Welcome to Stadium IT Forum!
As technology pervades every aspect of the operations of large public venues, the community of stadium technology operators -- the people who make it all work -- can use all the help they can get.
Into that realm we are introducing the Stadium IT Forum, a professional community for stadium technology operators and the companies that serve them. Quoting directly from our mission statement, "The purpose of Stadium IT Forum is to strengthen the connections, conversations and knowledge sharing that make the stadium technology community valuable."
What does that mean? It means we are setting out to reinforce and help grow what we think is the most interesting characteristic of the stadium technology community -- its willingness to share information between teams, schools, organizations and individual operators.
Stadium IT isn't a competition
Having covered this industry since the inception of the technologically advanced stadium, the one somewhat-amazing constant I've seen across the years is the almost universal willingness to share best practices (and hard-earned lessons) between the IT personnel of different sports and venue organizations. While teams of all kinds are definitely using technology any way they can to find a competitive sporting edge, the IT teams at just about every organization always seem willing and ready to help out their compatriots at other places.
That mission -- to share proven information from venue technology deployments -- was the driving force behind our original editorial efforts at the previous entities I founded, first Mobile Sports Report, which then evolved into Stadium Tech Report. Since most stadium tech teams spend most of their working days at their own venues, it's hard for them to find time to visit other venues or to get together with like-minded folks to talk shop. So we told as many stories as we could about successful deployments and lessons learned, to help spread the information across the community. But now it's time for a different approach.
Strengthening the connections, digitally and face to face
Good stories, insights and podcasts are great ways to share such information, but nothing can compare to the bandwidth exchange in a face to face connection. While Stadium IT Forum will certainly have rich offerings of digital communications, our primary business focus will be to build a connected community, and then gather groups of its participants in small meetings to learn, share, and connect with each other.
More details are coming soon! For right now our number one task is to start assembling the community. Our personal outreach will start today but don't hesitate to reach out to us first. You can begin by signing up for our newsletter at stadiumitforum.com, or by sending me an email to kaps at stadiumitforum dot com.
The website will fully launch sometime later this week, with more details about what topics we plan to focus on and how exactly we plan to deliver our information. Like our past editorial endeavors, the newsletter, website and podcasts will be available for free to anyone who's interested.
If you hold a position as a technology professional for a team, school, conference or league (or are a consultant employed in the same fashion), you will get additional information about our "Technology Council," an internal subset of our community that will involve private channels of communication as well as the opportunity to participate in the aforementioned small-gathering events.
Companies interested in reaching our audience and supporting our efforts can inquire about our sponsorship opportunities, to Paul via LinkedIn message or through the email noted above.
More to come, just getting started! Stay tuned and join us today!
-paul
(editor's note: This post also appeared on LinkedIn on Sept. 21)
