Web. Proud to Call It Home.
Somebody the other day told me that New Orleans is like a digital swamp. I felt a slight pinprick, and I am still thinking about if it matters (and if it is true). Compared to the Silicon Valley hosting tomorrow the second Science Foo Camp - SciFoo, hosting zillions of big and small seminars of web savvy professionals, it is a swamp, but then, which city isn’t? does it matter? Admittedly, it does. No thrill of web entrepreneurial spirit closely surrounding me. No blogger fellows around me here and there dropping words I get excited about (and stressed that I have not kept abreast with the latest geekfeed). Hey, no bloggers bickering about if web 2.0 is totally a marketing invention or not (OK, I am glad not having to go through all these pointless web 2.0 or not web 2.0 debates. Really). But there must be a digital catch-up in NOLA too. And once I am here, I want to be in it. There are Meetups in the city (I mean The meetup.com site), there are blogs, bloggers, nola.com (one of them is an odd one out).
We have moved to New Orleans from Budapest, Hungary 6 weeks ago, and I have been offered a position at a digital marketing agency concentrating on mixed online campaigns (SEO, SEM, SMM, what have you). Partly due to the 2005 destructions, New Orleans is less developed digitally than Budapest - I have not expected so. Yet I am glad to get back to business - get back to business data interpretation divings, campaign refinements, chatting with colleagues, getting to know clients. These are the big clients. Official, smart. Local? Guess what?
On the other hand, as a volunteer wishing to do good, I have also listened to some small businesses (really small businesses - let’s say 200 USD for marketing - trying to think about using the web - not only for the Gulf Coast business prospects. It is good to hear that I am needed to bring traffic to help restarting business through their sites, and I will. I wish to put my contribution to the redevelopment of a city with marked features, softly padded air, great food, omnipresent fleur-de-lys motifs, people chatting on patios, enjoying music, not even noticing the hypnotizing sounds of locusts, and, most importantly, resisting any outsider’s dilemma if New Orleans should be rebuilt or not. It is to stay, as the cards, stickers, flags, T-shirts say: “New Orleans. Proud to call it home.”
Still, I am extremely grateful that my insatiable appetite for intelligent, fresh, rich, mature discussions on digital trends gets some up-to-date, cutting edge feeds via the web. Thank you web and people.
“Web. Proud to call it home.”
My family. Proud to call it home.
Welcome to Tortuga. You did land in a digital swamp. If we keep with that analogy, it *is* a mixture of many small things that are alive, a breeding ground of life yet unsettled and never refined. You are definitely not in the USA.
As you live here, you will find many creative class people, become incredibly frustrated but will likely learn web and non-web things that will open your mind unlike any of the dry, hard lands we are surrounded by.
Hello Saffy, thanks for the welcoming thoughtful words. “Not in the USA” seems to be a common ground here. What makes it non-US exactly? (This is my first US stay as you can see.) The French influence? The Code Napoleon? The abundance of music and art galleries? The presence of a strong Black American middle class? The creepy voodoo things and the swamp monster? What else?
Welcome to New Orleans. Where are you working? Where are you staying?
Ann Plugged, you have a lot of kind things to say about New Orleans in describing the differences. Thank you. The city is often described as the Northern most Carribbean city.
Hello Alan, thanks for the info. So far I have only heard ‘Big Easy’ as a nick name.
I work as a SEM & SMM account strategist and consultant at one of the newly established agencies, plus I do extracurricular online communications jobs. Let me know how I could help with recovery projects.
(We are staying in the garden district - in the lucky neighbourhood of St James Cheese Company!)
Anna