Managing a venue can be a complicated endeavor, and that’s a good thing for your memory and thinking.

According to new research published in Neurology, people whose jobs require more complex work with other people may gain longer-lasting memory and thinking abilities compared to people who do less complex work.

“These results suggest that more stimulating work environments may help people retain their thinking skills, and that this might be observed years after they have retired,” said study author Alan J. Gow, PhD, of Heriot-Watt University and the Center for Cognitive Aging and Cognitive Epidemiology in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Our findings have helped to identify the kinds of job demands that preserve memory and thinking later on.”

Complex jobs were ones, for example, that involved coordinating or synthesizing data, negotiating with others, and instructing and mentoring people. Non-complex jobs included such things as copying or comparing data and taking instructions.

The issue that is often raised, though, is whether stimulating environments help increase a person’s cognitive abilities or if people with high cognitive skills seek out challenging occupations.

“These results actually provide evidence for both theories,” Gow said. “Factoring in people’s IQ at age 11 explained about 50 percent of the variance in thinking abilities in later life, but it did not account for all of the difference. That is, while it is true that people who have higher cognitive abilities are more likely to get more complex jobs, there still seems to be a small advantage gained from these complex jobs for later thinking skills.”

(photo credit: Eduardo Mueses via photopin cc)

A start-up company in the United Kingdom wants to cover stadium roofs with solar panels. Solar panels made from cloth. Stretchy cloth.

“The Cambridge, England-based, Solar Cloth Company is beginning to run trials of its solar cloth, which uses lightweight photovoltaic fabric that can be stretched across parking lots or on buildings that can’t hold heavy loads, such as sports stadiums with lightweight, retractable roofs,” Katie Valentine reported for ThinkProgress.org.

The company—which won the 2014 Solar U.K. Industry Awards’ Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Solar Innovation of the Year award—claims there are 320 square miles of U.K. roof space and 135 square miles of U.K. parking space that could be covered with the solar cloth, resulting in enough solar-generated energy to power the U.K.’s grid three times.

The cloth weighs just a little more than seven pounds (compared to almost 50 pounds for standard solar panels), and it’s flexible.

“[The panels] can be laid over almost all low-load bearing structures, and bonded to most structural fabrics to allow application in tensile structures, stadia, and agricultural land covers,” the company said on its website.

Copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) is used as the base technology because of its higher conversion rate and flexibility , the company’s CEO and founder, Perry Carroll, told The Engineer.

“…because CIGS uses a 100 times less semiconducting material than silicon cells, the embedded energy used to manufacture them is less,” Carroll said. “According to the U.S. Department of Energy, assuming a 30 year-life of the solar installation, crystalline silicon PV [photovoltaic] payback time is estimated to be 2-4 years. CIGS PV payback time is estimated to be 1-2 years.”

(Image: Solar Cloth Co.)

The IAVM Foundation has been committed to programs, ideas, and initiatives that build amazing careers and a strong future for the industry for more than 32 years. It has bestowed more than 300 scholarships worth approximately US$350,000 dollars.

This past July at VenueConnect in Portland, the Foundation continued this legacy by announcing its newest campaign, “Build An Amazing Future.” This campaign is a three-prong approach focused on students, young professionals, and mid-level management in the venue management industry.

Part of this approach is the commitment to funding just over $40,000 to provide 37 scholarships + internships through the Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship Program for venue professionals, young professionals, and students to attend IAVM sector meetings, schools, and VenueConnect each year. The funds will help cover the registration fees and all hotel accommodations. The Performing Arts Managers Conference in San Francisco, Feb. 15-17, 2015, will be the first sector meeting that scholarships will be offered. Visit www.iavm.org/amazingfuture for eligibility and to apply.

The Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship Program recognizes deserving individuals who demonstrate leadership, character, diversity, community involvement, and the potential to be future leaders in the venue management industry.

The program was established after the passing of Joseph A. Floreano, CFE, a long-time IAVM member, Foundation Trustee, and the first-and-only Honorary Chairman of the Foundation Board of Trustees. Floreano was known for giving selflessly in both time and money to worthy industry causes. His leadership was aspirational and he took great pride in mentoring and supporting the advancement of the venue management industry. Joe Floreano was not only incredibly instrumental in the development of the Foundation’s “Build An Amazing Future” campaign but also became the inspiration as he truly resembled and embodied everything it stands for. The contributions Floreano made to the Foundation are immeasurable, and with that, we believed that the naming of the scholarship program would be the most appropriate way to honor his legacy, which will forever leave a mark on the Foundation.

