Creative Class

On the What’s Happening section of the blog on RyanSeacrest.com, Richard Florida’s singles map from Who’s Your City? is front and center. Ryan Tweeted about it as well.

What do you consider the best city for singles?

I’m part of the team filling in this week for the amazing Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Dish at The Atlantic Online. Here’s what Andrew has to say:

I’m due for a break from the web for a week. Aides de blog Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner will keep the Dish al dente in my absence. I’m working on an essay for the magazine and catching up on some reading – things I cannot seem to get done when I’m blogging twelve hours a day. Atlantic Correspondents Richard Posner, Richard Florida, and Lane Wallace have also agreed to contribute this coming week. Usually when I try to take a breather, some epic events occur – popes die, icons are shot, etc – so look busy.

I’m grateful to Andrew and my Atlantic online editor Bob Cohn for the opportunity, and humbled to be in such esteemed company. I want to thank my online CCE editor Elizabeth McGolerick and my MPI and CCG teams, especially Patrick Adler and Charlotta Mellander, for supporting my blogging.

Come visit here.

Creative Class Exchange will continue life as usual. My posts for the The Daily Dish and otherwise, along with my Twitter feed, will continue to appear here. And our other bloggers will be posting usual.

Does Twitter improve workplace productivity, or on balance does it distract employees and detract from their overall performance?

Globe and Mail writer Tavia Grant wrote about this very subject this week. Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of Twitter from her article:

The proponents

Jen Evans, president of Toronto-based Sequentia Communications, has 1,649 followers and tracks the musings of 1,283 others. She is a huge Twitter fan – for herself and her staff of 16.

Her business involves connecting businesses with clients, and she’s found Twitter invaluable for recruiting, drumming up business and building her brand.

Having staff on Twitter can be a “visibility enhancer,” she says.

Larger companies, too, are jumping on board.

Telus Corp. allows Twitter time at work. “You have to trust employees,” says spokesman Shawn Hall, who personally uses it “all the time” to stay connected to journalists, public relations groups and the telecommunications community.

The opponents

Employers are still wrestling with policies on Facebook and other more established social networking sites, never mind Twitter. But some, including several government departments, such as those for the City of Toronto, ban personal use at work.

Murray Key, operations manager of a steel warehousing company in Edmonton, can’t stand to see staff whittle away their work hours on any kind of social networking.

“There is a time and place to be a social butterfly, to play inane games and to waste personal time, but for the vast majority of us, that place is not at work,” he says.

Experiment with it

…Twitter has emerged as a “powerful tool that can speed up the metabolism of an organization, keep everyone better informed and enable greater agility and responsiveness to changing conditions.” [says Don Tapscott].

He encourages people to experiment with it. Managers should try it out – at least to understand how it works – and give employees a chance “to self-organize and collaborate using these tools,” he says.

Given Richard’s announcements that he’s now tweeting on Twitter, I thought I’d ask the CreativeClass.com audience for their thoughts.

So, to Twitter or not to Twitter?

Check moi out over at Twitter. Lots more info, updates, and quick hits there.

I did not have to search high and low for these, but here are four good economic signs and one direct observation. You are welcome to use this list to step away from the edge or as a simple reminder that it is people and firms taking action that will turn the economy around, not the government. There is growth to be had and people and firms are making it happen without the government.

5) Oil is so cheap (around $40 a barrel) that it feels free. Don’t believe me? Demand is rising again and inventory is not. We can and are driving and flying again with impunity (see more below).

4) Twitter raised $35 million in venture financing. Txt updates? Micro-blogging? During “depression-like” conditions?

3) Oracle has acquired more than 10 companies in the last 12 months and Cisco raised $4 billion in debt to make acquisitions. Yes, there are firms (and people) that aren’t levered up and are taking advantage of this recession to purchase rivals and innovators and undervalued assets. They are in fact growing their payrolls. They are efficiently deploying capital.

2) Nancy Pelosi’s husband and some of his buddies just put $30 million into a startup, minor-league American Football league. The United Football League (or UFL) is launching this summer and will play its championship game in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving weekend. That is a low-tech, purely domestic entertainment investment. What do they know?

1) I had to wait in line everywhere in Miami Beach last weekend. From our plane’s arrival (which was delayed because they did not have enough runways) to our attempt to snare a cab to our departure flight, where a line of black limos was waiting for beautiful people to head home and blocking taxi access. Yes, prices were down and RE there is getting crushed, but it was crowded and housekeeping, cabana attendants, beach combers, lifeguards, wait staff, and others were working. Which means managers, accountants, lawyers, web programmers, IT staff, and others were also working.

These are just a few small reminders that the world is not yet over. That perhaps we do not need to “rebuild” everything in America, and that people, acting as individuals and in concert as firms, will do the lion’s share of the work if the global economy is to find its way back to a growth trajectory.

Not quite new news, as noted by Fred Wilson, but the Twitter blog has announced that Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners have invested $35 million in the microblogging service. A Twitter holdout? Two interesting articles, one by David Pogue of the New York Times and the other by Will Leitch in New York Magazine provide some insight into what all the fuss is about. However, skepticism abounds as to how the company is going to turn a 140-character status message into cash.

Our own prodigious updater notwithstanding (aside: when I visit the Martin Prosperity Institute I am going to search for an army of ghost-writing typists in some back room) and the occasional interesting opportunities for micro-reportage, what’s next?

Thoughts?