Archive for the ‘Op-Ed’ Category

It’s been reported that some Baton Rouge agencies are deciding how to profit from the New Orleans selection to host the Super Bowl in 2013 that we reported recently. When it was last hosted in 2002, the local agencies slipped up and we saw little economic activity directly related to the Super Bowl which is just a shame. So, I have a few recommendations for Paul Arrigo, president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Showcase Baton Rouge. Show the potential Super Bowl attendants that Baton Rouge is a great tourist city. Entice them to come early and leave late. Advertise the huge availability of hotels. Make the choice to stay in Baton Rouge (which is really just a short drive to the venue) easier by offering incentives: What about a shuttle to the Super Bowl? How about preferred parking in the Super Dome complex?

If I were going to the Super Bowl and was flying from out of town, I’d surely bite at a hotel package that was cheaper and offered either a free shuttle or free parking at the venue. Even if it was just cheaper, I’d probably book Baton Rouge, because the tickets are already expensive enough.

Mr Arrigo, these suggestions are the result of one college student brainstorming. I don’t even have a marketing degree! Use your position to siphon the massive economic impact of the Super Bowl to our city. Don’t let 2013 be 2002—bring the money here!

We’re about five days away from the Palm Pre launch, and while it’s doubtful it’ll see as much fanfare as the most recent iPhone, there should still be quite a bit of people looking for some of the very few Pres being shipped to Louisiana. According to an anonymous source on the Everything Pre forums, these following stores will have the Pre in the specified quantities.

Click photo to enlarge.

If you’re going out to wait in line, let us know how it goes.

[via Gizmodo]

I saw this article on Storyville’s blog about the 13 reasons Brad Pitt should run for Mayor of New Orleans. I’m not quite sure if this is meant to be taken seriously (there is talk about him running), but most of it is written quite humorosly. But this raises an important question: Should Brad Pitt be mayor of New Orleans? I’m not a local, so I can’t talk about the cultural impact on New Orleans, but from my perspective, this actually might be a good idea. Looking at all their points, some of them actually make sense. And I think I speak for everyone when I say that it’s time for the current Mayor’s tenure to expire after his abysmal job handling—well—pretty much everything. More importantly, Pitt has already shown his enthusiasm and bleeding heart for New Orleans with all of the charity he has and still is participating in post-Katrina. It’s going to be an interesting race.

What do you think?

Raising Cane’s is a beloved member of our community. Started by a former LSU student, Cane’s first restaurant is still operating right outside the gates of LSU (and it made the list of recommendations of restaurants near LSU). They’ve been operating out of Baton Rouge for the past twelve years—since day one. I was very surprised to learn that they’ve recently decided to move their main operations to Plano, Texas (Plano Star-Courier; Dallas Business Journal). At first, I was shocked, but then I was upset. I felt betrayed and abandoned. They’re taking a lot out of our economy—the economy that helped start the company. And with them goes at least 35 jobs. I’ve already received word from people who’ve been directly affected by this. They’re hurting the same community that Todd Graves, the founder, raves about on their about page. He said: “The community response was overwhelming and I wanted to make sure Cane’s gave back to the community that was supporting my dream.” (RaisingCanes.com) It’s been great having Cane’s in the community, and they did give back, but now they’re baselessly inflicting a severe wound upon this community. Needless to say, I am confused and bewildered.

The articles I’ve read say that it’s because it’s a more central location for their business, but I can’t imagine that this is the real reason. After all, Baton Rouge supports a fortune 500 company and another fortune 1000 company, which is a lot bigger than Cane’s approximate $100 million enterprise.

I reached out to the company via Twitter. I asked them twice to respond to this and give me something—anything. I received nothing but an emphatic “No, please don’t boycott us.” So, now it’s time for me to publicly call them out. This is absurd, Cane’s, and if you expect my continued passionate patronization, then you at least owe me an explanation.

So, Cane’s, how are you going to ameliorate this situation?

Note that this is officially coming from the enterprise of the Baton Rougean and not just me. As Baton Rouge’s first and only hyperlocal news site, it is our duty to give the community a public voice—something that traditional news bureaus either can’t or won’t do. Someone must stand up for the injustices inflicted upon our community when no one else will. And yeah, maybe those words are a little harsher than this situation calls for, but I’m just setting up our official policy for the future when something else happens. I’m not saying anything negative about Cane’s. In fact, I love Cane’s and this might legitimately be a shrewd business decision, I really don’t know. It’s just not excusable to extract 35 jobs from a community that you connect yourself with. It’s also not excusable that you do this and then proffer no explanation.

Nate Silver of the political statistics blog FiveThirtyEight (which became popular when he used statistics to accurately predict the 2008 election) used a regression model to produce a prediction of when each US state would vote against a gay marriage ban. Louisiana has previously voted for a ban on gay marriage and taking into account other factors, including religiosity the percentage of white evangelical christians, Silver predicts that it’ll 2019 before Louisiana votes against a marriage ban. It’s an interesting statistical model that seems, from his evidence, to be quite accurate. What’s notable is that we’re ahead of most of the Southern states with the notable exception of Texas. You can read more about Nate’s predictions here.

What do you think? Is this prediction an accurate characterization of Louisiana? Do you think 2019 is right, or is a decade too long or short? What does it say about Louisiana to be where we are in comparison to other Southern states?

Baton Rouge is home to many cool people who are doing exciting things within and outside of our great city. To show this, we’re starting a new series that highlights these people and their accomplishments. Our first installment is an interview with Richard Felix, Jr., a rockstar web developer in Baton Rouge.

I sat down to talk with Richard over instant messenger as he was “fighting with a complex rails app install.” Like I said: he’s a rockstar. Richard is a great, down-to-earth guy that I first met at the inaugural Baton Rouge tweetup. I had first heard about him when he was featured on CSS-Tricks, a famous coding community curated by Chris Coyier, when Chris and he released their first web site together called Status. I was thoroughly surprised when I clicked through his site to see he was located out of Baton Rouge. In fact, if you google for a Ruby on Rails developer in Baton Rouge, his company is one of the first to come up. As always, it was a pleasure to pick his brain and learn about some of the awesome things that he’s pumping out.

Thanks for granting us this interview, Richard. Let’s first learn a little about you. How long have you lived in the Baton Rouge community?

I’ve lived here since right before freshman year of high school, yeah, I’ve been here awhile—14ish years?

Wow, so you’ve been here for longer than I have! First, where did you go to high school?

Scotlandville Magnet, back when it was always a competition between us and Baton Rouge Magnet.

I heard somewhere that you were featured in The Advocate. What’s the story there?

I was a late transfer student at SMHS, my freshman year. Since I missed early registration, I was placed in a basic computer class (one where you learned the parts of the computers and how to use them). Within the first 5 minutes, my teacher realized that I didn’t belong in the class (since I already knew everything she had to teach), and so she gave the class some work to do and brought me down the hall to see the advanced computer science teacher. After talking to him for awhile, he decided that I belonged in Computer Science II AP.

Since I skipped the first Computer Science altogether, by senior year there were no more classes for me to take. Since it was a magnet school, we were required to take 7 courses every year, so things were put in place for me to teach a class on web design.

Someone found out about it over at The Advocate, and one of their reporters came in, observed the class and wrote a feature for The Advocate on New Year’s Day, 2000.

Continue reading “Cool People in Baton Rouge: Richard Felix, Jr.” →