IAVM’s ConventionCalendar.com has entered into a strategic partnership to feature the second largest convention center in the nation—Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center (OCCC). The new convention industry calendar will give meeting planners easy access to the Orlando Convention calendar via any Internet connected device at IAVM.org and ConventionCalendar.com.

Developed and powered by Destination Advantage LLC, the new calendar application will link the OCCC with tens of thousands of meeting planners, guiding them through the site selection process for potential new meetings and events.

“We got together and decided that with our access and database of clients, we should really try to formulate our own program. So in a sense, we’re all part owners. This is our program,” said OCCC Deputy General Manager and IAVM member Yulita Osuba, CMP.

Managing Director of IAVM’s ConventionCalendar.com program, Donovan Shia says

“OCCC is a long term supporter of IAVM and has a unique understanding of the value of collaboration and innovation,” said Dononvan Shia, managing director of IAVM’s ConventionCAlendar.com program and an IAVM member. “We are very excited about the opportunity to feature the OCCC.”

(Image: Kendrick Arnett/Creative Commons)

The Orlando City Council on Monday unanimously approved SED Development LLC to construct a complex next to the Amway Center. The mixed-used venue will feature a corporate headquarters for the NBA’s Orlando Magic, a hotel, a conference center, and residential and retail facilities.

“Like with the Amway Center, this has been several years of planning and working with the city to find the right avenue to add another great piece that will add to the core of downtown,” said Orlando Magic CEO Alex Martins on NBA.com. “So it’s incredibly exciting to get to the approval stage. Now, the real work begins in planning for construction. It’s going to be a long project and from start to finish we’re probably looking at five-to-six years. But we’re very excited to get started.”

RTKL—the design firm responsible for places such as L.A. Live, the Kansas City Power and Light District, and Berlin Live—plan to make the complex “uniquely Orlando,” suggesting that it will host a variety of musical, cultural, and community events.

“We’ve been talking for about 10 years now about trying to create a new downtown for Orlando and what these venues can do to create economic development and spur other mixed-use development. Because of the recession, it never happened,” Martins said. “So this is the opportunity to get it really started and be the spark. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. Hopefully there will be other developments that pop up and revitalize downtown so that locals want to live and work and play and eat and be entertained.”

The Orlando Magic will continue to partner with the Parramore neighborhood. The organization in the past has donated more than 3,500 service hours, built nine reading and learning centers, and two playgrounds.

“It’s our neighborhood and it’s important to us that we continue to help revitalize it,” Martins said of Parramore. “We think this is another step. Hopefully this is a spark for others to invest in that part of downtown. Downtown really stretches from Orange Avenue to the Citrus Bowl. So this is an opportunity to spark the western side of that stretch.”

(Image: NBA/Orlando Magic)

The current and future leaders of the world are the ones who played team sports in high school.

“Participation in competitive youth sports ‘spills over’ to occupationally advantageous traits that persist across a person’s life,” said Kevin M. Kniffin, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and lead researcher.

Kniffin’s research shows that people who played a varsity high school sport are thought to be more self-confident, have more self-respect, and exhibit more leadership than those who participated in other extracurricular activities. The research also found that varsity athletes exhibited higher pro-social volunteerism and charitable activities.

“In our study of late-career workers, those who earned a varsity letter more than 50 years ago do demonstrate these characteristics more than others—plus, they donate time and money more frequently than others and possessed great prosocial behavior in their 70s, 80s, and 90s,” Kniffin said.

Well, now that that’s on the table, let’s take a poll.

(photo credit: K.M. Klemencic via photopin cc)

There was a lot of news this past week. Here are some stories that caught our eyes.

Stadium in Berlin Gets Transformed Into Giant Living Room for World Cup, Includes 700-inch Television
—TechEBlog
“Best of all, admission is free for the giant living room, known as WM Wohnzimmer, and it has room for up to 12,000 people.”

Dallas Summer Musicals Bolsters Theater Sound System with Technology for Hearing Impaired
—The Dallas Morning News
“The program offers hearing access in a number of ways, including a revamped sound system, upgraded and high-fidelity headsets, a loop system that is compatible with telecoils (known as t-coils) in hearing aids, and, the latest addition, frequency modulated (FM) ‘classroom compatible’ seating system, which is the same listening technology used in schools.”

World Cup 2014: Japanese Fans Clean Stadium After Losing 2-1 to Ivory Coast
—The Independent
“Despite seeing the Blue Samurais lose 2-1 against Didier Drogba’s team at the Arena Pernambuco in Recife, Japanese spectators armed with bin liners patrolled their side of the stadium and gathered up discarded litter…”

How to Manage Workplace Stress in Five Simple Steps
—The Guardian
“Stop telling yourself off and recognise what you need to be happy. And if all that fails, work out the cost to the bottom line and show your boss.”

How Data Beats Intuition at Making Selection Decisions
—Scientific American
“In predicting job performance, for instance, the predictions of hard data outperformed a combination of data and expert judgment by 50 percent.”

(Image: TechEBlog) 

That grumpy person at your job may be your best worker. According to a new study published in Social Psychology, a person considered a “hater” may be a better employee because he spends time on fewer activities.

Researchers  Justin Hepler (Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Dolores Albarracín (Annenberg School for Communication and Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania) found that people who like many things have a positive attitude and do more things during a week compared to people who dislike many things (the haters), who end up doing fewer things during the same time frame.

Helper and Albarracín showed in two studies that “likers” and haters don’t differ in the types of activities pursued, but that haters just do fewer of them and focused more time on their chosen activities.

“The present results demonstrate that patterns of general action may occur for reasons other than the desire to be active versus inactive,” the researchers wrote. “Indeed, some people may be more active than others not because they want to be active per se, but because they identify a large number of specific behaviors in which they want to engage.”

Helper and Albarracín suggest that these findings can be implemented in work strategies. For example, if you have a hater at work, find an activity he likes and let him focus his whole attention on it. He will develop better skills and be more productive.

He just may not be the most pleasant person to be around.

(photo credit: c r i s via photopin cc)