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Several years ago, during one of those interminable meetings that make up much of the preparation for an Olympic Games, a member of the large guest Australian contingent referred to me as a “dinosaur.” I’d not questioned his ancestry, or his somewhat distorted version of the Kings English nor his manhood or progeny. But apparently I may have questioned his strongly held belief on the subject then under discussion.

Sure that I was not a reptilian species nevertheless I still looked up the word just to be satisfied. The current Oxford Dictionary refers to a common use of the term as unwieldy and unchanging. Thus considering my age and years in the industry my Aussie acquaintance might have been far more correct than colorful in his opinion. I joined the fraternity of public assembly facility management when I was young, so very much younger than I am today.

From the time I joined the IAAM in 1962, I want to highlight the changes I have observed during the years and my opinions regarding the new era of facility operations now in vogue. But like the opening line of Erich Segal’s hit novel of years ago, Love Story, “Where should I begin?” to me the answer was simple. I’ll begin when the opportunity first arose for me to enter this industry.

In early 1962 I left Holiday On Ice as a promotion representative having been offered the position of general manager of the then newly constructed Sioux Falls (SD) Arena and its accompanying facilities downtown. From there it was on to a coliseum in the south, a period with the initiation of professional soccer in the U.S. and then on to New York state and on and on, as many of us did during those early years of a burgeoning facility industry.

At that time the IAAM, originally an acronym for International Association of Auditorium Managers, was still in its puberty. Communication between facilities and with both current and potential facility users was, by today’s standards, primitive to say the least. But most of us in this fledgling field soon recognized we needed each other and that this professional networking would become an integral part of our professional enrichment. The telephone was the primary means for this communication with the fax machine still a luxury for most of us. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were still expensive phone bills away, often criticized by many municipal “bean counters” who felt such costs were excessive in the normal transaction of business.

With the computer age still in its infancy and the amazing growth of facility construction beginning, social issues often became as complex a factor in the operation of a building as did the programming of events in the struggle to meet one’s yearly budget. When I first joined the Mid-South Coliseum, then still in its early construction phase, integration of public facilities had barely begun its tenuous journey to full recognition of the right of all citizens to enjoy the industry’s offerings. At that time little public awareness existed of the needs of the physically disadvantaged. It would be more than a decade before legislatures began the required process assuring everyone free and basically unhindered access to most entertainment, sports and convention facilities.

As the 1970s emerged, the furor over Vietnam, the fast growing drug culture, and the newly arrived age of rock n’ roll were coupled with ever increasing facility operating costs. This and the desire of building managers themselves to be better equipped drove the need for highly trained staffs, more sophisticated management techniques and speedier methods of communication.

The proliferation of entertainment events, the rise of private facility management and the growing power of professional sports to dominate many new facility design and construction projects emphasized a new concern: who was actually in charge?

While that Mesozoic Age creature known as the dinosaur is now extinct, a few of us human replicas still exist. I’ve been fortunate to have been involved in a number of exciting and memorable events both domestic and international. My accomplishments, both personal and professional, have been no more than many of my associates, nor as much as many others have achieved and in which they continue to accelerate.

When asked to write this article I pondered what insight I could provide a management group who have far surpassed in scope and professional expertise what none of us ever imagined years ago. But if I may, let me offer a comparison of where we were when I began and where we are today.

The past 42 years have seen amazing technical and philosophical changes in this industry. Expansion of the IAAM’s membership categories and the elimination of the voting/non-voting classifications have dramatically increased the rank-and-file. Larger structures and spectator amenities of newer venues was quickly followed by an equal increase in highly advanced technical facilities including scoreboards, sound amplification, food service, automated HVAC control, ticketing and the introduction of wireless Internet service.

With the addition of all these modern accoutrements came the need for more highly skilled technical and administrative personnel. Education became the base for introducing anyone to a career in this profession. Experience required a diverse familiarity with many more considerations than we faced four decades ago.

One must be willing to recognize that times have changed and the current facility executive is a product of advanced training and preparation. These are advantages that sadly many of us did not have to opportunity or resources to acquire. When I first started in this profession I knew the importance of education but it didn’t seem to have relevance at the time to the complexity of the work in which I was then involved. Today institutions of higher education are offering vital courses in a number of the disciplines so important to the technical and operational sophistication of the public assembly facility industry.

But the reader should never consider this a disparagement of those early facility managers who developed the basic procedures and laid the groundwork for the inevitable growth of the industry. Regardless of meager budgets and fickle and often inflexible governmental oversight, they succeeded in providing their particular market area a varied and often unique menu of activity. Their efforts enhanced the lives of their patrons. Aside from fiscal realities and investor obligations, this enhancement was and remains a principle responsibility of our profession.

During those early years we often struggled to achieve acceptance even in our own community. Facilities, with the exception of a few private entities, were municipally funded, built and operated under archaic systems too often subject to the whims of political favor and change. What was accomplished was often through an imaginative use of available resources. Marketing ploys were frequently pursued, as one would say, "under the radar” and in this manner able to provide results without the constant interference of those within the local government who neither understood nor appreciated the effort required to exist successfully in an increasingly competitive marketplace. My reflections on the past are for purposes of cataloguing what I believe has become the foundation of the future. It is not intended as nostalgia since that is for reunions of old friends and quiet reminiscences of individuals in the twilight of their years.

In recent times there appears to be a much broader recognition by governments that good business procedure and aggressive event promotion serves the citizen as well as the private investor in making such facilities more adaptive to market needs. The development of quasi civic/private enterprises has created unique combinations of local funding with investor involvement.

Today the facility executive and his or her staff are better trained, better educated, more respected in the marketplace and far more able to acquire and integrate the newest technology and operational approaches. However, it must be emphasized that this is not a criticism of those who came before. Rather, they set the pace; now with this accelerated growth of technology and training, today’s facility operators are able to keep pace with the constantly changing needs of their patrons and market expectations.

Of all the improved systems and technologies that I have seen over the past four decades, three stand out in my mind as being significant in heralding what could be termed the modern age of public assembly facilities. Not necessarily in the order of importance they are: automated or computerized ticketing, which has vastly expanded an individual facility’s marketing scope. Next would be the automation of HVAC controls, sound amplification and lighting levels. Along with the comfort level such systems afford the attending public, they provide a far more efficient budget control. My third candidate is the emphasis on thorough recruiting, training and supervision of staffs and contract groups. The intensive program of both special interest and new issues training sessions do much to keep facility operations as current as time and conditions might allow.

Has the profession improved? In my opinion, very much so in both personal achievement and excellence in presentation. Some of us older members of the fraternity may have found change difficult and perhaps even considered it disrespectful to those who founded the basis of the industry as we know it today. But as time relentlessly moved on, most were willing to make those changes, not necessarily because they saw the light but often because they felt the heat of competition.

After several years in the business I thought I knew all the answers. Now, 40 years later, even the questions confuse me. Yet, in my mind, one axiom remains as true today as it did years before: You must find an enjoyment in the adrenalin producing aspect of presenting events to a large and diverse patronage and you must feel a sense of accomplishment with the successful completion of any event. If you’re not experiencing a degree of fulfillment in being part of a fascinating industry, then dear reader, you are in the wrong profession.

If those who have gone before have provided a reasonable foundation for the growing competency now so integral to the profession, I only hope they will be remembered with the respect and appreciation they deserve.

Jim Oshust is an IAAM Honorary Member and serves as a consultant in Salt Lake City, Utah..