Job Resources

• Missouri Career Center provides a database of jobs available in the area.  Go to https://www.missouricareersource.com/mcs/seeker/search/search.seek.
• ITEN: Information Technology Entrepreneur Network (ITEN) has an OPPORTUNITIES section from their start-up companies.   Go to http://itenstl.org/opportunities.
• Stltoday.com combines with Yahoo’s HotJob’s.

If you have a resource you recommend, please contact us.

Back at Work: September 28, 2009 – IT and Vincent Van Gogh

IT and Vincent Van Gogh (Connecting the Dots)

Have you seen the ad for the new Omnimax screen film Van Gogh: Brush with Genius?  It sounds great – promising that “audiences will relive Van Gogh’s life journey through his letters, visit the landscapes that inspired him and discover a Van Gogh that they never knew before.”  I am thinking about going to see it, but I believe I know the plot already.

You see, it was just last week (while visiting our daughter in Geneva) that my family took a road trip to the French town of St. Rémy de Provence and stopped a while to tour the Hospital of Saint Paul where Vincent Van Gogh spent one of the last years of his short life.  The St. Rémy guidebook said something to the effect of visitors being able to relive Van Gogh’s life journey, visit the landscapes that inspired him, and discover a Van Gogh that they never knew before.

How very strange to return home and find in the enormous stack of backed-up mail an invitation to next week’s showings at the St. Louis Science Center of Van Gogh: Brush with Genius.  Apparently, one can experience virtually right here and now what I had just experienced literally hundreds of miles away.

Still smarting in a jet-lagged haze from the airfare and the car rental and all, my first reaction was: a cheap substitute, that’ll be!  But, having now traveled the paths that Van Gogh walked and looked out at the rolling hills and blue skies from the window of the very room where he slept, I really appreciate the Omnimax challenge.  The landscape of Provence is truly glorious and inspiring, but there is nothing there that matches the astounding alternative reality that Van Gogh saw and recorded on canvas.  Only his mind could perceive the awesome possibilities behind the tranquil scenery experienced by the rest of us.

So, to be successful, the Brush with Genius film-makers must not only transport viewers into the sights and sounds of southern France, but create a digital channel between that serene reality and the wildly creative interpretation that went on in the mind of the artist.  Only then can teams of technicians with state-of-the-art tools do what the ad promises: “for the first time with the full force of the immersive Omnimax theatre format [express] the extraordinary colors and passionate brushwork of Vincent Van Gogh,” enabling them to “take on new life in the dazzling giant screen film….”

You don’t have to be an artist to see the possibilities behind that reality: jobs.  I’m seeing software developers, video technicians and engineers, audio / video producers, imagery analysts, flash animation specialists, production analysts, digital software installation engineers, and on-line marketing specialists – all working in a fast-paced environment to meet the increasing demand for breath-taking here-and-now experiences we “never knew before.”  You can probably envision even more.

The big question for us is: will these jobs be part of St. Louis’ emerging economic landscape, or will all the action be somewhere else?  Your Bounce Back team is going to dig into that challenge with local and regional economic researchers, entrepreneurs, educators, and designers. You’ll know their responses if you see these occupations – and some of the employers who hire for them – on the agenda of an upcoming “Emerging Economy Careers Forum.”  If you have some insights, please let us know.  That’s how we’re going to move into the future together.

By the way, there is hopeful evidence of local interest in the cutting edge by virtue of the fact that the International Science Festival, SciFest09, runs from October 7 -11 at the St. Louis Science Center. (www.scifeststl.org)  An agenda of interesting workshops for the general public has been planned for the 10^th and 11^th and, while few of them deal directly with job opportunities, you won’t have any trouble looking behind the apparent to the underlying possibilities.  There’ll be twice-daily Omnimax showings of the screen film Van Gogh: Brush with Genius, as well.  If you participate, be sure to let me know what you see.

Thanks.  Blair