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Editor's corner

It’s been a busy time for us. Since our last eNewsletter, I’ve been traveling a lot, first to Hyderabad, India where we have started working with a client on the development of a children’s edutainment center to be located in a new mall and then back to Da Nang, Vietnam for the 8th time for our project under construction there.

Not too long ago I was with a colleague of my age (I’m an early Baby Boomer) and she relayed to me an experience she recently had at a conference where just about everyone else was in their early 30s or younger. She was attending a seminar in an auditorium and often when the presenter said something, less then a minute later there would be laughter or some other reaction from the audience that did not match what the presenter had just said. This puzzled her for a while until she looked around the audience and saw that a large number of them were looking at their smartphone screens and there was a second conversation going in amongst the audience on Twitter using a hashtag. 

This got me interested in looking at how the younger generation is using mobile digital devices and what the impact might be on entertainment venues including theme parks and family entertainment centers. I dug into the research and you can read what I found (it’s not good news) in our feature article The implications of the new 6th Sense and the flight from conversation.

We’re covering ‘not good news’ topics like this in our eNewsletters as there are major disruptions brought on by the triple revolution—the internet, mobile devices and social media—affecting every aspect of society and how we live our lives. Location-based entertainment venues are rather permanent investments, so to succeed financially, they need to have long lives. Therefore it is important to understand current trends and where they may be taking us in order to design not just for today, but for the future as well.  

If you missed my last two blogs, you should check them out. And if you haven’t signed up to receive my occasion blogs, please considering doing it so you won’t miss out (sign up here).

• Proof that moving to a High Fidelity customer experience is a winning strategy
• More High Fidelity proof

And as promised in one of my blogs, this issue has coverage of new location-based entertainment spending and participation data for 2012 and its changes from previous years.

We have other thought provoking articles for you. One suggests that the lexicon we use to describe the location-based entertainment industry is a mismatch for what the centers really are or should be and those names are constraining our thinking.

I’ll be at IAAPA, which is less than a month away, so if you want to meet up in Orlando, contact me to set up a time.

As always, I hope you find some useful information in this issue.

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