Larry Perkins, CFE, CPP, CMP, is a giving person. For many years, he’s given back to and volunteered for IAVM in countless ways that have helped the association.

“Over the years, I have been a volunteer leader with IAVM; from Crowd Management to heading the Safety and Security Task Force, ADA White Paper, VMS (Oglebay) Class President and 2004 VMS Chair to vice chairs of the Safety and Security Task Force, where I helped establish the Academy for Venue Safety and Security, help write the industries SSTF Best Practices, have spoken around the country to help promote IAVM programs, worked with DHS on the IAVM Foundation Grant for AVSS and served in IAVM senior leadership—2006/07 Chairman, which was an honor and a privilege,” Perkins said.

His generosity extends to other organizations, as well. Case in point: Foster A Voice, a nonprofit organization focused on bringing about awareness, education, providing support, and being a voice for foster children, adoptions, kinship care, and for those children living in an unsafe environment.

“We have launched a Kickstarter crowd funding program to raise funds so that we can create a short film entitled Silence that focus on the plight of foster children, the many crisis situations that places children in the foster system,” said Perkins, vice president and assistant general manager of the PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Our goal of $200,000 is a long way off.”

Perkins said that the name Silence was chosen because it depicts and describes the viewpoints of the mindset of fosters/adoptions, never opening their hearts, harboring and masking the pain they suffer in silence.

“Many act out to relieve the pain and frustration of not being adopted; not having parents, being separated from siblings and no home to call their own, no one to tuck them in bed at night,” said Perkins, who is also the president and CEO of Foster A Voice. “‘Silence’ also fits many in our social world who won’t help fellow humans, don’t see the problems, or just ignore them. Many are not aware of the cost we and they pay, repeatedly—going from foster care to welfare, to prison, becoming homeless, those turning to drugs and alcohol, or selling themselves.”

However, the real work starts after the film is completed, because Foster A Voice plans to create programs that deliver change and have real hands to help.

“We are creating a program entitled “Cycle Out,” Perkins said. “It’s a program that utilizes volunteer mentors, grouping them according to skills sets such as accounting, health care, business, finance, trades, educators, and influencers. The idea for these groupings is patterned after an internship program, where fosters rotate from one mentor to another with the skill sets mentioned over a period of weeks and months. By engaging fosters in this fashion, mentors help them break the cycle. A foster enters the program before aging out to the world.”

Perkins knows firsthand the experience of being a foster, and he wrote about it in his new book, Buck Seventy-Two: A Destiny of Will (releases May 1, 2015).

“I’m pledging the proceeds from my new book to help make Silence,” he said. “May is Foster Care Awareness month, and we want to have secured the funding and go ahead to start production.

“I feel so strongly about this, I feel it’s’ the right thing to do,” he continued. “It’s not for me; I just want to give back.”

Guests often have to wait in lines to enter venues, and sometimes it feels like it takes forever to get in and other times it doesn’t faze a guest at all. Why is that?

Well, a study in the Journal of Consumer Research looked at the factors that determine how people experience time.

“Consumers lie happily on the beach for hours despite the uneventfulness of the activity, but they can become impatient and extremely frustrated after just a few minutes of waiting in line,” wrote authors Niklas Woermann (University of Southern Denmark) and Joonas Rokka (NEOMA Business School). “This puzzled us, and we wanted to know more as this phenomenon poses a number of challenges for businesses.”

The authors studied two sports, freeskiing and paintball, to better understand factors that shape a person’s experience of time. They identified five elements that need to be in balance for people to have a positive experience of time flow: technology, consumers’ skill, their plans and moods, rules and regulations, and cultural understanding.

If those five elements aren’t aligned, time either feels rushed or dragged.

The researchers offer waiting in line at an airport as an example.

“Politeness or local laws force us to wait even though we are already thinking about finding the gate and boarding,” the authors said. “As a result, time seems to pass very slowly. But when freeskiers wait for their next jump, they are not impatient or annoyed. They have accepted waiting as a part of their sport and use the time to prepare their mind and body for the task ahead.”

The researchers suggest that companies optimize activities and consumption experiences to ensure a more positive time flow.

