We love to mention when our members are in the news, and since the 2014 International Convention Center Conference begins tomorrow, this is the perfect time to point out a great article in the October issue of Convene that focuses on convention centers.

“When a convention center transitions to a new management organization—from a public authority to a third-party company, a third-party company to another third-party company, or some other variation—lives and livelihoods hang in the balance,” Christopher Durso wrote in “Convention Centers Under New Management.” “And not everyone is receptive to a new leadership culture.”

The article features IAVM members Teri Orton, general manager of the Hawai’i Convention Center; and Brad Gessner, CFE, senior vice president and general manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Orton and Gressner—along with managers from the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center—discuss such topics as why they took the job, turnover, meeting the staff, and managing transition.

“We actually retained 98 percent of our staff here [from SMG]. We have just over 75, close to 80 employees. That was a blessing for me, being new to facility management, to have the existing staff here—that most of the employees have been here since the building opened,” Orton said. “The building has been open 15 years, so that says a lot. I looked at it as a positive for me because they knew the facility. I opened my mind to learning as much as I could from them.”

You can read the complete article on Convene‘s website.

(Image: Dana Edmunds)

Drones outside the venue continue to spark discussion and concern, but Cirque Du Soleil has released a beautiful glimpse at what it might look like for them to integrate into the experience happening on stage.

HT to Slate, where you can watch a behind-the-scenes video.

Maine’s Portland Press Herald reports that the managers of the State Theatre will run a 5,000-capacity outdoor concert site on Thompson’s Point next summer.

“The venue will be part of the redevelopment of 30 acres of former industrial land on Thompson’s Point, which eventually will include retail space, offices, residences, a hotel, and the Circus Conservatory of America,” Ray Routhier reported.

Stage location and seating types have yet to be determined, along with how many or what kind of acts will perform on the site.

“[Manager Lauren] Wayne said the venue might attract the kind of acts that play the State Theatre, which holds about 1,800 people, but it is not likely to host country stars since those acts attract larger crowds,” Routhier reported.

Please visit the Portland Press Herald website for the rest of the story.

(Image: www.thompsonspointmaine.com)

Success isn’t always fun, says Srini Pillay, M.D., CEO of NeuroBusiness Group, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and a teacher in the Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School. For some people, finding success increases worries that they’ll fail in the future. However, there are strategies for getting out of this mindset.

Pillay, writing on the Harvard Business Review blog, offers the following suggestions to help you enjoy your success.

Avoid Victory Laps
“Learn to moderate when and where you express happiness about your success. Share the good news with other successful people. And focus your conversation on other things you are developing when you are succeeding so as not to annoy people.”

Focus on Value, Not Winning
“When we win, we assume that others will feel similarly, as we project our own feelings onto them. This fear may be unconscious or conscious and may disrupt our confidence, causing anxiety about the effect of our success on other people.”

Be in the Moment
“…stop overthinking the success. Focus on the ‘here and now.’ Let go of worrying about the future and rationalizing the past. Obsession with the past can be distracting and is not always helpful. Also, it will prevent you from clearing your mind.”

Aim Higher
“When you have mastered something, ask yourself: How you can innovate around this? Watch out for your own boredom as it can lead you to sabotage yourself, and also watch out for reactive lateral shifts in job hierarchy simply to escape your boredom of mastery.”

“Even when we consciously want to be successful, enjoying that success can be a challenge,” Pillay wrote. “By following the suggestions above, you can create a framework for managing success so that you can more reliably sustain your success when it occurs.”

Pillay’s post is a good one, and I recommend you read it for a more in-depth discussion about each suggestion.

(photo credit: Scrap Pile via photopin cc)

Behind every great success is a great spouse. At least that is what a new study has found.

“Our study shows that it is not only your own personality that influences the experiences that lead to greater occupational success, but that your spouse’s personality matters too,” said Joshua Jackson, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and the study’s lead author.

The study is the first of its kind to show that a spouse’s personality traits can affect your career.

“The experiences responsible for this association are not likely isolated events where the spouse convinces you to ask for a raise or promotion,” Jackson said. “Instead, a spouse’s personality influences many daily factors that sum up and accumulate across time to afford one the many actions necessary to receive a promotion or a raise.”

More than 5,000 married people, ages 19-89, were studied for five years. They were given psychological tests to determine how they would score on five types of personalities: openness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. The researchers then tracked on-job performance of working spouses using occupational success surveys, such as job satisfaction, salary raises, and promotions.

The researchers found that employees who had high scores of career success most often had spouses with high conscientiousness personalities. This is probably due to, the researches said, spouses helping with day-to-day chores, employees emulating the good habits of the spouses, and reduced stress because spouses helps keep employees’ personal lives running smoothly.

“This is another example where personality traits are found to predict broad outcomes like health status or occupational success, as in this study,” Jackson said. “What is unique to this study is that your spouse’s personality has an influence on such important life experiences.”

(photo credit: kenteegardin via photopin cc)