DISTRICT IV MEMBERS LEAD THE WAY IN GREEN BUILDINGS

It Ain’t Easy Being Green!

The Winnipeg Convention Centre has been awarded a Go Green Certificate by the building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA). This national environmental certification recognizes responsible practices in building operations.

The Go Green program honors' commercial buildings which are committed to :best practices” in waste reduction and recycling, interior environment, building materials and resource consumption. Ten minimum requirements are identified in these key environmental areas for a building to be granted the three year recognition ranging from energy and water use to indoor air quality and HVAC maintenance.

“All of us at the Centre have been dedicated to finding and implementing environmentally friendly innovations for a long time”, notes Winnipeg Convention Centre’s General Manager, Klaus Lahr. “It’s an honor to be recognized by this Canada-wide organization.”

As our society becomes more environmentally conscious, there is a need to develop appropriate, practical performance standards that optimize our use of finite resources. A building’s environmental friendliness is becoming a more significant factor in the overall selection process. The efforts of BOMA have had a significant impact in helping commercial building owners who care about our future environmental challenges to get involved as leaders in this important movement.

Across the Border:
Spokane Convention Center Awarded LEED Silver Certification

The Spokane Convention Center has become the third Convention Center in the United States to earn LEED Certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. Built on the scenic Spokane River the Spokane Convention Center site has great history in concert with the environment. Built on the site of “Expo 74” the first environmental Worlds Fair, SPFD Board felt it was important to preserve the history, our river and the environment. Constructing and operating a sustainable building made sense.

The Spokane Convention Center earned enough points for a LEED Silver Certification in the five categories for minimizing the building’s impact to the environment: Sustainable Site, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality.

Not only has the LEED Silver Certification been good for the environment, it has also proven to be a valuable marketing tool as the Green Meeting trend is growing at a rapid pace. More and more planners are recognizing the importance of holding their meetings in sustainable buildings.

VCEC President Barbara Maple and Dr. John D. Wiebe, President & CEO of the GLOBE Foundation with the IMEX gold award

CONVENTION CENTRE EVENT WINS GOLD AWARD FOR GREEN MEETING

Vancouver, B.C., May 9, 2007: The third session of the World Urban Forum (WUF3) has won Gold for the IMEX 2007 Green Meetings Award in Frankfurt, Germany at IMEX 2007 – one of the meetings and conventions industry’s largest worldwide exhibitions. Organized by the Globe Foundation of Canada, WUF3 was held at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre (VCEC) in June 2006 and was a “green-mandated” conference hosted by UN-Habitat and the Government of Canada.

Explaining why the six-day, 10,000 participant conference was chosen above other entrants, Shawna McKinley, Executive Director of the Green Meetings Industry Council said: “WUF3 had its own holistic plan which engaged all participants and exceeded the baseline for sustainable practice. The application was so strong that it certainly lived up to – and arguably has now set – a new gold standard for environmentally responsible meetings.”

“Our team at GLOBE worked hard to create a greening program that successfully integrated event operations with marketing and communications,” said Dr. John D. Wiebe, President & CEO for the GLOBE Foundation of Canada. Wiebe continued: “While actively engaging suppliers and delegates to reduce the environmental impact of daily activities, we set out to make the conference carbon neutral and focused on waste minimization, pollution reduction and energy conservation.”

Each application was reviewed against the conference venue and the conference itself, including catering and trade show practices. According to the judging panel, as WUF3’s chosen venue, the VCEC offered an exemplary set of green features including seawater cooling systems and a detailed energy efficiency program. Other benefits such as low flow toilets, a recycling program for organic waste, use of re-useable glassware and utensils and the use of green certified housekeeping and cleaning products all met with the organizers’ stringent requirements.

“On behalf of the VCEC, I would like to congratulate our longstanding client and partner, the GLOBE Foundation,” said Barbara Maple, VCEC President. “We’re pleased that we had the systems, people, and processes in place to support WUF3, as the event required extensive strategic planning, teamwork, participation and commitment by all parties.”

"This is a great example of B.C.’s commitment to sustainable best practices,” said the Honourable Stan Hagen, Minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts. “I want to congratulate the GLOBE Foundation on this well-deserved award.”

ABOUT WUF3

Marking the 30th anniversary of the first United Nations conference held in Vancouver in 1976, the third session of the World Urban Forum (WUF3) hosted delegates from more than 150 nations at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. Previously held in Barcelona and Nairobi, the World Urban Forum was established by the UN to examine rapid urbanization and sustainability.

