Category: rants

Free the Artists – The Creative DC Action Agenda

artist at Adams Morgan Day

I finally had a chance to read the Creative DC Action Agenda. The report, commissioned by DC Office of Planning in partnership with the Washington, DC Economic Partnership, does a really good job at highlighting the role that the creative industries have in making DC a vibrant and fascinating city.  There’s some really interesting tidbits contained in the report, such as:

  • Creative jobs amount to more than 10 percent of the city’s employment base and generate $5 billion in income.
  • There are more than 75,000 creative jobs in the city, including 16,000 federal government positions.
  • With 69 theaters producing 8,723 performances in 2008, DC is now among the top tier of theater cities in the U.S.
  • DC was ranked fourth in the nation for the concentration of artistic talent, behind Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.
  • The average wage for creative occupations in DC is $33.73 per hour.

The definition of creative occupations is fairly broad, and includes people in the culinary arts and even libraries.  However, DC has a fairly high concentration of writers and visual artists, as well.  This creative community adds to the city’s tax coffers and attracts newcomers to Washington.

Washington has come a long way since the municipal dysfunction of the 1990s. But there’s much that the city can do to empower the artistic community in DC, including:

  • Identify vacant spaces for theater and work spaces.
  • Increase visitor awareness of the creative arts beyond the Mall.
  • Improve access to funding for filmmakers.
  • Cut the red tape that makes DC unfriendly to small business.

As a member of the “creative occupations” myself, it’s really interesting to see the big picture.  What do I think should be done?  The last point on cutting red tape really resonates with me. DC should cut regulations that inhibit small businesses and artists in the city.  There are so many confusing city rules about running a business from home that I’m not sure what’s legal.  And everyone I know who tries to create some sort of festival or event encounters a thicket of regulations and forms, requiring countless trips to city offices.  It seems crazy in 2010 that dealing with the city requires filling out reports by hand and collecting stamps and signatures.  Eliminating this old-fashioned paperwork (or at least putting it online) would further encourage the ongoing creative renaissance of this city.

DC should capitalize on the creative talent drawn here by reducing the burden of regulation. As demonstrated in the Creative DC Action Agenda, a liberated “artist-entrepreneur” community would deliver economic benefits citywide.

I finally had a chance to read the Creative DC Action Agenda. The report, commissioned by DC Office of Planning in partnership with the Washington, DC Economic Partnership, does a really good job at highlighting the role that the creative industries have in making DC a vibrant and fascinating city. There’s some really interesting tidbits contained in the report, such as:

· Creative jobs amount to more than 10 percent of the city’s employment base and generate $5 billion in income.

· There are more than 75,000 creative jobs in the city, including 16,000 federal government positions.

· With 69 theaters producing 8,723 performances in 2008, DC is now among the top tier of theater cities in the U.S.

· DC was ranked fourth in the nation for the concentration of artistic talent, behind Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

· The average wage for creative occupations in DC is $33.73 per hour.

The definition of creative occupations is fairly broad, and includes people in the culinary arts and even libraries. However, DC has a fairly high concentration of writers and visual artists, as well. This creative community adds to the city’s tax coffers and attracts newcomers to Washington.

Washington has come a long way since the municipal dysfunction of the 1990s. But there’s much that the city can do to empower the artistic community in DC, including:

· Identify vacant spaces for theater and work spaces.

· Increase visitor awareness of the creative arts beyond the Mall.

· Improve access to funding for filmmakers.

· Cut the red tape that makes DC unfriendly to small business.

As a member of the “creative occupations” myself, it’s really interesting to see the big picture. What do I think should be done? DC should cut regulations that inhibit small businesses and artists in the city. There are so many confusing city rules about running a business from home that I’m not sure what’s legal. And everyone I know who tries to create some sort of festival or event encounters a thicket of regulations and forms, requiring countless trips to city offices. It seems crazy in 2010 that dealing with the city requires filling out reports by hand and collecting stamps and signatures. Eliminating this old-fashioned paperwork (or at least putting it online) would further encourage the ongoing creative renaissance of this city.

I'm Not That Joe Flood

I am the Joe Flood who wrote Murder in Ocean Hall, a mystery set at the Smithsonian.

I am not the Joe Flood who wrote The Fires, a new book on 1970s-style arson in the Bronx.

Why do I mention this? Because I’ve gotten a couple emails from editors of well-known magazines asking for information about my book.

But they think I’m the author of The Fires. I’m not. And a quick look at my site (like in the about me section) would reveal that. While I’m a writer, I primarily write fiction.

I’m surprised by a couple things:

  1. So, nobody reads web pages carefully? Not even editors? They just skim until they find what they’re looking for? I imagine these editors did a search on my name, my site popped up, and they emailed me, assuming that this must be the right person.
  2. Everyone blindly trusts Google to know their wishes? Search engines can’t read your mind. You can type in “Joe Flood” but it might not be the right “Joe Flood.”

