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

Listen Up: NFL Logos Must Look More Like Soccer Crests
—Wired
“The coworkers at a local creative agency decided to create an experiment that explores what NFL logos would look like in the form of football crests from England, Spain, Italy and Germany. The resulting logos, called Football As Football, are like gaelic football—a perfect melding of American brashness and European restraint and tradition.”

With New Management in Place, AEG Seeks to Revitalize Convention Center
—Los Angeles Downtown News
“Anschutz Entertainment Group, which in October won a five-year contract from the city to manage the Convention Center, last week named Brad Gessner the senior vice president and general manager of the Downtown venue. Gessner served as the San Diego Convention Center’s general manager for six years before joining AEG’s facilities wing in 2012 as vice president of convention centers.”

How to Build Massive High-Tech Rock Star Concerts
—Bloomberg Businessweek
“The music industry is going through tremendous change, de-emphasizing the sale of recorded music and focusing on live performances. Artists are now turning to technology to boost live music revenue. It’s an arms race and the leading arms dealer is a privately held company called Tait Towers based in the heart of Amish country in rural Pennsylvania.”

After A Disaster, These Inflatable Shelters Can Fall From The Sky
—Fast Company
“In the aftermath of a natural disaster, aid isn’t always lacking. But where roads are destroyed and bad weather foils transportation, the ability to distribute resources diminishes. That’s why Turkish industrial designer Adem Önalan has created LifeBox, an ingenious, inflatable contraption that can hold food, be air-dropped onto land or sea, and transform into a durable raft or shelter.”

For CEOs, It’s Time to Study Up on Technology
—Associations Now
“If you’re the head of an organization, how much do you need to know about technology trends? Detailed specs on the leading hardware and software tools? Just enough to understand what your members do every day? Enough to bluff through the procurement process?”

(Image: Football As Football)

USA Today readers have spoken, naming Lambeau Field the best NFL stadium, where there is a 30-year waiting list to buy season tickets.

The other NFL stadiums on the “10Best Readers’ Choice” list:

Soldier Field (Chicago Bears)
M&T Bank Stadium (Baltimore Ravens)
Lucas Oil Stadium (Indianapolis Colts)
AT&T Stadium (Dallas Cowboys)
Heinz Field (Pittsburgh Steelers)
Sports Authority Field (Denver Broncos)
Raymond James Stadium (Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
CenturyLink Field (Seattle Seahawks)
Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City Chiefs)

I’d love to visit Lambeau Field one day, but as a die-hard Cowboys fan, I’m still smarting about that Ice Bowl loss in ’67.

(photo credit: elviskennedy via photopin cc)

I know a lot of our readers are interested in sports and music, so I wanted to point you to a great article on Sports on Earth. Written by Alan Siegel, it’s the story of how NFL Films got involved in the music business, first starting with Journey’s, rock documentary, Frontiers & Beyond.

“Written and directed by [Phil] Tuckett, Frontiers & Beyond has NFL Films’ fingerprints all over it,” Siegel wrote. “Facenda, in fine form, reminds the audience early in the film that it belongs not only to Journey, but also its crew. ‘This is their story, too,’ he says in his signature baritone. ‘Together they are 70 modern day troubadours and roustabouts, crisscrossing the country in seven tractor trailers and three buses, towing the portable pieces of state-of-the-art rock and roll theater.’ Fittingly, there’s also the use of slow motion, in this case not to showcase a balletic Lynn Swann catch, but to highlight lead singer Steve Perry’s facial expression during ‘Faithfully.'”

I didn’t even know there was a Journey documentary out there, much less produced in the same style as all those great pieces from NFL Films. You can watch the documentary above, but definitely read the article. It’s a great one.

In a recent article on The Verge, David Pierce journeys through the staggering amount of equipment ($25 million worth) and personnel (~200 credentialed staff) Fox Sports brings into a stadium to broadcast the experience to televisions and screens.

For venue managers, the article and 13-minute documentary (above) are an insightful glimpse into the depth of coordination that exists between the venue and the Fox Sports team. It is also a sobering reminder that, as Rich Russo, director on Fox’s A Crew, states, their mission is to “make the viewer feel like they’re sitting in the stands, seeing and hearing everything as if they are inside…”

Whether being in the stands could ever be simulated is yet to be determined, but the crew at Fox Sports NFL is showing us all what it takes to give it a shot.

The Performing Arts Managers Conference (PAMC) will take place February 22-25, 2014, in Kansas City, Mo. Along with great opportunities to network and learn about the latest trends and fresh ideas emerging in the performing arts sector, venue managers can tour one of the region’s newest gems, The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

The Kauffman Center began as a simple sketch on a paper napkin, broke ground in 2006, and became a reality in 2011. The facility quickly defined itself not only as an architectural icon for the skyline of Kansas City, but as a focal point for the region—delivering enriching experiences for both artists and audiences alike. Designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the building’s most distinctive features are its curving, shell-like exterior, superior acoustical design, and the facility’s accessibility.

We wanted to provide a sneak peek into some of this venue’s striking features and inspire performing arts managers to attend the conference and take in this spectacular new venue for themselves. So we spoke to Patrick Donnelly, local host for PAMC and the director of theatre operations at the Kauffman Center, about the new facility and asked him a few questions about the construction process.

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