Venues Today announced on its Facebook page the winners of the 2014 Women of Influence Award, and four out of the five are IAVM members. Congratulations to Jan Addison, CFE; Lynn Carlotto; Wesley Cullen; and Cheryl Swanson, CFE, on being selected this year for the award!

The magazine will feature all the winners in its July issue and will honor them at the Women of Influence reception, July 27, during VenueConnect in Portland, Oregon.

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

NBA Uses Google Glass to Turn Courtside Celebrities Into Broadcasters
—The Verge
“The Pacers want to continue expanding the amount and variety of Glass content they offer to fans inside the arena, and are making some technical improvements along with adding the fresh courtside perspective.”

Cover Your Ears, Belgian Trumpets to Fill Brazil Stadiums
—Reuters
“…two Belgian entrepreneurs hope to fill stadiums in Brazil with the high-pitched noise from plastic trumpets dubbed ‘diabolica.'”

Adelaide Convention Centre Employees Get on Their Bikes
—Global Alliance
“The Adelaide Convention Centre has successfully created a cycling culture of its own, with more than 20 per cent of the permanent workforce now choosing bikes over cars for their daily commute to and from work.”

Build Your Own All-Star Team
—Harvard Business Review
“High-performing teams are the secret behind many extraordinary accomplishments.”

Behind the Scenes of the Record-breaking New Miss Saigon
—The Telegraph
“When tickets for the West End revival of Miss Saigon went on sale it broke box office records, taking £4.4 million in a single day.”

(Image: Pacers.com)

If you’re seeking a job or a new career, then consider creating a personal map via visual thinking. This new way of figuring out one’s interests was developed at Wake Forest University in its career center.

“As far as we know, we are the first university to set up a designated area in a career center with the tools and support to use visual thinking techniques to create a personal map,” said Katharine Brooks, Wake Forest University’s executive director of personal and career development.

Here’s how it works: Place yourself in the center of the page, then quickly add short phrases or pictures of things that are important to you in life. When that’s completed, make connections among the items.

“One student of mine drew a line connecting her favorite TV show, Law & Order: SVU, to her love of playing poker to having a sister with cerebral palsy,” Brooks said. “When I asked her what the connection was, she said all of those things honed her ability to problem solve and strategize. She liked to guess who the villain was in SVU. She used strategic thinking in her tournament-winning poker playing. And because her sister had physical and learning challenges, she was always trying to come up with strategies for helping her gain access to inaccessible places and do better in school by finding other ways to help her learn.”

Brooks suggests you look at your whole life when creating your personal map.

“Visual mapping moves the focus away from asking, ‘How am I going to make money?’ Brooks said. “It’s a wide-angle view on choosing ways to make a living that fit within your life passions rather than just intersecting them in a small way.”

And it’s not just a feel-good exercise, she said.

“We explore the difficult challenges that have tested our mettle,” Brooks said. “By identifying the skills in which we are particularly strong, we can think about how we would apply them in the workplace.”

(Image: Wake Forest University)

The BBC published an interesting story this week about the Brazuca, the new World Cup ball, which is the 12th one created by Adidas for the games. The previous ball, named Jabulani, used in 2010 in South Africa was criticized for its unpredictable trajectory when kicked. This new one, though, has better accuracy, according to Adidas.

How the ball behaves comes down to design factors, said aerodynamic experts interviewed by the BBC. Those factors include the amount of roughness and the geometry of the seams.

“I am pretty sure the Brazuca is going to behave more like the traditional 32-panel internally stitched ball, so the complaints we got in the last two World Cups will be minimized,” Dr. Rabi Mehta, branch chief at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, told the BBC.

Visit the BBC website to read the complete story about the one ball that most of the world will focus on this summer. Also, fee free to follow the ball on Twitter.

(Image: Adidas)

Yesterday, good news concerning Wi-Fi came from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“The FCC approved an order that sets the stage for an incentive auction that can advance both licensed and unlicensed wireless broadband. The FCC has found a compromise that will allow it to auction large bands for licensed wireless services while still permitting innovations in unlicensed technologies in at least three channels in every community in the nation,” WifiForward said in a statement. “By ensuring that American consumers, businesses, schools, libraries, anchor institutions, and local governments will have access to these three unlicensed channels across the country, the FCC has laid the foundation for the investment and innovation needed to develop a new class of 600 MHz unlicensed technologies.

“WifiForward congratulates the FCC on this substantial achievement. But far more work remains to turn the promise of the 600 MHz band into a reality.

“The FCC announced that it would now issue a series of important rule-making notices to set the critical technical rules for unlicensed technologies. We strongly support the FCC’s efforts so far and look forward to working together to ensure a robust wireless economy supported by the most efficient and effective allocation of spectrum, one of our nation’s most valuable public resources.”

(photo credit: FutUndBeidl via photopin cc)