IAVM’s get-a-member campaign, iCommit, ends March 31, in just four days! Do you know any potential superstars that will benefit by being connected to our tremendous network? If so, here is the next step:

Call or email your friends, colleagues, product and service providers—anyone that is involved in our industry—and encourage them to join.

Your one membership referral gets us closer to our goal AND more members means more collaboration, a bigger and more diverse network for you, and a greater pool of experts to create inspiring and motivating educational sessions at conferences.

For your efforts, you will be entered in a raffle to win one of five $500 Apple gift cards (generously provided by Ungerboeck Software) to apply toward the purchase of any Apple product including an iPad, iPhone, or iPod—your choice.* The more members you refer, the more chances you have to win.

To ensure you are eligible to win, make sure the new member who joins lists your name in the Applicant Section titled “Who Recommended IAVM To You?” and enters “iCOMMIT” in the Promotional Code field in the Payment Method section of the membership application. Your referral will save the one-time initiation fee up to $150.00. If you have questions, please call Member Services at 972.906.7441 or membership@iavm.org. We value and appreciate your support of IAVM!

*iPAD, iPhone, iPod not included

(Image: Orange Photography)

We’ve posted two stories about Facebook this week, so we may as well make it a hat trick. This time we’re going to talk about how the social networking site and emotional connectivity are related.

A new study found that after more than one billion anonymized Facebook status updates from more than 100 million U.S. users were analyzed that positive posts produced more positive posts and negative posts generated more negative posts. The positive posts, though, were more influential and contagious.

“Our study suggests that people are not just choosing other people like themselves to associate with but actually causing their friends’ emotional expressions to change,” said lead author James Fowler, professor of political science in the Division of Social Sciences and of medical genetics in the School of Medicine at University of California, San Diego. “We have enough power in this data set to show that emotional expressions spread online and also that positive expressions spread more than negative.”

The researchers ran an experiment involving rain to determine cause and effect. They found that posts by people being rained on affected posts by those in drier parts of the country. Even more, they found that positive posts created more positive posts among friends.

“It is possible that emotional contagion online is even stronger than we were able to measure,” Fowler said. “For our analysis, to get away from measuring the effect of the rain itself, we had to exclude the effects of posts on friends who live in the same cities. But we have a pretty good sense from other studies that people who live near each other have stronger relationships and influence each other even more. If we could measure those relationships, we would probably find even more contagion.”

The findings are significant for the public well-being, too, the researchers said.

“If an emotional change in one person spreads and causes a change in many, then we may be dramatically underestimating the effectiveness of efforts to improve mental and physical health,” Fowler said. “We should be doing everything we can to measure the effects of social networks and to learn how to magnify them so that we can create an epidemic of well-being.”

This latest study is another confirmation that being positive is a major key to creating viral content (the other key is emotion). Consider an experiment conducted by two University of Pennsylvania professors, Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman.

“After controlling for online and print placement, timing, author popularity, author gender, length, and complexity, Berger and Milkman found that two features predictably determined an article’s success: how positive its message was and how much it excited its reader,”  Maria Konnikova wrote in The New Yorker. “Articles that evoked some emotion did better than those that evoked none. But happy emotions outperformed sad ones.”

Even after re-framing a single story to be either positive or negative, Berger and Milkman found that the positive one was way more popular.

How often do you find yourself sharing positive stories compared to negative ones? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

(photo credit: Fellowship of the Rich via photopin cc)

The big Blue Bear has something new to look at in the Colorado Convention Center. In a public-private partnership between the City & County of Denver and SMG (the center’s management firm), $235,000 worth of new art has been installed in its halls.

Local artists created all the pieces, selected by art consulting firm NINE dot ARTS.

“Half of the artists in the new slate are under 35, which is impressive considering most public artists are over 40,” said Martha Weidmann, CEO and co-founder of NINE dot ARTS. “For many of the artists, this was the largest scale permanent installation they have ever worked at, including veteran artist Roland Bernier, who installed the largest piece of his nearly 60-year career. The art committee showed an amazing vision and faith in Denver’s emerging talent to knockout results.”

Most convention centers are also learning centers where people come to be engaged and broaden their knowledge, said Kent Rice, executive director of Arts & Venues for the City of Denver, so it’s appropriate that art be an important part of the building’s environment.

“Convention centers today must provide practical, green, efficient and easy to use space, but art and atmosphere are just as important to create surroundings that are conducive to learning and to conducting business,” said John Adams, an IAVM member and general manager of the Colorado Convention Center.

You can view all the pieces here.

(Image: NINE dot ARTS)

The February/March issue of FM magazine is at the printer and will be mailing soon. However, the digital edition is ready for reading, and one of the articles we’re most excited about sharing with you is the one featuring IAVM member success stories from this year’s Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium. Four stadium staff members talked about their experiences before, during, and after the big game.

For example, Aaron Schmitt, assistant director of guest services, talked about the one piece of advice he and his team found helpful:

Matt Surabian, director of parking and concessions, told us about his most proud moment of the event.

The article also features stories from Anne Wheat, director of guest services, and Alan Kashian, senior director of facility operations. We hope you read the article, and please join us in congratulating these IAVM members from MetLife Stadium for helping make this event such a success.

(Image: Ariele Hecht Goldman/MetLife Stadium)

Facebook surprised the tech world yesterday when it said it was buying Oculus VR, a virtual reality gaming company.

“Our mission is to make the world more open and connected,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his company’s site. “For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining, and personal experiences.”

Zuckerberg wrote Oculus’ mission is to “enable you to experience the impossible,” and he sees (no pun intended) a variety of ways in which this new partnership can work.

“Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world, or consulting with a doctor face-to-face—just by putting on goggles in your home,” he wrote. “This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”

Let’s get that imagination ball rolling. Tell us how you could see (once again, no pun intended) harnessing this technology for your venue’s own benefit. I’ll start with one: Perhaps now if a concert is sold out, special virtual reality tickets could be sold for those who want to experience it at home. Now, your turn. Let your imagination go wild and please share your thoughts in the comments section.

(photo credit: Sergey Galyonkin via photopin cc)