so that attendees feel safe enough to attend live events.

To assist our members with the tools they need, IAVM offers a variety of critical networking opportunities throughout the year. Among the array of IAVM national educational events, sector conferences, and schools, IAVM Chapter Meetings have enabled local communities across all markets to convene and discuss trends that impact venues and share best practices. These events offer education, ideas to promote forward thinking, and of course, an exchange of information with peers. And sometimes, these meetings are just plain fun. Chapters offer local members and potential members an option to learn, grow your network and develop important relationships that can assist when there is a greater need. The moral of the story, meet your neighbors!

To create a chapter meeting in your city or community where several venues exist, basic hosting tips and resources are available at http://iavm.org, click on the About tab, select Regions and Chapters, select your region, then Chapter Meeting and check out the overview, and proceed to Hosting a Meeting. You will find steps you can take to start planning meetings in your community.

Please check out the FM June/July 2014 article online: Let’s Talk Chapter Meetings by Kathy Lowrey and Nick Zazal, IAVM membership committee. We hope to see you at VenueConnect this summer, August 1-4! Questions: contact IAVM’s membership director, Gina Brydson, at 972.906.7441, or via email at gina.brydson@iavm.org.

(Image: dirkb86/Creative Commons)