Mike Baldwin

Whew! Where to begin with the amazing discussions that transpired at the March NetSquared New Orleans meeting. There were two presentations with two radically different approaches to the same thing: employing the creative workforce.

The first presentation was from Kurt Weigle with the New Orleans Downtown Development District. The main focus was bringing and keeping the creative class in New Orleans. He had several justifications: quality of life/cultural uniqueness, lower cost of living, and opportunity for progressive growth. He introduced the idea of place based economics, which means workers are now choosing where they want to live not because the job is there, but because they enjoy the location and how easy it is now to telecommute. Digital industries are developing in New Orleans for a few reasons. The first being the newly instituted tax break incentives offered to companies that establish and sustain business in Louisiana. The second reason is that the cost of living is 40 – 70 % lower as compared to major creative meccas (example: New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, etc). The major cities have effectively driven out the creative class because it has become too expensive for the workers to live there. It is important for New Orleans to embrace the new digital industries because it will help the city to move forward and decrease its dependance on the oil/gas & hospitality industries.

Chris Schultz’s discussion was radically different and on the surface almost contradictory to Kurt’s presentation. His topic was Outsourcing 2.0. Understandably this is a sensitive and controversial business practice that invokes mixed emotions. What made Chris’ approach unique is that he believes outsourcing can go both ways. A client could be in London but the contract workers are in New Orleans. So in that way, you’re actually contributing to the local economy as well as the global economy. With higher global education standards and the maturity of the internet, it’s possible to work or hire workers anywhere in the globe. Concerns were voiced from the audience about the quality of code (when it came to software development) and Chris explained that all code is put through rigorous standards that are checked by other programs and everything is commented in English. Another benefit of outsourcing is the ability to find skilled workers to complete a project on tight deadlines that wouldn’t be possible on a local scale. He realizes this model will not work for all industries, in fact he has referred potential clients to local businesses because it made more sense for them to work locally. Chris’ perspective is unique and I personally hope that more people can learn to embrace this business model instead of perceiving it as a threat to local jobs.

Overall, it was a great discussion and another successful NetSquared meeting. If you’re a citizen of Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans or the surrounding areas I highly recommend you attend these meetings. The topics and presenters are always interesting and there’s even free drinks! It’s held every first Tuesday of month at the Bridge Lounge (1201 Magazine St) and you can become a member by joining the meetup group at http://www.meetup.com/net2no/ you can also find out more information on their website at http://www.net2no.com/