For five days – June 19 to 23, 2006 – participants examined and identified solutions to critical problems facing cities around the world. Originally expecting 6,000 attendees, nearly 10,000 delegates attended WUF3 and the event generated $17.8 million in non-resident delegate spending.

Some of the environmental management strategies in place included prominent placement of recycling containers to ensure recycling of paper, cardboard, plastics, cans/bottles, etc.; energy efficient lighting; scheduling HVAC around event times; composting organic matter/food waste; utilizing fairly-traded coffee complete with locally-produced milk and cream and organic sugar; extensive use of non-disposable crockery and biodegradable cups; and foods served in bulk rather than individually packaged. The VCEC also brought in 15,000 bottles of "Earth Water" made by a company that donates 100% of its profits to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

In addition to its Gold award, WUF3 also earned a Four Star MeetGreen Certification for excellence in green meeting practices.

Official report from the inaugural meeting of the
Pacific Northwest IAAM Chapter Meeting – May 22, 2007.

First of all, allow me to give a big “Thank You” to Edie Burke, Manager, KeyArena at Seattle Center for being such a gracious host for our inaugural meeting. Edie donated the use of the FSN HD Lounge at Key Arena. Aramark provided an outstanding menu and Starplex CMS provided some wonderful guest service attendants for the evening.

TWe hosted 61 people at our inaugural meeting. The amazing thing about this meeting is that the people who were in attendance weren’t our usual IAAM attendees. All seemed very interested in joining IAAM and everyone took the IAAM membership info packages with them as they left. Hopefully we will generate more membership and participation for our organization. We suggested each person in attendance to donate $5 to go to the IAAM Foundation. Kim Bedier, General Manager of the Everett Events Center donated $80 on behalf of her staff that attended the meeting and Rob Henson, Deputy Director of the Tacoma Dome donated $100 on behalf of the Tacoma Dome staff that attended. Starplex CMS, the security and guest services sub contractor at Key Arena donated $100. After everything was counted, we raised a total of $418 that will be donated to the IAAM Foundation. We challenge other chapters to raise funds whenever possible to go to this worthy cause.

Kim Bedier did an excellent job of developing the “icebreaker” portion of our meeting that provided those in attendance an excellent opportunity for networking with each other. The Northwest must hold some type of record of having the most people who have worked for Feld Entertainment (I’ll research this and report my findings).

Edie Burke called our meeting to order with a welcome and some brief introductions, and then invited Duane Morris, our official District IV Vice President to give the IAAM District and National update. After Duane’s report, we invited those who had construction or expansion projects underway to give updates to our chapter. Jyo Singh, Director Commercial Events and Facilities for Seattle Center revealed Seattle Center Century 21 – the Future of Seattle Center and John Hodgson, the City Administrator of Kent, WA talked about the plans for Amiga Events Center construction, the new arena that will be built in Kent for their minor league hockey tenant the Seattle Thunderbirds.

Rob Henson introduced Jeff Trisler, President Northwest Concerts for Live Nation. Jeff gave our group a brief overview of the Live Nation business model, and then opened the floor for questions/discussions. Everyone seemed interested about the future of the live event business and what it would look like in 5 – 10 years. This segment of the program produced some pointed questions that created much discussion. Jeff was very gracious with his time and sincerely appreciated the opportunity to speak to us.

After Jeff, we moved on to the Hot Topics forum where the discussion centered on the Washington State Liquor laws as they relate to the “darkened house” rules.

We have several volunteers for our next meeting. John Erickson, Northwest Vice President of Centerplate agreed to provide the food and beverage for our next meeting. We will try to secure Safeco Field (home of the Seattle Mariners) for our next chapter meeting. Currently, we have agreed to hold quarterly meetings. We encouraged everyone present to get involved with the IAAM and to volunteer their time to help insure that our organization will continue to grow and be vital in the coming years.

Join us for the 82nd Annual IAAM Conference & Trade Show
in Salt Lake City at the
Salt Palace Convention Center,
July 20-24, 200
(The District Meeting is on July 23)

Center needs Headquarter Hotel

Metro, the regional governmental agency that owns the Oregon Convention Center has accepted the public development process from the Portland Development Commission in moving to the due diligence phase of the Headquarter Convention Hotel. The hotel will potentially be built across the street from the Oregon Convention Center.

The Development Team includes; Garfield Traub/Ashforth Pacific, Turner Construction and Architects, Zimmer Gunsul and Frasca (ZGF). The hotel will be flagged as a Westin property. Developer negotiations, underwriter selections, financing plans and industry research are now taking place with a decision to move forward or not in early fall of this year.

