Tammy Koolbeck, executive director, Iowa State Center, Ames, managed by VenuWorks, is the incoming second vice-chair role on the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) board of directors. Venues Today spoke with Koolbeck about her vision for her new role. Koolbeck will be take on her new position at VenueConnect, which will be held at Music City Center, Nashville, Tenn., Aug. 7-10.
Is the IAVM process still one where you will move from second vice-chair to
first-vice chair and eventually be the chairwoman?
Yes. It’s a four-year commitment. I will go from second-chair to first-chair to chair and then past-chair. I became an IAVM member in 2001 and started being very active in 2005 when I joined the Region 3 leadership team.
What are your goals for your new roles at IAVM?
We just passed our “One Member, One Vote” initiative. With the passage of the initiative, Faculty, Young Professionals, Retired, Allied and Students will get a vote now. Previously, allied members who never ran a facility, or managed a venue, did not get to vote on any of our policies. This adds an additional 1,050 to the 4,250 people who had the right to vote. It’s a great thing for the association. Also, we need to continue to be relevant to the industry and continue our educational mission.
What ways can you achieve continued relevance?
Transparency, education and knowing the important issues facing venue managers. The top issues currently are safety and security and budgets. There are a number of governments, both state and federal, that are cutting aid to the arts and infrastructure projects. Certainly, that affects a number of our venues. We’re a unique field with many responsibilities and there are not a whole lot of people who understand how we do things. We also need to keep our educational mission at the forefront, which helps all our members.
Can you explain the restructuring of IAVM that occurred this year?
We took the four sector meetings — Performing Arts Managers Conference (PAMC), International Convention Center Conference (ICCC), Arena Management Conference (AMC) and International Stadium Managers Conference (ISMC) — and put them all into VenueConnect. The four conferences will be in tracts; everyone will be in one place, which we believe will allow for members to cross from one tract to the other. We don’t want people in one silo.
What are your hopes for the new VenueConnect?
It’s two-fold. We need to educate the membership and make money. The money helps support all the initiatives IAVM does with our IAVM venue data source, our safety and security initiatives, and our Venue Management School, the Academy for Venue Safety & Security (AVSS) and the Senior Executive Symposium (SES).
How is registration for VenueConnect looking for this year?
It’s going great. We are currently seeing more than a 20 percent paid attendance increase over VenueConnect 2016 attendance. We’re getting a great response from our membership. From what I’ve heard, people are pretty positive about the changes we’ve made. The goals of the leadership team are for IAVM to engage members, deliver relevancy to members with members connecting and contributing to the industry, and provide them with the educational and networking opportunities that enable them to be more effective in their venues.
Please explain the switch in how the IAVM board operates?
Over the past few years, the IAVM Board has transitioned to a governance model where the board establishes goals and vision for the association. The one employee of the board is the CEO, currently Brad Mayne. The CEO is tasked with carrying out the goals and vision of the board and is responsible for leading and managing the IAVM staff and business. The IAVM board is not involved in the day-to-day management of the association.