“Our research is helpful for consumers to understand why they sometimes feel under time pressure or why time passes too slowly,” the authors said. “It also shows that businesses aiming to ensure an optimal customer experience should be attentive to a possible misalignment of the different elements that influence timeflow.”

How do you create a more positive waiting-in-line experience at your venue?

(Image: Gord McKenna/Creative Commons)

You can smell happiness. It’s true. According to new research published in Psychological Science, humans communicate positive emotions through sweat.

It’s been long known that we can communicate fear and disgust through chemical compounds in our sweat, but until now no studies had been done for positive emotions.

“Our study shows that being exposed to sweat produced under happiness induces a simulacrum of happiness in receivers, and induces a contagion of the emotional state,” said psychological scientist Gün Semin of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and the study’s senior researcher. “This suggests that somebody who is happy will infuse others in their vicinity with happiness. In a way, happiness sweat is somewhat like smiling—it is infectious.”

Semin and the researchers studied sweat taken from people in a happy state to see if it would influence behaviors, perceptions, and emotions of others exposed to the sweat. The participants did not smoke or take any medications and had no diagnosed psychological disorders. They were banned from drinking alcohol, eating smelly food, exercising excessively, and participating in sexual activities.

In the end, the researchers found that men and women responded positively to chemosignals in sweat through a series of tests and measures.

“This is another step in our general model on the communicative function of human sweat, and we are continuing to refine it to understand the neurological effects that human sweat has on recipients of these chemical compounds,” Semin said.

So think happy thoughts to make your sweat smell good to others. Also, use deodorant to be on the safe side.

And in related news: Scientists have developed a perfume that smells better the more you sweat.

(Image: Vox Efx/Creative Commons)

The University of Cincinnati (UC) athletic director, Mike Bohn, and coach, Tommy Tuberville, unveiled the newly renovated Nippert Stadium on April 23 to the media.

The stadium’s $86 million renovation and expansion will increase seating from 35,000 to 40,000.

“It includes a structure on the west side that stretches for almost 130 yards and rises five stories above the stadium concourse,” Bill Koch reported for GoBEARCATS.com. “It contains four levels–a press and operations suite with seating for 100 reporters, a suite level, patio suites level, and scholarship club seats level.

“UC will go from having almost no premium seating options to the addition of 1,100 scholarship club suites and more than 50 indoor and outdoor suites of varying sizes,” Koch continued. “In addition, the concourses on both sides of the stadium have been widened and furnished with new restrooms and concession facilities.”

Working in conjunction with UC’s Office of Planning, Design and Construction, the Architect of Record for the project is Heery International. Architecture Research Office is the design architect, and Turner Construction Company is the construction manager.

Tuberville had praise for Turner Construction.

“They’ve put together what’s going to be, and will be for a long time, the best on-campus and prettiest on-campus stadium that you’ll see,” Tuberville said. “And I’ve been in most of them around the country.”

Nippert Stadium is set to reopen on September 5.

(Image: University of Cincinnati)

Exchanging ideas and best practices with members is one of IAVM’s hallmarks, and nowhere is that more prevalent than on VenueNet. Not only is it a great place to pose questions and receive answers, it can also contribute to your overall well-being.

According to a new study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, online forums offer benefits for individuals and society as a whole.

The study found that approximately 10 percent of online users in the U.K. participate in an online forum, whereas 20 percent in the U.S. do.

“Our findings paint a more optimistic picture of old-style online discussion forums,” said lead author Dr. Louise Pendry from the University of Exeter in the U.K. “Often we browse forums just hoping to find answers to our questions. In fact, as well as finding answers, our study showed users often discover that forums are a source of great support, especially those seeking information about more stigmatizing conditions. Moreover, we found that users…who engaged more with other forum users showed a greater willingness to get involved in offline activities related to the forum, such as volunteering, donating or campaigning.”

Forum users who get more involved develop strong links with other users, said Dr. Jessica Salvatore of Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

“They come to see themselves as more identified with other forum users,” Salvatore said. “And then these more identified users see the greatest benefits, in terms of positive links with mental health and getting involved offline. In a nutshell, the more users put into the forum, the more they get back, and the pay-off for both users themselves and society at large can be significant.”

If you haven’t participated on VenueNet, please do so. Not only is it good for the industry, it’s good for your health.

(Image: SumAll/Creative Commons)