Creative economy guru Richard Florida could not make Thursday's "creative cities" summit that attracted more than 200 enthusiastic attendees to St. Petersburg. But as with Hurricane Ivan - out of sight yet on everybody's mind - his influence was felt.
After all, yesterday's conference at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort never would have materialized had Florida not delivered a rousing speech in Tampa in April 2003 to 500 paying area economic developers, business executives and arts leaders.
His message: Metro areas that make themselves most attractive to tomorrow's most talented workers - dubbed the creative class, ranging from scientists, software programmers and teachers to lawyers and artists - will, in turn, draw the best companies and their better-paying jobs.
And metro areas that remain intolerant and do not welcome newcomers? They will be the economic losers of the future.
Oh, what Dr. Florida unleashed.
In the past two years, the Carnegie Mellon University regional economic development professor and the author of the bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class has inspired dozens of metropolitan areas across the country, and in many parts of the world, to embrace his ideas. And he has generated a strong backlash from the traditional economic development world upset with his quick fame and concepts they consider economy lite.
None of that mattered one whit to Thursday's crowd at the Vinoy summit, which served as sort of a best practices meeting on creative economic development.
Dr. Florida may have turned the key to start the engine. But the area momentum is all ours. Local leaders have driven many a creative-economy project that is concrete and positive for this metro area in the past 18 months. Here are five, among many:
1. An organization called CreativeTampaBay (www.creativetampabay.com) was created to help this area's artistic and business communities communicate with one another.
2. Emerge Tampa, an affiliate of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce designed for emerging leaders ages 21 to 35, was started to make it easier for young adults to get involved and have more say in the direction of the area's economy. The group already boasts more than 400 members.
3. The Tampa Bay area scores poorly against other metro areas when it comes to attracting or keeping its 25-to-34-year-old population. A recent study called "The Young and the Restless" was conducted to recommend ways to make this area more competitive for young and talented adults.
4. Mayors of both Tampa and St. Petersburg have embraced Dr. Florida's creative economy ideas and are providing public resources to help their cities.
5. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio this summer formed a Creative Industries Council aimed at encouraging area business support of the arts.
At Thursday's summit, artists and urban planners and chamber of commerce officials mingled in various sessions that all shared a common goal: How can the Tampa Bay area employ creativity to better prepare its youth, its businesses and its cities for the clearly more competitive years ahead?
Larry Thompson, president of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, told attendees that the "best looking" products - how they look, how easily they can be used - will become more important in a society with an overabundance of material choices. That's when businesses will clamor for his design students.
Former Miami Beach Mayor Neisen Kasdin, explaining how his city slowly pulled itself back from the economic brink, confessed the 1980s TV show Miami Vice and its hip, jet-set images (misleading as they were at the time) probably did more than any urban redevelopment project to revitalize his city.
St. Petersburg cultural affairs director Ann Wykell, recounting the dead-as-a-doornail downtown in the 1980s and early 1990s, said it took the "Treasures of the Czars" museum exhibit and its 600,000 visitors to restore the confidence of the business sector in St. Petersburg. Now downtown St. Pete is the envy of the metro area.
Beware all those rankings that say your city is falling behind, warned Tampa's recently arrived director of arts and cultural affairs, Wendy Ceccherelli. "Every community starts to feel it is substandard to somewhere else," she said.
Perhaps the biggest area fan is Thom Stork, a longtime marketing chief for Busch Gardens and now president of the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. The best single step to help this metro area climb the economic ladder is for all the different cities to work better together, he said. "Elect me mayor of Tampa Bay," he suggested, "And I'll get it done."
Though Dr. Florida could not join the summit, one of his co-workers did. Lou Musante, a partner in Catalytix, a Richard Florida consulting company, said he handles the practical side of economic development while Dr. Florida is the big picture guy.
Musante is in the early stages of working with the city of Orlando, the Tampa Bay area and the Gainesville area as one of the country's economic "super regions" of the future.
Dr. Florida is one busy fellow. The Harvard Business Review recently named his creative class concept one of the "breakthrough ideas" of 2004. Now he's busy finishing a second book that explores the rise of outsourcing and the increasing worldwide competition among cities to gain a bigger piece of the best workers and jobs in the 21st century. It's titled The Flight of the Creative Class.
Let's hope the flight does not come with a one-way ticket.
