Our International Stadium Management Conference is upcoming, taking place in Atlanta, Georgia, May 7-9. This is a great opportunity for stadium and racetrack  managers to meet together, learn from one other, and make new connections.

Over the weeks leading up to the conference, we’ll have many of the presenters and organizers offer their thoughts about the event and why you should attend. Up first is Nate Hayden, director of business operations at the Fiesta Bowl.

Why do you feel it’s important for managers to attend this conference?

The past few years, the conference has been held online utilizing the webSITE format. The past conferences were effective and feedback from members was positive, but obviously the committee is particularly excited about bringing the meeting back on site, and what a better location than Atlanta with the Georgia World Congress Center and the Georgia Dome as our hosts.

The educational value of the conference is top-notch as it is, yet greatly enhanced when all the stadium professionals in the room have the opportunity to add their expertise through feedback, sharing personal experiences (the good and the bad), best practices developed at their stadiums, etc. The industry is unique in that all IAVM members, Allied members, colleagues, peers, experts, etc. are willing to openly share information among each other. That is our greatest resource.

What’s one topic or session that attendees will benefit from and why?

I am personally excited for the session on event and facility command center operations. This panel discussion will present case studies/best practices/examples from member buildings and their events as well as current issues and opportunities followed by a question-and-answer period with the panel. Again, there is so much to be learned simply from our colleagues sharing information—operationally from event managers, structure and life safety tactics from law enforcement and EMS partners, technologically from practices in monitoring social media to opportunities for security observation, just to name a few. I think this session will offer numerous “take-homes” from the experiences and expertise presented by the panel and the attendees.

There’s a study that is sure to get a lot of people on the dance floor of debate, cut a rug of “oh, really!,” and do an old soft shoe of suspicion (I got a ton of these; it’s Monday, and I lost an hour of sleep!)

Anneli Hujala, Sanna Laulainen, and Kaija Kokkonen of the Department of Health and Social Management at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio studied how dancing can help a manager improve awareness interaction with employees.

“In management and organisation theory and practice, management is conventionally consider to be a rational and cognitive issue ignoring the bodies and emotions of managers,” the researchers wrote in the study‘s abstract. “This experimental study aims to find out whether a method based on harnessing the whole corporeal body of a participant may elicit, express and create new and different kinds of knowledge about interaction embedded in management.”

The researchers had study participants “dance their feelings” and filmed them in order to learn about hidden insights and emotions.

“The use of creative movement ‘revealed’ unconscious dimensions of behavior and the relevance of feelings in management interaction,” the researchers wrote. “In addition, the therapeutic outcomes appeared to be an essential part of the study for the participants.”

It was noted that being a good dancer is not required. It’s about creative expression through music.

So, do you think this study has two left feet or is it something to twist and shout about?

(photo credit: Stephen Poff via photopin cc)

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

Queen and Adam Lambert to Reunite for Summer Tour
—Rolling Stone
“While Lambert has appeared with current Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor at numerous shows, this will be the singer’s first official tour with the group.”

The 25 Most Amazing College Campus Theaters
—Best College Reviews
“These top 25 theaters celebrate large spaces, history, unique architecture, impressive interiors and innovative designs.”

Why Your Stodgy Old Concert Hall Looks The Way It Does
—Fast Company
“New research supports the idea that the best way to hear music is in a room shaped like a shoebox.”

European Concert-going is Falling According to Eurobarometer
—PanStadia & Arena Management
“Across the EU Countries, respondents generally said that lack of interest or lack of time are the main obstacles to participating in a particular activity.”

Breathing Easy
—The Meeting Professional
“Why have special meal requests and allergies exploded among groups?”

An expert panel of representatives from ARRIS, Motorola Mobility, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and IAVM member Steve Schwartz, senior research policy manager at Walter E. Washington Convention Center,  spoke as part of today’s WifiForward Coalition breakfast held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The breakfast was held to raise awareness in the media for the efforts of the coalition (which IAVM is a part of) to  encourage the FCC to support new research and help relieve the congestion faced across the current wireless spectrum and to support the expansion of unlicensed wireless to include the 5 Gigahertz spectrum.

Democratic FCC commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, wants to seize the day on expanding unlicensed spectrum in the lower 5 GHz band.

“We should seize this opportunity right now,” she told unlicensed advocacy group WifiForward this morning, according to excerpts of her remarks. “We can take the flexible Wi-Fi rules that have already been the script for an unlicensed success story in the 5.725-5.825 GHz band and expand them to the 5.15-5.25 GHz band. If we do, we could effectively double unlicensed bandwidth in the 5 GHz band overnight. That will mean more unlicensed service—and less congestion on licensed wireless networks. That’s win-win.”

If you’d like to join the conversation, you can follow the Coalition on Twitter: @WifiForward or follow this morning’s social media posts at the WifiForward Tumblr page here.

Learn more about IAVM’s participation in the coalition by reading my earlier blog post here.

Meditation. Mindfulness. Making time to be in the moment. There’s a push for everyone to slow down in our fast-pace world, and for good reason. Science is showing that simple acts of meditation and mindfulness not only change the brain’s physical structure, but they also help you make better decisions.

Researchers at INSEAD and The Wharton School found that one 15-minute, focused-breathing meditation a day may help you make smarter choices. They conducted a series of studies exploring how meditation affects “sunk-cost bias” (i.e., not being able to cut your losses).

“Most people have trouble admitting they were wrong when their initial decisions lead to undesirable outcomes,” said researcher Andrew Hafenbrack, lead author on the research and a doctoral candidate at INSEAD. “They don’t want to feel wasteful or that their initial investment was a loss. Ironically, this kind of thinking often causes people to waste or lose more resources in an attempt to regain their initial investment or try to ‘break even.’”

The researchers discovered that mediation may mitigate this natural bias.

“We found that a brief period of mindfulness meditation can encourage people to make more rational decisions by considering the information available in the present moment, while ignoring some of the other concerns that typically exacerbate the ‘sunk-cost bias,’” Hafenbrack said.

One study had participants report how much they focus on the present moment and read 10 sunk-cost scenarios. They then reported how much they would let go of the sunk-costs. Those who focused on the present moment reported they would ignore sunk costs. In a follow-up experiment, participants listened to a 15-minute recording by a professional mindfulness coach, who instructed one group to focus on breathing. Another group was told to think of whatever comes to mind. Participants then answered sunk-cost scenario questions. A final study had participants answer questions about the time period on which they were focused (past, present, or future) and the emotions experienced.

Meditation increased resistance to sunk-cost bias in all the experiments.

“The debiasing effect of mindfulness meditation in sunk-cost situations was due to a two-step process,” said co-author Zoe Kinias. “First, meditation reduced how much people focused on the past and future, and this psychological shift led to less negative emotion. The reduced negative emotion then facilitated their ability to let go of sunk costs.”

Co-author Sigal Barsade said that meditation can be very practical.

“Our findings hold great promise for research on how mindfulness can influence emotions and behavior, and how employees can use it to feel and perform better,” Barsade said.

Do you meditate? If so, how does it help you in your job? Please share your experiences with us in the comments section.

(photo credit: jessebezz via photopin cc)