““This scholarship and internship program memorializes the life and contributions a man who spent a lifetime leading by example,” said Paul Cramer, CFE, executive director of The Classic Center. “Joe was on a constant quest for quality and daily illustrated his love of servicing others. It was his attention to detail and warm-giving personality that earned him the respect and honor of his community and his peers. The professionalism by which he served the public, the IAVM association, belief in continuing education, and willingness to give to others to improve the future of our industry can only be regarded as legendary.

“I know he, his family, and staff will be honored to know that future generations to come will continue to learn by the outstanding example and legacy he has left behind,” Cramer continued. “I can’t think of a greater gift that the association and Foundation could give to future generations than a scholarship or internship named after a master of the craft of public assembly facility management.”
The Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship program will select five outstanding candidates to receive scholarships at the Performing Arts Managers Conference (PAMC), the Arena Management Conference (AMC), and the International Convention Center Conference (ICCC) in 2015 based upon the following five categories – Outstanding Leader, Diversity, Industry Women, Young Professional, and a Student Internship. The program also has scholarship + internship opportunities at the Academy for Venue Safety & Security (AVSS), Venue Management School (VMS), and VenueConnect.

“The IAVM Foundation is committed to fostering and supporting the next generation of the venue management industry,” said Foundation Board Chair Jason Rittenberry, CFE, president and CEO of IRG Sports + Entertainment. “By naming the program after Joe Floreano, we are setting the gold standard of what we should all strive to aspire to be. Joe was the ultimate mentor, leader and friend to all.”

In addition to the Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship Program, the “Build An Amazing Future” campaign will also be launching a 30 UNDER 30 Program for young professionals and a new certification – Certified Venue Professional (CVP). To learn more about the “Build An Amazing Future” campaign, please visit www.iavm.org/amazingfuture.

People know you’re in power by your voice alone, as new research shows that people pick on acoustic cues to determine who’s in charge.

“Our findings suggest that whether it’s parents attempting to assert authority over unruly children, haggling between a car salesman and customer, or negotiations between heads of states, the sound of the voices involved may profoundly determine the outcome of those interactions,” said psychological scientist and lead researcher Sei Jin Ko of San Diego State University.

The researchers point to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an inspiration for their investigation.

“It was quite well known that Thatcher had gone through extensive voice coaching to exude a more authoritative, powerful persona,” Ko said. “We wanted to explore how something so fundamental as power might elicit changes in the way a voice sounds, and how these situational vocal changes impact the way listeners perceive and behave toward the speakers.”

Ko and colleagues created two studies and found that voices of participants assigned to a high-power role tended to go up in pitch, become more monotone, and have a variety in loudness compared to the voices of those assigned low-power roles.

“Amazingly, power affected our participants’ voices in almost the exact same way that Thatcher’s voice changed after her vocal training,” said Adam Galinsky, a co-researcher from Columbia Business School.

It was also discovered that people outside the experiment were able to identify the high- and low-rank roles by voice alone with great accuracy, because they associated louder voices with higher power.

“These findings suggest that listeners are quite perceptive to these subtle variations in vocal cues and they use these cues to decide who is in charge,” Galinsky said.

(photo credit: garryknight via photopin cc)

The employee-boss relationship can be a delicate dynamic. Each wants to be liked by the other, and each may have different views about the relationship. However, once it’s all out in the open about how each feels about the other, then productivity and motivation increases.

“Seeing eye-to-eye about the employee-supervisor relationship is equally, if not more important than the actual quality of the relationship,” said Fadel Matta, lead investigator for a Michigan State University (MSU) study about workplace motivation.

Matta and his colleagues surveyed 280 employees and bosses separately across a variety of fields and found that motivation suffered when a worker thought he or she had a good relationship with a boss but the boss thought the opposite. However, when an employee and boss were on the same page about the relationship, motivation increased.

“Some people would say it’s better to fake it, but our results indicate that the opposite is true,” said Matta, a doctoral candidate in the MSU Department of Management. “At the end of the day, it’s better for everyone to know where they stand and how they feel about each other.”

(photo credit: whistlepunch via photopin cc)