Salaries

Richard Florida, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon, recently
wrote an interesting book--The Rise of the Creative Class--which
includes chapters titled "The Power of Place" and "The Geography of
Creativity" and in these chapters, Florida makes compelling
arguments why the "creative class" in which conservators and other
museum professionals are included by his definition choose the
places they live and work. One of his premises is that salary is
relatively minor compared to other factors in choosing a place to
live. The quality of life factors that are most important are:
Quality of place-what's there: the combination of the built
environment and the natural environment; Who's there: the diversity
of people; and What's going on: the vibrancy of street life, cafe'
culture, arts, music and people enjoying outdoor activities.
Basically what "creative class" people look for in community are
abundant high-quality amenities and experiences, an openness to
diversity of all kinds, and above else the opportunity to validate
their identities as creative people.

On Florida's list of most desirable locations in areas over one
million, not surprisingly, many are on the East and West coast.
Areas that ranked high (within the top 20) in the interior  include
Austin, Dallas, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Denver, Atlanta, Phoenix and
Indianapolis. San Francisco, by the way, ranks #1. Florida states
"large regions have not exclusively cornered the market as Creative
Class locations. In fact, a number of smaller regions have among the
highest Creative Class concentrations in the nation-notably college
towns like Gainsville, Florida: East Lansing, Michigan, and Madison,
Wisconsin and other regions like Bloomington, Illinois; Melbourne,
Florida; Huntsville, Alabama; Santa Fe, New Mexico and Boise,
Idaho."

The point being that lesser known areas and communities around the
country have the characteristics, as identified by Florida, that
make them desirable places for conservator-types and these places
often go overlooked in job hunts to the detriment of the job seeker.
Des Moines, Iowa has been a pleasant surprise for me. Of course, the
desirability of a place and job is in the eyes of the beholder and
many factors weigh-in. I stand by my statement that "attitude
adjustment" or in other words "a change in perception" would be
helpful  and not a negative thing and actually could be very
beneficial for new conservators who have the desire and  freedom to
look for employment around the country.

On the other issue, not to be cloudy, I think that raising salaries
at a particular institution is extremely difficult and I have not a
clue.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:66
                  Distributed: Tuesday, April 29, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-66-006
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