Montreal and the Creative Class

Richard Florida’s book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ has been one of my favorite books for awhile. His basic ‘big idea’ was seeing that as companies are more and more freed from prior constrains of locating near a physical resource or a transportation hub the nature of place, jobs and wealth generation changes. Ecomomic growth is no longer simply a question of attracting a few big employers to your town. It’s about attracting economically creative people, who then attract companies who want to employ them, who then attract still more people.

I’m oversimlifying of course, but I was excited to post here, because Richard Florida’s consultancy Catalytix has done a write-up on Montreal and how well it’s doing!

He gave a nice talk too about his book at a conference recently if you want to have a listen.

New Job

Well, my job search is over.  I started a new job last week.  I’m doing QA and technical support for a small company called Aptilon Health.  They build online marketing presentations and tools for Pharmaceutical companies’ marketing campaigns to doctors.  It’s a small company–there are only about 25 of us right now, though it’s likely to expand soon.  Lots of flash and database stuff to learn.

Analyzing the Election

I’d printed out this article awhile ago–"How Bush Really Won" in the New York Review of Books–but hadn’t had a chance to read it fully.  It certainly stands the test of a few months of time.  It’s a penetrating and refreshing, if still depressing, in its analysis of how the right convinced more voters to vote for them than for the other side. It looks beyond the simple platitude of ‘moral values’ that so many grabbed after the election.