Bowl Expo 2010

Bowl Expo has increasingly become one of the hottest events on the amusement and location-based entertainment industries’ calendars. Game technology manufacturers and service providers have stepped up their presence before the bowling trade, which continues to retrofit existing centers with enhanced amusement components and develop new facilities that embrace traditional family entertainment attractions.

As a bowling center owner, manager or operator, what’s your amusement and attraction agenda at June’s Bowl Expo? What product are you in the market for and how could it fit into and underscore your overall concept? Will keynote speaker Sarah Palin be a striking enough draw to get you to the convention center before the show floor opens? Share your perspective on the politics of bowling and games for possible inclusion in the upcoming issue of RePlay.

Operator Interface: Back to School

Continuing education opportunities combine business learning with networking possibilities to grow professional expertise in the small business arena. Regardless of new equipment and accounts, it's knowledge that gives operators the competitive edge. From AMOA's Notre Dame program to NDA's League SMART Conference to local civic groups, what tips have you learned and successfully implemented back home? What info and topics would you like to see addressed? What outside resources have been advantageous in improving your company? Share your perspective on how opening yourself to new ideas has changed you as a business person and has evolved your company.

Operator Interface: FEC Forum

FECs are getting into the game in preparation for the anticipated summer season, bringing higher traffic and profits. How are you preparing your facility to draw families with out-of-school kids and especially the trend-setting teen market to your location? Whether it's new attraction packaging, marketing plan or social networking, how are you implementing new equipment, policies and ideas to put a hot spin on your brand and generate fresh excitement? Share your plan of attack for getting customers out of the house, through your doors, on your games and at points of sale.

State of the Association

In the best of times, state associations monitor lobby-worthy developments while providing community and recreation to amusement operator members. In the worst, they're pre-mobilized organizations prepared to make lawmakers aware how bills can impact and exploit their small business, both directly and indirectly. In both cases, there's strength in numbers, however the onus is always on leaders to build a vision of their state's operators, often competitors, being bound in a cause that can and will impact their individual bottom lines.

What is your level of participation in your state association? What's the status or outcome of specific initiatives with which you've been involved? What are the biggest challenges to maintaining the health of a state association, and how does yours promote its member benefits? Your feedback may be selected for inclusion in the forthcoming issue of RePlay Magazine.

Operator Interface: Amusement Expo Era

Next month, the coin-op industry starts a new chapter with Amusement Expo, the premiere tradeshow collaboration between the AAMA and the AMOA. Show planners are eager to make the product showcase, resulting from industry consolidation and years of lobbying from the trade's three tiers, the must-attend event of the year, a distinction that depends on buyer attendance for its first several years.

Additionally, Amusement Expo must prove the health of the working relationship between its sponsoring associations, highlight the value of out-of-home entertainment to other trades, and chart a bold and creative path through tough economic times to a future where technology and game play should theoretically offer more opportunity.

What are your expectations of Amusement Expo? What significance and advantage do you hope it can offer you and your business that may set it apart from the former ASI or the AMOA Expo? What challenges do you foresee the associations or tradeshow needing to address in order to establish the expo's vitality to the industry's overall success?

Healthcare & Coin-Op

The healthcare debate has not only been hashed out for decades in Congress but in the offices of small businesses. The employer-based insurance system, straining beneath ever increasing healthcare costs and premiums on the one hand and a soft economy on the other, has led to owners tweaking, comparing and overhauling coverage, or making adjustments to support existing plans.

As a coin-op and amusement business owner, what are the biggest challenges and considerations you face in providing insurance to staff and families?

What are your thoughts on the Senate healthcare plan being wrestled into a final bill for voting on this month? Would the plan, currently set to cover millions of Americans over the next decade by requiring them to buy insurance -- potentially through a government-run program designed to theoretically keep costs in check, possibly unburden your health plan expenditure, or would you likely continue with your current plan?

Have you taken advantage of AMOA's member benefit healthcare option?

Your thoughts may be selected for inclusion in RePlay's focus on coin-op and healthcare.

Operator Interface: IAAPA & I

IAAPA is in full-swing this week at the Las Vegas Convention Center. About three dozen new product debuts and street operator attendance, along with its base of FEC and amusement park customers, indicates that it has finally cemented its reputation as the premier fall event for the industry. Whether in Las Vegas or back at work, what's your take on the health of this year's mega event and what new product and developments seen there suggest about business in 2010?