MERC SELECTS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER TO RUN REGIONAL PUBLIC ASSEMBLY VENUES

Portland, Oregon – The Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission has selected David Woolson to serve as the regional venue management agency’s new chief executive officer. Woolson begins his post with the commission on April 30, 2007.

Woolson is a lawyer with 25 years experience serving in senior executive positions in the entertainment and media industries. "We are pleased that David Woolson will lend his considerable business development and entertainment industry expertise to the MERC operations,” said MERC Board Chair George Forbes. “He brings a great suite of skills honed in the public and private sectors that align well with MERC’s strategic direction and its enterprise business focus.”


 

Woolson joins MERC after serving as president of Big Catch, a talent negotiation and rights management company located in Portland. He also served for eight years as executive director of Oregon Film and Video Commission where he recruited film and television productions to Oregon. His work with the commission resulted in unprecedented levels of feature film, television and commercial productions in Oregon and record revenues to the state. Woolson’s background includes serving as a senior executive and attorney with studios and production companies in Los Angeles including Paramount, Orion Pictures and Dick Clark Productions. “Our selection committee was impressed with David’s accomplishments,” said Forbes.

Woolson looks forward to his leadership role promoting the cultural and economic benefits of the regional public venue assets managed by MERC. “It will be exciting to serve as an advocate for MERC to further develop the economic and cultural landscape of Portland,” said Woolson. “I’m looking forward to working with our many partners to build strategic alliances on the region’s behalf.”

MERC, a subsidiary of Metro, contributes to the region’s cultural and economic vitality through management and stewardship of regional public assembly facilities. MERC oversees a $56 million annual operating budget and employs a workforce of 500 employees. MERC operates the Oregon Convention Center, Portland Center for the Performing Arts and Portland Expo Center, which serve 2 million visitors and patrons annually at about 1,000 events.

THEY’RE COMING!

For 200 million years, dinosaurs ruled the earth and now they’re back to invade the Tacoma Dome and the Spokane Arena in an extraordinary new event, WALKING WITH DINOSAURS - The Live Experience, playing the state of Washington this summer.

Based on the award-winning BBC Television Series, this event comes to the Northwest after playing for ten sold-out weeks in five cities in Australia, where it was seen by an audience of over 300,000. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS will begin a two-year arena tour and will make its North American premiere at the Tacoma Dome followed by a week-long engagement at the Spokane Arena.

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS is a brilliant blend of special effects, escapism, excitement and information.
 

In this 90-minute show, fifteen dinosaurs, snarling and walking, mesmerize the audience – and are as fascinating as they were over 65 million years ago. This show is BIG. This will be the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing what it was like when dinosaurs walked the earth.

Fifteen dinosaurs are represented from the entire 200 million year reign of the dinosaurs. The show includes the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the terror of the ancient terrain. The largest of them, the Brachiosaurus is 45 feet tall, and 75 feet from nose to tail. It took a team of 50 – including engineers, fabricators, skin makers, artists and painters, and animatronics experts – a year to build the original production.

The trade publication Variety said of the Australian production, “The dinosaurs are stunning, life-size and faultlessly nimble. In act one, the beasts parade into the arena gnashing and cavorting as a safari-suited paleontologist describes their attributes … in the second half, the action cranks up, culminating in a spectacular clash as a T-Rex mom defends her child from predators. Walking With Dinosaurs is a truly spectacular spectacular. It is everything a dino-phile could want.”

The 15 dinosaurs of the original Australian production were “hatched” in a Melbourne Docklands workshop big enough to park a 747. The show took one year to build. The team of 50 artists and technicians are now building a new set of ‘stars’ to tour North America and international markets.

The show is so large that the only building large enough to house rehearsals for the North American tour during the month of June will be the Tacoma Convention and Trade Center! In fact, the creatures are so large, that the audiences seated in the lower seats are all but overwhelmed by the dinosaurs, while those seated in higher seats view the entire spectacle and panorama of the production.

The show depicts the dinosaurs’ evolution, complete with the climatic and tectonic changes that took place allowing them to survive for so long. With almost cinematic realism, WALKING WITH DINOSAURS has scenes of the interactions between dinosaurs, and the audience sees how carnivorous dinosaurs evolved to walk on two legs, and how the herbivores fended off their more agile predators.

The production staff for WALKING WITH DINOSAURS have been major creative forces of the high-tech world of animatronics puppetry for film and television whose work can be seen in the Farscape television series and feature film work including Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Peter Pan, Ghost Rider and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Many of the technologies used in the making of WALKING WITH DINOSAURS are borrowed from film. The computer software and hardware that have been developed is based on the systems used to control animatronics creatures in feature films.

