On Tuesday morning, I got an email from Jobs that are Left advertising one of the most memorable jobs I have seen in a long time.
Employer: The University of California, Santa Cruz
Date: Monday, March 15, 2010
Job Type: Communications/P.R.
Description: Position is open until filled; Initial Review Date: 03/21/2010
JOB #1002488
Full Salary Range: $5,000 - $9,000/monthly.
Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience.
UCSC strives to embrace diversity in all its forms; it strives to be an inclusive community that fosters an open, enlightened & productive environment.
Reporting to the University Librarian, the incumbent provides management of the entire Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant funded project, Virtual Terrapin Station: Blending Traditional and Socially Created Archives for Research, Teaching, and Cultural Enrichment. The Project Manager will be a member of the Grateful Dead Archive team and will be directly responsible for the planning, coordination, design, and execution of the archive exhibition website and community web publishing platform. The Project Manager will oversee communication with the IMLS (the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a grant-making federal agency) including interim and final reports. [Please indicate the source of the job lead as The Brad Traverse Group (brad traverse dot com)]. The Grateful Dead Archive is a multimillion dollar collection that has sparked international interest. This position is responsible for overseeing the creation and implementation of the "Virtual Terrapin Station" that will incorporate digitized content from the archive plus materials contributed from the Deadhead community. Specific responsibilities include the development of a detailed project plan to design the website, digitize material for it, build a rights tracking function, and oversee the development of software to enable the exchange of information between library systems. The Project Manager has responsibility for the timely and successful distribution of over $1.4 million dollars comprised of the original IMLS grant and matching Library funds according to strict rules and deadlines per the general terms and conditions of the grant. (BOLD ADDED by Diarist)
What a job, eh? Living in Santa Cruz, working in an academic community, spending your days with the music and whatnot of the Grateful Dead – nice salary too, and university system benefits – who could complain about that?
Well there are lots of folks who wish the job did not exist: the righties, the uptighties from the business community, and various anti-hippie bigots are unhappy. According to Al Lewis, a business columnist at the Denver Post:
"While I think the Grateful Dead is an American icon, how is it that anyone can justify spending $1.4 million of government money that does not exist to build a shrine to rock band?" wrote Denver real estate broker Larry McGee. "The total funds are coming from a state that is bankrupt and a federal government that is trillions of dollars in debt."
California, facing the worst budget crisis in state history, last year cut about $600 million in funding from its universities. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed restoring $370 million of it. But even if that happens, funding will still be well below what it was two years ago. And who know what happens after federal stimulus funds run dry?.
Meantime, regents and trustees have been raising tuition, slashing programs, furloughing workers and planning to put prospective freshman on waitlists.
But at least the Golden State can still pay homage to the Dead.
Yes, in spite of over-paying doctors, insurers and other middle men, the state has the guts to put some cash into the project of organizing the afterdienst of the Dead. Horrors! That money is for the rich!! Public archives...schmarchives! Give that money to Corporate Interests ... the cries are heard by all.
Oh well. Cry babies emerge no matter what you do. Hooray for CA!
But the Dead was more than just a band. It was a movement – or the symbol of a movement, or something like that. They were also enlightened business managers, if you can believe the recent article from Joshua Green at the Atlantic Monthly, entitled "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead".
ODDLY ENOUGH, THE Dead’s influence on the business world may turn out to be a significant part of its legacy. Without intending to—while intending, in fact, to do just the opposite—the band pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by corporate America. One was to focus intensely on its most loyal fans. It established a telephone hotline to alert them to its touring schedule ahead of any public announcement, reserved for them some of the best seats in the house, and capped the price of tickets, which the band distributed through its own mail-order house. If you lived in New York and wanted to see a show in Seattle, you didn’t have to travel there to get tickets—and you could get really good tickets, without even camping out. "The Dead were masters of creating and delivering superior customer value," Barry Barnes, a business professor at the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship at Nova Southeastern University, in Florida, told me. Treating customers well may sound like common sense. But it represented a break from the top-down ethos of many organizations in the 1960s and ’70s. Only in the 1980s, faced with competition from Japan, did American CEOs and management theorists widely adopt a customer-first orientation.
Interesting, eh?
Even if they learned it in the 1970's, the corporate hacks have by now forgotten how to treat customers. Banks and cellular companies, in particular, seem to treat me not as someone they want to please, but as someone they want to shakedown for another buck.
Maybe the business people should donate to the creation of the archive, and then go there to study how to treat customers to keep them coming back.