Ironic, this lack of reading comprehension and digital literacy from people who work with words on a daily basis.

What's the Best Content Management System?

wordpress screenshot

Highly subjective, of course, but what’s the best content management system that you’ve used? I think that the best CMS is the one that gets out of the way, that allows anyone to easily write content for the web site. Someone should not have to learn HTML, or how servers operate, or spend days in training just to add a press release.

I’ve had the fortune/misfortune to work in multiple CMSes. Here are my impressions:

WordPress – Maybe not technically a CMS but so simple to use. WYSIWYG window, you click publish, that’s about it. I use it for my personal site, joeflood.com and also used it for a blog while I was at NOAA. I literally trained people in how to add content to the blog in fifteen minutes. My favorite. This is ideal for people looking for a simple platform to blog. Continue reading “What's the Best Content Management System?”

There Are No Rock Stars

You do not need to take a class with a “rock star” to be creative. This faith in the magical ability of experts to transform lives is ironic in our secular  society. Gurus, rock stars, life coaches, Oprah – they can make you change. Most people don’t go to a priest for career advice yet believe that taking the workshop of a famous person will cure their creative funk.

I was thinking about this after reading comments by a talented photographer friend of mine, Mary Kate McKenna. She was writing about “rock star” wedding photographers and their high-priced workshops:

REALLY tired of newbie photogs (I still consider myself a newbie in the industry!) doing workshops for other professionals, charging a lot of money, with no real business skills and embellishing the amount of money they make in the industry. Before attending a “rockstar” workshop, do your research. Continue reading “There Are No Rock Stars”

The Disintermediation Moment

With the advent of the Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader and the growing acceptance of e-books among readers and writers, it’s safe to say that we’ve reached what I’d call the Disintermediation Moment. This is the time when industries collapse, driven by changes in consumer behavior and expectations. Technology offers new solutions, eagerly adopted by ordinary people, but resisted by middlemen and gatekeepers who want to retain their status, control and income. Continue reading “The Disintermediation Moment”

USAJOBS vs CBO Job Site

Too much exposure to USAJOBS has really turned me cynical. Despite news reports on the need to recruit thousands of new employees, the main federal jobs site is a usability nightmare, unfathomable to even people who work on web sites, like me. While the site has few defenders, some have argued that it has to be that way, because it’s the government. Federal requirements dictate its complexity and difficulty.

There’s got to be another way! And there is. It’s the job site for the Congressional Budget Office. The site is a model of simplicity and common sense, where you can apply for a job in minutes, rather than hours. Let me spell out the differences between the CBO site and USAJOBS:

  • It’s all one site.You’re not bounced to a separate organizational site to complete a whole other application, like you would if you applied for a job with Agriculture from USAJOBS.
  • An easy password. You don’t need a complicated ten character password with upper and lower case letters plus numbers.
  • Upload or copy and paste your documents. Choose which is easier for you – either upload a Word doc or copy and paste your resume. You don’t have to enter information job by job. Supporting docs can also be uploaded.
  • No KSAs.
  • Job descriptions less than a page long, in plain language.
  • No confusing instructions to fax or snail mail in additional information. It’s 100% online.
  • It’s well-designed. The site makes excellent use of white space and provides strong visual cues for users, such as making the “Submit Application” button blue and placing it at the bottom of the right-hand menu.

Why can’t the rest of government do this? The site is not complicated, in fact it looks like it was designed in the late 1990s. But it’s simple and easy for visitors. It’s oriented around their top tasks, as good government sites are supposed to.

Looking at this site, USAJOBS makes even less sense to me.

Coding HTML By Hand in Government

Gwynne Kostin has written about how efforts like the Online Presidential Town Hall can reveal larger problems. In her article, she mentions that world-class government web sites, like the Centers for Disease Control, hand-code web pages.

Most large-scale web sites use some sort of content management system (CMS) to publish and organize their web sites. Even small-scale web sites (like this one) use a CMS for their work. This site runs on WordPress, for example. I don’t need to know code to update my site; I just have to type into a box on a web page. Continue reading “Coding HTML By Hand in Government”

Why Doesn't Government Use the Web to Organize Its Work?

I’ve been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. It’s a brilliant book on the information revolution that we’re going through. He believes that this revolution is as momentous as the development of the printing press, which triggered the Reformation and religious wars. The rise of amateurs and the expansion of consumer choice has meant the end of seemingly unassailable institutions like newspapers.

Seeing how the world is rushing to adapt to the web, I had a practical question. Why doesn’t the government use the web to more efficiently accomplish its work? For example: Continue reading “Why Doesn't Government Use the Web to Organize Its Work?”