Vol. XIV, No. 3, April 2014
Editor's corner
Last month we held a Foundations Entertainment University 2-day program at the DEAL show in Dubai. We had 33 attendees from 11 different countries in attendance.
A few of the attendees at the 32nd Foundations Entertainment University held in Dubai, U.A.E.
The next Foundations Entertainment University will be held in Chicago July 15-17. There is an early bird $140 savings if you register on or before May 31, 2014.
Finally after the worldwide Great Recession and the real estate bubble in Dubai, the construction cranes are all in action again in Dubai and new construction can be seen underway everywhere.
While in Dubai, I stayed at a hotel next to Mall of the Emirates that was quite a distance from the World Trade Center where the DEAL show was held. Now Dubai has a metro and it is really cool. It’s fast and cheap. It cost me less than $1.40 per trip and I had to travel about half the line’s distance.
One of Dubai’s metro stations
One evening I met a longtime friend, Pradeep Kumar. Pradeep was the original CEO for a children’s edutainment center we designed and produced in Dubai back in 2000, LouLou al Dugong’s. Pradeep turned entrepreneur and now owns Lifeline Wellness, a chain of ten health and fitness centers in Abu Dhabi that he has developed since leaving LouLou’s. He drove up from Abu Dhabi to meet me for dinner. We went to a great Thai restaurant, Pai Thai, located at Dar Al Masyaf Hotel, Madinat Jameirah. Madinat Jameirah features two boutique hotels, 29 summer houses, 7 villas, over 40 restaurants and bars and a 1000-seat multi-purpose venue, all connected by almost two miles of waterways.
We dined al fresco. The dinner and setting was great
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| View of the deck of Pai Thai where we ate | View from our table |
We traveled back to the hotel on one of the many boats they use to transport guest around. For some strange reason, the boat’s engine sound reminded me of the boat in the 1951 movie African Queen.
In May I’m heading to Lewiston, Idaho to start initial work on a new project there. It will be the renovation and expansion of a closed movie theatre into an FEC.
On April 16th I received an email wishing me a happy 5th Twitterversary. 
I never knew there was such a thing as a Twitterversary and hadn’t realized I’d been tweeting for five years. If you’re on Twitter and don’t follow me, you’re missing out on links to a lot of information and articles that affect our industry. Very rarely do I tweet more than four times a day, so you won’t be overwhelmed, like what happens from a lot of Tweeters. You can follow me at https://twitter.com/whitehutchinson.
One of my recent Twitter posts was about a 2-year-old who somehow wondered off from his apartment, and after a search, he was found in the crane machine in the bowling alley across the street. 
Somehow he got in, but no one could figure how. Finally a person from the coin-operator who owned the crane machine came and got him out by taking part of the machine apart. That’s certainly a new one. Need a new two-year-old? Just visit you local bowling alley, put you money in a crane machine and see if you can win one.
If you want to follow more of the industry news and insights we find and our analyzes, sign up for my blog. I only send out a blog once or twice a month, so it won’t jam up your email inbox. My most recent blog was Disruption by a new 3rd place with lubricated socialization. It’s about a new concept that will be taking market share from traditional bars found in all types of restaurants and entertainment centers.
We have a number of informative and insightful articles for you in this issue. I hope you enjoy reading them.
