Winter Storm Leon lunged into the southern parts of the U.S. this past week. Sure, you can quote Charles Dudley Warner and say, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” But that’s not true. There are people out there who are doing something about it, primarily in the preparedness field.

Consider IAVM member Leonard Bonacci and John Comerer. Bonacci is vice president of stadium events and operations for Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, and Comerer is the stadium’s security director. They are part of a team that ensures the safety of all guests during events. In our latest issue, Joe DesPlaines wrote a story about how Bonacci and Comerer handled a Shelter-In-Place (SIP) during a storm at Taylor Swift concert. DesPlaines does a great job explaining the before, during, and after aspects of the situation, and he had Bonacci and Comerer identify key lessons learned:

• “There were some guests that refused to shelter, even with the lightning! Mostly these were fans in the ‘pit’ who didn’t want to lose their place as space in this area in front of the stage was given on a ‘first come’ basis. We ultimately had to ask the police for help, and we now know to routinely use the uniformed officers to clear the pit.”
• “We also found that people moved out of the seating areas fairly quickly but stopped when they entered the concourse and/or service area tunnel, effectively stopping the sheltering. We quickly learned that we needed to position some staff at the entrance to move people into the concourse, to accommodate all the guests.”
• “We had some guests who were very frightened of the thunder and lightning. We realized that we had to take special care with guests who panic and become immobilized.”
• “This event confirmed our training to be prepared to respond with urgency. Storms move fast and lightning can strike miles from the storm center. Activating the SIP plan was an immediate call to act quickly to maintain the safety of the guests and staff.”
• “Emergency planning must be totally transparent. All participants including venue employees, police, fire, EMS, tour staff, and even the performers need to know there is a plan and what actions we will take if activated. It was our understanding that even the star knew her shelter location.
• “Having executive leadership ‘buy-in’ to emergency response is invaluable . Their support and encouragement really motivates the staff.”
• “Communication is key to a successful shelter—with guests and staff. Providing information, even if it was a repeat of something previously stated, helped keep everyone calm.”
• “All the practice paid off—it was rehearsal for the real emergency.”

Training to properly respond is what drives the program at Severe Weather Preparedness & Planning for Public Assembly Venues and Events, which takes place March 4-5 at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. There you will be trained on such topics as atmospheric electricity (lightning threats), safe sheltering, and crowd dynamics. All the instructors are experts in the safety, security, and weather fields. Registration is open and available for members and non-members.

You can now blame your gender on your inability to remember things. According to researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, men have worse memories than women.

“It was surprising to see that men forget more than women,” said Jostein Holmen, a NTNU professor. “This has not been documented before. It was also surprising to see that men are just as forgetful whether they are 30 or 60 years old. The results were unambiguous.”

More than 48,000 Norwegian people took part in a longitudinal study, and nine  questions dealt with memory. The results—published in BMC Psychology—show that “subjective memory impairment” was reported by half the participants, with men reporting the most problems for eight out of the nine questions. Remembering names and dates were the most common problems. And your education level matters. Those more highly educated have better memories , and those who are more often anxious or depressed have memory problems.

“We have speculated a lot about why men report more frequent problems with remembering than women do, but have not been able to find an explanation,” Holmen said. “This is still an unsolved mystery.”

(photo credit: Rusty Clark via photopin cc)

Forget wrath, greed, sloth, etc. These are the seven sins updated for an always-on culture that likes to keep its social media close and its email closer.

“Back in the dial-up era, when going online had a cost implication, most people checked email maybe once a day and often responded as soon as they read them,” said Dr. Emma Russell, a psychologist from Kingston Business School in England. “Now, with broadband and 3G, unlimited numbers of messages can be streamed through smartphones at any time of the day or night. However many of us haven’t adapted our behavior.”

Responding to emails on your off hours is one of the sins.

“This puts pressure on staff to be permanently on call and makes those they are dealing with feel the need to respond,” Russell said. “Some workers became so obsessed by email that they even reported experiencing so-called phantom alerts where they think their phone has vibrated or bleeped with an incoming email when in fact it has not. Others said they felt they needed to physically hold their smartphone when they were not at their desk so that they were in constant email contact.”

Russell analyzed email usage across different companies, marking positives and negatives, and identified these seven email sins.

1. Ping pong – constant emails back and forth  creating long chains
2. Emailing out of hours
3. Emailing while in the company of other people
4. Ignoring emails completely
5. Requesting read receipts
6. Responding immediately to an email alert
7. Automated replies.

How many of these sins are you committing?

(photo credit: alexander_witt via photopin cc)

Our latest issue of Facility Manager is now online and available for you to flip through, read, and share.

Features in this issue include our cover story on farm-to-table in venues, an intriguing story about a shelter-in-place that happened during a Taylor Swift concert, and a discussion of sound design featuring St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York.

In addition to all the great sector columns written by our members, you can read profiles of Jan Addison, CFE, and Adina Erwin.

If you’re a member or subscriber, the printed edition should arrive in your mailboxes soon. In the meantime, though, visit us online and share any thoughts or ideas you have about the issue or future issues in the comments section below.

There was a lot of news this past week you may have missed. Here are some headlines that caught our eyes.

Angry Birds Coming to NHL Stadiums Across the Country
—GameStop
“Not only will the HockeyBird mascot greet fans at stadiums in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Vancouver, but Rovio will launch new interactive Angry Birds games on jumbo screens. The two games are called Slingshot and Slapshot, both of which use ‘state-of-the-art voice activated technology.'”

Cities Create Music, Cultural Festivals to Make Money
—Governing
“Municipal officials and entrepreneurs see the power of cultural events as a way to spur short-term tourism while shaping an image of the host city as a cool, dynamic location where companies and citizens in modern, creative industries can thrive.”

How the Australian Open Turns Match Data Into Dollars
—Business Spectator
“In a windowless bunker located meters away from the Rod Laver Tennis court, a team of IBM engineers are working feverishly to turn mundane match statistics into a money-spinner.”

How to Avoid “Square Peg in a Round Hole” Campus Event Scheduling
—Ungerboeck
“Are you a campus scheduling rebel? Are you the event or venue manager at your college or university who is using a different system from the other departments to coordinate your events? You might be a square-peg-in-a-round-hole event scheduler.”

3 Time Management Tips That Will Improve Your Health And Productivity
—Business Insider
“…how can we manage our time to live healthier and happier, do the things that we know are important, and still handle the responsibilities that are urgent?”

(Image: NHL/Rovio Entertainment Ltd.)