Have something you want to learn about or something you want to share with your industry peers? The VenueConnect 2015 Planning Committee invites you to submit session ideas for the annual conference, which takes place in Baltimore next year, Aug. 1-4.

It’s easy. just click on this link and fill out the form.

The committee strives to find the right mix of session topics and speakers, and we appreciate hearing from the membership. Last year’s session submissions included “Knowing Your Digital Value: Building and Measuring Effective Sponsorships,” “When a Crisis in a Venue Occurs,” and “Intelligent Capital Planning in the Age of Cost Reduction,” among others.

We look forward to your submissions and seeing you at VenueConnect next year!

Oxford Dictionaries has spoken, and the 2014 Word of the Year is “vape.”

“As e-cigarettes (or e-cigs) have become much more common, so vape has grown significantly in popularity,” Oxford Dictionaries wrote on its blog. “You are thirty times more likely to come across the word vape than you were two years ago, and usage has more than doubled in the past year.”

While conclusive scientific evidence is still out on whether vaping is good or bad for you, we’ve addressed the issue when it comes to how venue managers handle e-cigs. Please read the blog post “E-cigs, Venues, and Vaping Policies,” and the article “The Vaping Question” to learn more.

Since vaping is more popular, do you think the trend has settled a bit? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments.

And for the record, here are the Oxford Dictionaries’ other words and definitions that “vape” beat out for Word of the Year.

bae (n.)—used as a term of endearment for one’s romantic partner.

budtender (n.)—a person whose job is to serve customers in a cannabis dispensary or shop.

contactless (adj.)—relating to or involving technologies that allow a smart card, mobile phone, etc. to contact wirelessly to an electronic reader, typically in order to make a payment.

indyref, (n.)—an abbreviation of “independence referendum,” in reference to the referendum on Scottish independence, held in Scotland on Sept. 18, 2014, in which voters were asked to answer yes or no to the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

normcore (n.)—a trend in which ordinary, unfashionable clothing is worn as a deliberate fashion statement.

slacktivism (n.)—informal actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, e.g. signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on a social media website; a blend of slacker and activism.

(photo credit: Apollostowel via photopin cc)

Drones—also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—are one of the hottest topics in our industry at the moment. How do we use them? Why would we want to? What can we use them for?

Convene magazine decided to take on that last question, specifically for the meetings industry, in a feature story in its November issue. The story, “How Drones are Changing the Meetings Industry” by Hunter R. Slaton, also highlights Freeman, one of IAVM’s global partners.

“Another new way in which the meetings industry is utilizing drones is with virtual site visits. In May, for example, Freeman announced drone-based enhancements to PLANTOUR, its web-based site-inspection tool. Using drones to film venues ‘gives more of an opportunity to capture the facility from different perspectives,’ said William Collins, Freeman’s vice president of product development, ‘and allows us to capture both internal and external views at a lower cost.'”

The video above is an example of PLANTOUR’s virtual tour via a drone.

Check out the rest of the story to learn more about how venues are taking advantage of the positive traits of the technology. And if you’ve used a drone in you venue, please share with us your experiences and what you did with them.

Pop quiz: What does VenueDataSource (VDS) provide IAVM members?

Answer: Resources, membership value, empowerment, and information.

IAVM represents more than 2,000 venues around the world. We are stronger together, and the key to moving our facilities forward is information and community. The association provides its members educational opportunities unlike any other. It provides its members opportunities to grow in the industry, ensuring long-term success for public venues for generations to come.

VDS is just one more asset for IAVM members, and its guiding Research Advisory Council is reigniting our efforts in providing you—our IAVM peers, partners, and key stakeholders—more and better tools, information, and data.

VDS provides the place where members go in search of working knowledge of the association—available on demand. VDS provides members an opportunity to benchmark yourself, your career, your venue, and more. VDS captures and maintains the pulse of the industry.

Do you know where your salary stands compared to your industry peers? Do you know where your peers are saving money or spending money in annual expenses? Do you know where your facility rates in terms of its use of 21st-century technology?

VDS knows and can share that information with you instantly. The best part of how VDS does what it does? Trust. The information we collect is 100 percent confidential. Even the top brass in IAVM doesn’t have access to the information provided BY our members—just the overall end results of the anonymous totals.

Our goal is collect as much information as we can from members, for members. Information that can influence and direct your career, your decision-making ability, and how your facility performs.

We need your help to continue our efforts. We need your responses to our quarterly surveys. We need your ideas of what you need to help you move forward with your facility. We need you to be our partners in this quest to continue being the keeper of our best practices.

We provide reports AT NO COST to those who participate in the surveys. But anyone can receive the reports at little cost. Should you need a custom report, VDS can create one for you at little or no cost.

VDS leverages our association’s collective skills and dedication and provides a home for living documents and information for addressing any issues that could negatively affect the way we do business.

VDS is your resource of choice to help you manage better and smarter with the tools of our association.

VDS will continue to capture IAVM’s living best practices and will continue to make them available to its members, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year—FREE.

You can find us on this monthly blog; on Twitter @VenueDataFrank; in weekly newsletters discussing trends, facts, and asking poll questions; at the sector conference and VenueConnect—everywhere you VDS, you’ll find us. No matter where you go, there we are.

Curious about what a meetings industry mover-and-shaker thinks about the future of conferences? Skift has you covered.

In a thorough interview, Skift reporter Dennis Schaal sits down with Cvent founder and CEO Reggie Aggarwal to talk about travel, trends, and technology. Here’s a taste of the interview.

Skift: What about the debate about virtual meetings versus live events?

Aggarwal: I went on the road show when we were doing an IPO last year. The first thing a lot of Wall Street people did was attack live meetings. They said, “Hey listen, virtual meetings, WebEx, Go-to-Meetings. WebEx, for example, we started using that in 2000, right? It’s 12, 13, 14 years. But the point is, it’s not like the future is here. With webcams, just everything was moving towards virtual.

What we saw happen is the opposite of what you might have thought. The more technology there was like that, the more people wanted to meet face to face. That’s what we call the event effect or the experience economy. People want experience. Nothing beats coming to this conference and meeting face to face, breaking bread and shaking hands.

Please visit Skift to read the rest of the interview.

(Image: Cvent’s Facebook page)