Now here’s a really cool light technology. It’s recreates how sunlight looks through a skylight, which means you can have sunlight 24 hours a day or deep in the recesses of your venue. An Italian company, CoeLux, developed the product, which won the Lux Awards 2014 Light Source Innovation of the Year.

“The scientists who invented the light figured out how to use a thin coating of nanoparticles to accurately simulate sunlight through Earth’s atmosphere and the effect known as Rayleigh scattering,” Michael Zhang reported for PetaPixel. “It’s not just the color temperature that’s the same—the quality of the light feels the same, as well.”

The company says the technology is ideal for all types of indoor spaces and that future improvements will allow changes to the position of the sun in the frame and the color temperature of the sunlight.

I could imagine, for example, this being implemented in convention centers, especially in meeting spaces. Place a few of these in the ceiling, and it’s like you’re having a meeting outdoors!

Please watch the following video for more information about this technology.

(Image: CoeLux)

Congratulations to the group of IAVM student members from Missouri State University who worked at the 2015 Super Bowl at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

“Throughout the weekend, students worked mainly in an area called Super Bowl Central,” Melissa Price reported. “They greeted guests as they entered and provided information and directions. They also had the chance to be involved with some of the free concerts and really enjoyed the performance of the Roots from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”

Troy Parrott said they split up in pairs and went to different street corners.

“Some of us had to use clickers to keep track of people walking in and out of certain restaurants, because they filled up quickly,” Parrott said. “While the rest of us were handing out maps to fans and mainly directing them to the NFL Fan Experience, bathroom, convention center, etc.”

Working at the Super Bowl is an annual event for the school’s Entertainment Management Association, and Price said this year “the students worked with NFL Fan Experience, the National Football League’s official source for event experiences and hospitality, as well as the Arizona Host Committee.”

Please visit Price’s blog entry to learn more about the students’ experiences, and once again, congratulations on a job well done!

(Image: Missouri State University)

As iBeacons increase in popularity, venue managers may wonder what it’s like to install them. If so, let me point you in the direction of an informative article from the Brooklyn Museum, which is going through the process of installing 150 iBeacons in its 500,000-square-foot facility. While museums aren’t one of IAVM’s primary venue types, I believe many of you can relate and imagine your own venue when reading this article. For example, there’s the issue of different wall types:

“…we’ve had a lot of problems actually getting these to stay put on the walls. It’s no secret we have a tough production environment here; we use different types of paint (gloss, flat, semi) and our walls vary in surface (plaster, glass, sheetrock, cement). No matter what we do, we’ve found beacons are constantly falling off walls…constantly.”

Then there’s signal strength inside a building:

“Beacon signal, for instance, is disrupted by everything save air…walls, vitrines, objects, people, you name it. This problem is so bad, in fact, that I can be standing directly beside a beacon on the wall, and will find a stronger signal coming from one across the room.”

As I mentioned, “The Realities of Installing iBeacon to Scale” is an informative article and presents some first-hand experiences you should consider if you go down the iBeacon path.

(photo credit: Media Hack Days 2014 via photopin cc)

WTAE in Pittsburgh recently posted a story about DraftServ, which is product that lets fans pour their own beers. If you haven’t heard of it yet, I bet you have some questions, such as how to monitor under-age drinking. The video above answers many of those questions.

A flower designed by Andy Warhol could soon cover the Tacoma Dome. According to The News Tribune, city officials approved the plan on Tuesday.

“The unanimous blessing of the council will allow arts boosters to approach the Andy Warhol Foundation for permission to use the image on the city-owned Dome, and to start raising the funds needed to install what would be the largest Warhol in the world,” Kate Martin reported.

The project is expected to cost $5.1 million; however city officials say none of the costs will be paid by the city.

“The council’s OK allows the city to form a project committee and approach the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation for help fundraising,” IAVM chair Kim Bedier, CFE, told the publication. “There are still a lot of unknowns. We still have a lot of work to do.”

Warhol originally entered the flower design in a contest to decorate the dome’s roof in 1982. He lost the contest.

Please visit The News Tribune for more on the story.

(Image: The News Tribune)