By Bob Barancik
Let's do a quick demographic survey of the Tampa Bay area:
How many people from Ohio have you met? From the Midwest in general? Children or grandchildren of Midwesterners?
I've counted 64. Make that 65, counting myself.
In fact, it seems that just about everyone I meet here is originally from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, western […]

According to Forbes magazine, Tampa is one of the worst metropolitan areas for the Young & the Restless to reside in the continental United States.
Bob & Amy have lived in several major metros and have a reasonable sense of life at street level in most of the creative and economic hot spots in America — […]

I am not talking about the 4 letter F word but the 7 letter one.
The short vulgarism has become so commonplace in American daily life that it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow in most social situations, radio shows, or Hollywood movies. But the other F word can still make the most sophisticated and streetwise person […]

Each spring around graduation time, I am often cornered by anxious parents with highly creative kids. Their innovative offspring are graduating from high school, college, or art school, and simply don’t have a clue about jobs, career prospects, who to talk to, or what to do next.
 
Generally, the inventive young folks seem pretty relaxed about […]

When thinking about growing a sustainable Creative Economy, it is helpful to consider the 4As.
 
The first "A" stands for "Affordable housing" and there is little reason to consider the other 3As until this key public policy issue is resolved…or at least seriously addressed by local and state government.
 
One of the best examples of truly […]

Take this job and…
Well, you know the rest — "And shove it, I ain’t working here no more!"
This hardscrabble country song recorded by Johnny Paycheck in 1977 sold over 2,000,000 records, and inspired a movie of the same name. It spoke directly to alienated, overworked, and struggling American blue collar workers. But these words
Resonate […]

Have you ever attended a concert of earsplitting, atonal, avant-garde music, strolled into a museum gallery filled with deeply disturbing surreal paintings, or inadvertently clicked onto a gruesome surgical operation while surfing cable channels?
You might have been genuinely shocked by–but at the same time strongly attracted to–the subject matter.
That was what I felt as […]

Michael Phillips is a maverick, even by the wildly iconoclastic standards of the San Francisco Bay Area.
 
He was one of the principal founders of MasterCard in 1966. This innovation ushered in a revolution of consumer credit and debt that our society is still trying to digest 40 years later.

Phillips is also a staunch conservative in […]

Did You See the Gorilla?
I will get to the gorilla later. Let me begin by talking about luck…especially your luck over the last ten years.
Virtually all of us have been to a school reunion or large family event over the last decade. It is hard not to have been both attracted to and envious […]

From all the rumblings in the media, it sounds like Governor Crist and the state legislature are going to throw some real money at Florida’s nascent movie industry.
Can you blame them?
Hollywood-style cinema is sexy, hip, happening, young, big biz — and talk about the "creative economy" angle!
http://www.latimes.com:80/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-gabler25feb25,0,4482096.story
But let us consider another scenario. What if, for […]