As a marketing person, I’m always looking to see what the competition is up to. Today, I Googled “venue safety.” The first return is IAVM’s AVSS, the Academy for Venue Safety and Security. This certainly makes the marketing person in me smile. Other than that, I find thousands of search results, none of which seem particularly relevant for a venue looking to improve their safety procedures.

So I picked up the phone and called a trusted source for all things safety and security, Kevin Mattingly. Mattingly is the deputy director for the Phoenix Convention Center & Venues. After a few minutes, he reinforced my first impression of safety and security online resources—while it is possible to find many safety programs online, most have been created for other sectors of our economy. None are venue industry specific, and their planning tools don’t easily cross-over into the event and venue industry.

So, with the need for a venue-specific training program, a team of leaders at IAVM began to offer AVSS in 2004. This two-year course offers venue managers a broad perspective on venue safety and security.

Mattingly, an instructor for the program, refers to year one of the week-long AVSS program as the “we show them what they don’t know year.” In year one, students focus on the principles and processes of venue safety and security: risk management, even management, and emergency preparedness and training.

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

A First Look at Tomorrow’s Super-Stadiums for Gamers
—Gizmodo
“The future of gaming? Huge stadiums, like those for football and soccer, with cavernous interiors and screaming fans. That’s the vision of Kansas City-based architects Populous, designers of sports venues all over the world.”

Hoping to Tame the Snow in Sochi
—New York Times
“Scattered high on the craggy, snow-swept cliffs of the Caucasus Mountains, dozens of wide-mouthed metal pipes jut horizontally from the rocks. An elbow joint turns the pipes downward, like spouts of giant faucets.”

The 10 Travel Changes That Will Matter Most to You
—Condé Nast Traveler
“Here are ten game changers that redefined the travel landscape in 2013.”

What CEOs Can Learn From Hostage Negotiators
—Fortune
“When business owners mature as leaders, they make two crucial changes in the way they run their companies: They spend considerably more time listening than talking.”

20 Most Impressive College Gyms and Student Rec Centers
—Best Value Schools
“Because of the increasingly important role these facilities play in university life, our editors sought to understand the trend more deeply and invested several weeks researching the ultimate student recreation and campus fitness centers.”

(Image from Populous via Gizmodo’s Twitter account)

Sure, you have your blue recycling can underneath your desk. You may have even taken public transportation to work today. As you scribble on the last corner of a sheet so as not to waste any paper until it’s completely used, you’re probably asking yourself, “Is this really worth it? Will my one plastic spoon really be the item that sends us back to the Dark Ages? Does anyone really care what happens to the world after they’re dead?”

Take a breath. I understand. Being green is hard. It can be easy, though, if you can get over self-doubt.

“Supporting social issues often requires perseverance from individuals who want to make a difference,” wrote the authors of “It’s Not Easy Being Green: The Role of Self-Evaluations in Explaining Support for Environmental Issues,” a study conducted by scholars from Rice University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto. “Our research explains how the mixed self-evaluations of these individuals spring from their interpretation of issue-support challenges.”

Scott Sonenshein, an associate professor of management at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, says people’s support for environmental issues and their doubt in their behavior’s effectiveness manifests itself in benign daily tasks such as recycling or the mode of transportation one chooses.

“It’s this ongoing challenge,” Sonenshein said. “No matter what you do, the sense from the study is that it’s never enough. For example, you could drive your Prius to work or you could walk to work instead. It’s this never-ending set of doubts of ‘Am I doing enough to help the environment?’ It turns out that people are very different in how they can respond to these kinds of persistent doubts. Some people are able to cope with that through building immunity through their self-assets, and other people, unfortunately, fizzle and burn out.

“I would like to see a deeper understanding and appreciation of the difficulty of being an environmentalist,” Sonenshein continued. “Environmentalists have a psychologically very difficult task in front of them in part because of the enormity of the problem that they are solving, and that creates a pretty difficult psychological environment for them to be effective.”

There is a way, though, to help alleviate self-doubt, and that’s by thinking about a long future. Most of the time, environmental concerns are expressed with stories of impending doom. However, a study from researchers at NYU Stern and Columbia University found that when people were aware of an elongated sense of history, they were more apt to support environmental causes.

“Our research suggests to rely less on end-of-world scenarios and to emphasize instead the various ways in which our country—and our planet—has a rich and long history that deserves to be preserved,” said Hal Hershfield, a researcher at NYU Stern. “By highlighting the shadow of the past, we may actually help illuminate the path to an environmentally sustainable future.”

(photo credit: Rennett Stowe via photopin cc)

If you’re following today’s posts, you may begin to see a theme.

As Jason mentioned, today is the second annual “#GivingTuesday” a movement to create a national day of giving to kick off the giving season on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The first GivingTuesday brought in over $10 million in online donations in 2012.

We know that many of our venues participate in charitable programs, so we reached out to IAVM Headquarters neighbor, Paul Turner, CFE, director of event operations & security for AT&T Stadium, to see what they do to make a difference for their community, and Paul shared that the stadium has several programs in place including:

• Donating unclaimed lost-and-found items to charitable organizations (eyeglasses get reused and go to people who are in need)
• Holding food and toy drives that our hundreds of part-time staff give to regularly
• Taking part in our corporate community service projects including participating with the Dallas Cowboys to work with The Salvation Army on many efforts, including the kick-off of the Red Kettle Campaign.

“As an industry, I think we recognize the unique role that we (venues) play in society and in our communities and that we look for ways to be of service beyond our guests, event clients, performers and athletes who visit and use our facilities,” Turner said.

We know many of our venue members give back. Share what you do to make a difference in your community!

(photo credit: by Tim Green aka atoach)

Today is Giving Tuesday. It arrives on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two days marked by heavy consumption and spending. It’s nice to have a day where we’re encouraged and reminded to give back to others (though I’d argue that every day should be a giving day).

There are a lot of ways you can give to people in your communities, and there’s no one thing you have to do. However, there is one easy thing to give, according to Adam Grant, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s simply an introduction.

“When I look back on the moments that fundamentally changed my life, the vast majority began with quiet and generous introductions,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I met my wife through an introduction (thank you, Mike) and chose my career due to an introduction (thank you, Tal). When I wrote a book about the hidden power of helping others, it was featured in a New York Times magazine cover story because of an introduction (thank you, Wendy). Adam Rifkin was one of the stars of the book, and fittingly, I met him through an introduction (thank you, Jennifer).”

Grant says that most people overlook introductions as a form of giving, with only 27 percent making an introduction last year.

“One of the barriers is that we worry about putting our own reputations on the line,” he wrote. “As Liz Ryan pointed out last week, most introductions are reactive: we make them after someone reaches out for help. This puts us in a position of evaluating whether we want to stick our necks out on behalf of someone else. We can circumvent this problem by being more proactive, initiating introductions before people ask. When we choose who we want to connect, we can introduce people where there’s likely to be a mutual benefit and provide a compelling reason for why they should meet.”

I encourage everyone today to take a moment and introduce two people who were previously strangers. Ask them then to pay it forward. In the end, we’ll all get to know each other a little bit better and perhaps a few good things will come of it.