Creative Class

How do you watch TV? If you’re over 30, it may go something like this:

It’s Thursday night, and your favorite show is on at 9:00 p.m.

8:55 PM: You open your fridge, grab a beer. Open the cupboard, grab a bag of chips. (For the “creative” among you: Open your wine fridge, pull out a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, and grab some organic crackers from your pantry.)

8:57 PM: Yay! Only three minutes. Turn on your TV, watch the credits from the last show. Check your watch… only two more minutes. Watch promotions for the new upcoming “cop drama.” You would flick to something else, but you wouldn’t want to miss those crucial first few minutes of your show.

9:00 PM: Your show starts. You’re happy. Take a sip of wine, eat some cheese.

9:12 PM: Damn! Commercials. OK, well if you’re between 30 and 50, you probably flip aimlessly through other channels. Or if you’re super-savvy you pause your Tivo and grab a refill. If you’re over 50, you sit patiently and watch commercials.

9:16 PM: OK, back in business. Boy, that cliffhanger kept me guessing.

9:23 PM: Commercials again. Repeat routine.

9:30 PM: That was fun. Steve Carrell is so talented. I wonder what’s going to happen next week. Guess I’ll have to wait until then!

Sound familiar? It should. OK, well here is how people under the age of 30 watch TV. Now, some of them tune in like you do every Wednesday night because they just can’t wait another minute to see who’s next to get utterly humiliated on Project Runway/Biggest Loser (take your pick). Most, however, choose to tailor their TV schedule around their lives, not the other way around. That means using the Internet. Sites like Hulu.com and NBC.com actually allow you to watch many of your favorite shows on demand, for free, legally, with the blessing of the networks that air the shows in primetime.

This method has its drawbacks, most obviously that many of these online video options are unavailable outside of the U.S. I went to school in the States and was shocked to discover, upon my return to Toronto, that I was blocked from viewing my favorite shows (the Canadian distributors of American shows are none too keen to have their ad revenues siphoned off by the internet). There are, and have been for years, unauthorized ways to watch your favorite TV online – but they’re dubious at best, unreliable in quality, and are ultimately destined for obsolescence once TV goes online legitimately.

There are obviously still bumps in the road.  As Caroline McCarthy writes on “The Social”:

If the content providers finally work things out with the set-top box makers and Web video hubs, it could be terrific for me and other people who’ve gotten totally fed up with Stone Age TV offerings. For now, however, it’s just a dramatic mess and recent signs are indicating that it (the debate) is taking steps backward as opposed to forward.

There really is no technical barrier preventing anyone, anywhere with a broadband connection from viewing ALL their favorite shows on demand – regardless of jurisdiction. It’s just the leaders of the old paradigm are fighting the currents of the new – it’s the cable vs. online slug-fest. This won’t last forever – the method for distributing content will move, more and more, onto the Internet, and it will be driven by the Net generation and the unassailable appeal of customizing TV.

So, is the old model dead? Will TV go online on for good? I welcome responses.

I’m a member of the Net-Generation, people born between 1978 and 1997. At first glance, my cohort seems tailor-made for a decentralized and “flat world,” so we shouldn’t care so much about the place where we work. After all, the internet, like no other technology, has lowered geographical and temporal barriers for communication and collaboration, and N-Geners, like no other generation, are the most comfortable and capable working, learning, and communicating online. Case in point: I recently found myself collaborating on a project with two college pals on Skype (the free online video phone application): one in Palo Alto, California, the other in Alaska, while also chatting and sharing photos with a friend who was in an internet café in rural Vietnam.

However, while technology has lowered barriers and allowed people all over the world to participate in the global economy, it’s a mistake to suggest now that ‘place’ is no longer important for today’s emerging creative workers. Indeed where one works matters now more than ever.

Whether interested in finance, law, politics, computer programming, consulting, or medicine, young friends and colleagues of mine are drawn inexorably to the epicenters and major nodes of their respective fields; in cities, suburbs, and exurbs that also happen to score very high on the creative class index. This is certainly true for my friend in Palo Alto, a city straddling the area between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He is a talented computer programmer working for an internet start-up. But what about my friends in Vietnam and Alaska, you ask? Did Google just open a server farm in Juno? Is rural Vietnam the new Silicon Valley? Why do your friends want to live there? Truth is they don’t.

My Alaska friend was working for Mark Begich, a Democrat, who defeated the incumbent Senator (and convicted felon) Ted Stevens. If ever there was an appropriate time to say “got out of there like a bat out of hell,” Jeff’s escape from Alaska after the big victory was it. Jeff is passionate about politics, and he is now in Washington, D.C. looking for full time work. Truth is he would rather struggle for a little while in D.C. than be instantly employed anywhere else. After all, every politically engaged young person he and I know wants to be in the U.S. Capitol and, as a result, a burgeoning social scene of smart, creative, and ambitious young people has flourished there. Dave, my friend in Vietnam just graduated from McGill’s School of Management and is wandering Southeast Asia barefooted and bearded trying to ‘find himself,’ but really he’s just on vacation. Like me, he will soon find himself up to his elbows in financial statements and spreadsheets. He is returning to Toronto to work at a boutique private equity group. Jeff was drawn to the epicenter of the political world. Dave, a former business student with an entrepreneurial streak, will return to Toronto- Canada’s financial capital, because he knows the city offers great opportunity for a person with his interests (it also helps that he is a die-hard Leafs fan). In both instances, the where did not merely influence their decisions, it determined them. If anything, their stints in Alaska and Vietnam simply reinforce the notion that the Creative Class, and young people in particular, travel and move throughout the world with increasing ease.

Though not identifying it as the “Net Gen” specifically, Richard Florida presciently foresaw the emergence of a new generation of the “Creative Class” in The Rise of the Creative Class, a theme that has surfaced in ensuing works. His experience interacting with students at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University revealed that young people are drawn to certain hubs, crowding together in thriving and diverse places where like-minded individuals share lifestyles, cultural tastes, and work interests. While the moniker ‘Creative Class’ is not generation-specific, by 2018, when all members of my cohort will be of working age, the Net Generation will, simply put, dominate the creative class. As Boomers retire and Generation Xers fill the ranks of senior management, there will be an overwhelming demand for these young, highly educated people. Attracting them to companies and regions where they can thrive and prosper will be the next great imperative for today’s corporate leaders and politicians.

I encourage everyone to share your thoughts and opinions with me.  If a conversation begins, I will be happy to engage in it with you.