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS begins its rehearsal run at the Tacoma Convention Center in June followed by the US Premiere at the Tacoma Dome July 11 through July 15 and the second US date at the Spokane Arena July 18 through July 22.

Rose Quarter Launches Two New Marketing Initiatives

In a continued effort to better connect with Rose Quarter patrons, both past and future, the Rose Quarter now offers two new programs. Both SMS text messaging and a custom RoseQuarter.com Toolbar are now available for sign up and download, respectably, at RoseQuarter.com. Both programs, like the RQ Cyber Club, are free of charge and easy to get started. Like the RQ CyberClub, both new services will be used to push content such as event pre-sale information, event notifications, ticket auctions, discounts, traffic and weather updates, contests and prizes and much more.

Although the Rose Quarter has been collecting cell phone information from patrons for almost a year, the program was not put into effect until the database was a significant size and a major event pre-sale was available as an initial offering. Thus, in an effort to grow the database quickly and also offer something considered noteworthy, the Rose Quarter offered a special pre-sale opportunity for the Tim McGraw & Faith Hill Soul2Soul Tour 2007 to anyone who signed up for SMS Text Messaging. All SMS Text Messaging recipients received a password and web link to purchase tickets before the general public. Last year the Tim & Faith Soul2Soul concert sold out in one day and was the most highly attended event at the Rose Garden last year, with over 23,000 people.

Rose Quarter Fire Hero
Mike Jones night security officer at the Portland Rose Quarter went above and beyond the call of duty. When a fire broke out in one of the offices he jumped in to action by putting out the fire.

Howard Zuckerman
Promotions at the Rose Quarter:

Howard Zuckerman has been promoted to the position of Executive Director of Event Sales and Management. Zuckerman joined the Rose Quarter in April of 1999 as an Event Manager. Shortly thereafter, Zuckerman began a new role in the Events Sales and Management department. In addition to event management, Zuckerman took a lead role in the booking of the Rose Quarter. Zuckerman’s fifteen year career includes time spent with ICM Talent Agency, William Morris Talent Agency, House of Blues and Nederlander Concerts.

Chris Oxley has been promoted to the position of Assistant General Manager. Oxley is in his ninth year at the Rose Quarter. In his previous role as the Executive Director of Event Sales and Management his responsibilities included the oversight of all facility booking, event execution and guest service functions on the Rose Quarter campus. In his new role, Oxley will assist in the management of all arena departments. Chris is a thirteen year veteran of the sports and entertainment industry and gained a great deal of experience in multiple Colorado venues including Red Rocks, Mile High, Coors Field and McNichols Sports Arena.

DISTRICT IV REACHES THE 100% PARTICIPATION IN THE IAAM FOUNDATION

At the IAAM District 4 business meeting in Las Vegas in April, a motion was made and passed to make a $5.00 donation to the IAAM Foundation on behalf and in the name of every District 4 member. The total amount of the donation totaled $1,195 and we now have 100% giving participation in District 4!

We are now asking each of our District 4 members to make a matching contribution to the Foundation of at least $5.00 per member. Additionally, each person who makes a $25.00 Foundation pledge this year will receive a special 25 Year Anniversary commemorative pin. Since $5.00 has already been pledged in your name, you only have to make a $20.00 contribution to receive the pin!
Since its creation in 1982, the Foundation has supported over 132 grants, educational programs and professional development efforts totaling over $2.7 million dollars. In other words, WE ALL BENEFIT.
We encourage you to make a matching contribution (which is fully deductible to the extent of U.S. tax law) in support of the Foundation today.

Checks should be made payable to IAAM Foundation and mailed to:

IAAM Foundation
635 Fritz Drive, Suite 100
Coppell, TX 75019

Secure online donations can be made at: www.iaam.org

Thank you for your continued support of the Foundation.

Duane Morris
District 4 DVP

District IV
2007 Scholarship Awards

Mark Loigman, Director of Operations for the Hult Center in Eugene, has been awarded the District IV two-year scholarship to the IAAM Public Assembly Management School at Oglebay.

Jan Pierce with the Adams Events Center has been awarded a one-year scholarship from District IV to the IAAM Public Assembly Management School at Oglebay.

Karen Totaro, Assistant Executive Director with the Oregon Convention Center, has been awarded the Michael D. Kobluk Senior Executive Symposium scholarship for 2007.

Don Scorby, Operations Manager for the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, has been awarded a $500 scholarship to use in attending the Academy for Venue Safety and Security in August.