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Posted by:

jmanley

Date:

February 26th, 2009 12:51 PM

Header:

Looking for the Silver Lining in the Bad Economy

Bulletin:

Object lesson: when people who make media for a salary are laid off, and can't find work elsewhere, they sometimes take matters into their own hands, and invent their own next opportunity. That's what I did in 2002, after streamingmedia.com imploded, and I've never had to look back. And I'm not the only one. The creative diaspora after the dotcom bust was directly or indirectly responsible for more exciting and sustainable media businesses -- from Digg to Achewood to Revision3 -- than any number of swollen VC-funded "business" "plans" from the bubble years. The means of production have been in the hands of creative people since at least the 1980's, with the wide dissemination of personal computers and inexpensive software to make ideas into visible projects. The means of distribution are also within everybody's reach now. Promotion, likewise, has become more about viral effects and nimble meme-riding than about big budget commercials. What, then, does mainstream media have left to offer the creative people who make its product? Only a steady paycheck. And with the credit crunch and economic turmoil surrounding it, even that one advantage is rapidly moving out of reach of all but the largest of the large corporations.

I stayed at my job longer than I had to, long after I knew that I had the power to create economically viable media properties, because I was afraid of losing that paycheck. Once I got laid off, I didn't have any other choice. So I made something of my own. And I made my living at it, for six years, right up until the day I merged it with ComicSpace and joined that company as CEO, about a year ago. Would I have been able to do that if the dotcom economy had continued to thrive? Probably not. It was the crash that ultimately empowered me and, simultaneously, dis-empowered my better-funded competition.

That's about to happen to tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of creative people out there.

I can't wait to see what they make.

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