24/7 Software Blog

The end of summer is coming up in September.

We figured it would be an excellent time to reflect on how you did so far.

How do you think your season is coming along?

Did you oversee several events?

We’re aware of the summer of festivals, and we know your customers are paying big bucks to have fun.

But, with that brings the potential for threats to your operation.

From issues to incidents, you must be prepared for all things.

How would you measure your efficiency?

If you’re not sure how to measure your ability, here’s a question for you: as an event manager, how stressed are you?

If your stress level is high, there’s a very high probability that your efficiency could be lower than you need.

We get it; knowing this is overwhelming.

But we’re going to help you get through it and understand the areas of your operation you should address to reduce this stress.

We’ve created a principle that helps you understand your current strategy – it’s called the ACDA Principle™ (pronounced act-duh).

It covers the four areas of your operation: Awareness, Communication, Documentation, and Analysis.

We encourage you to refer to the Principle regularly.

It’ll keep your efficiency high, and your stress low.

“Received call from a customer. Their elderly father claimed to have slipped on a wet spill near the men’s restroom at Section 112.”

You hear this over the radio as you walk into the operations center.

“How are we doing,” you ask your operations manager, Kristine.

She nods and continues her radio call.

“John, have you arrived on the scene,” she radios to one of your mobile supervisors, John.

A few minutes later he responds.

“Yes, I’m here, but no one else is.”

You look at Kristine and shake your head in frustration.

She’s frustrated too.

What’s happening here?

Are your teams ignoring calls?

Are they missing the calls because there is too much noise over the radio?

How are things getting overlooked?

What’s causing this inefficiency?

The confusion continues as your operations center team tries to get personnel to the location.

Five minutes go by…

Seven minutes.

Now, it has been 15 minutes.

“We’re all leaving now. We took care of everything,” John calls in.

“What do you mean we’re all leaving,” Kristine responds.

“Oh sorry, everyone arrived on the scene after we last spoke,” he replies.

You and Kristine furiously look at one another.

She doesn’t know what to say or whether it’s right to be mad at John.

He’s only trying to do his job.

But, that’s the thing: he can’t fully do his job, and neither can anyone else on your team.

You’re only relying on radios to operate your events.

So, things are going to get missed or put to the side it the heat of the moment.

There’s no structure beyond your operations center.

Keep reading; we’re going to explain why you need mobile apps to alter your course and enhance your property’s real-time communications capabilities.

“Scientists have taken another step toward understanding what makes the human brain unique,” writes Jon Hamilton in their recent NPR article entitled “What Makes A Human Brain Unique? A Newly Discovered Neuron May Be A Clue.”

According to the article. “An international team has identified a kind of brain cell that exists in people but not mice, the team reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.”

"This particular type of cell had properties that had never actually been described in another species," says Ed Lein, one of the study's authors and an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, in Hamilton’s article.

“The finding could help explain why many experimental treatments for brain disorders have worked in mice, but failed in people. It could also provide new clues to scientists who study human brain disorders ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to schizophrenia,” explains Hamilton.

"It may be that in order to fully understand psychiatric disorders, we need to get access to these special types of neurons that exist only in humans," says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research, in the NPR piece.

The article continues, “Researchers have suggested several other brain cells that might be unique to humans. But these cells have either been found in other species, or the evidence for them has been less convincing.”

“It is still possible that these newly identified neurons will also be found the brains of primates like monkeys or chimps, Lein says.” Hamilton continues in the article.

Hamilton further shares, “The brain cells have been named ‘rose hip neurons’ by a team at the University of Szeged in Hungary, which played a key role in the discovery.”

The discovery of rose hip neurons quickly provoked our thinking on the uniqueness of your property.

What makes your property different from, let’s say, a similar operation in the next city?

Yes, you run an operation like others.

Many of the same characteristics and practices exist.

But, there are ones that can be remarkably different.

That’s what we want to find out.

What are those?

Do we disregard them as being unique for your property and should you be paying closer attention to them?

Many best practices, policies, and theories for execution could work across the board.

But, it’s the “rose hip neurons” of your property that could be affecting your performance and adequate understanding of what you need to approach differently than another operation would.

This exercise requires you getting up close and personal with your operation.

Keep reading; we’re going to share the principle you can use to understand your property – and what makes it unique.

“There has been a car theft in parking lot GG.”

“A thunderstorm is approaching at 15 MPH.”

The calls are coming in.

“We have…”

You turn off your radio for a moment.

You stare at the mirror knowing you only have thirty seconds before your operations coordinator sends out the bat signal because you haven’t responded to your calls.

Cupping your hands under the faucet, you let the water run over them.

You slowly splash your face to make sure this isn’t a nightmare.

“Yep, this is real,” you mutter to yourself.

You put on your glasses, turn on the radio, and rush out of the restroom.

While your team is panicking over the radio, you open the restroom door to the thousands of customers moving throughout your property.

Your goal is to keep smiles on their faces and to ensure they never find out anything is ever wrong.

It’s a big goal, and not always achievable for your team.

More calls are coming, but they aren’t incident calls.

It’s your team.

You can hear the panic in their voices.

A few variations of “We weren’t prepared for this” make their way over the radio.

You head to the operations center.

“There’s no way to prepare for all of these incidents,” you tell yourself.

But, we’re here to tell you there is.

You’ll need to employ Proactive Operations because incidents occurring on your property is an instance of when not if.

We’re nearing the end of the year.

It always seems to be the best time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished and what still needs work.

It’s an excellent time to plan your goals and the strategy for hitting those targets for the upcoming year – 2018 in this case.

But, you might not know what needs to get done.

There might be something missing in your operation, but it’s not always so easy to put your finger on what needs some work.

Do you agree?

Now, do you have a strategy that you follow?

Your strategy is critical.

But we’re confident you already know this.

Sometimes it requires a little help getting in the right rhythm to step up your operational game, though.

Don’t fret; we’ve got your back.

Here at 24/7 Software, we recognize the importance of strategizing each year. That’s why we want to give you the resources to optimize your operation year after year.

“An update from the Wild Wild West of fake news technologies: A team of computer scientists have figured out how to make words come out of the mouth of former President Barack Obama — on video — by using artificial intelligence,” writes Aarti Shahani in their recent NPR article entitled “Computer Scientists Demonstrate The Potential For Faking Video.”

Shahani writes that “if you've been on the Internet at any point in the last year, there's a good chance you've come across fake news articles. Soon we may see a wellspring of fake news videos.”

“As a team out of the University of Washington explains in a new paper titled ‘Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio,’ they've made several fake videos of Obama,” according to the NPR piece.

“Take, for example, a time that he discussed the Pulse nightclub shooter and said "the investigation is ongoing, but we know that the killer was an angry and disturbed individual who took in extremist information and propaganda over the Internet,” Shahani explains.

The NPR article continues that “Obama did, in fact, say these words. But the computer scientists were able to make it look like he said them in places different from where he actually did — in this instance, in a different room at the White House. Audio and video images could be manipulated to make it look like he said them at a different time — say as a much younger Obama.”

This video shows the variants the team created during their project: