Tag Archives: Richard Florida

Public intellectuals on Twitter – where are the Brits (or even the Europeans)?

Attending Personal Democracy Forum, re:publica and other equivalent events has – both directly and indirectly – opened my eyes to the writing and thinking of a whole group of US public intellectuals. I’ve had fun meeting Jeff Jarvis, have heard Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and Cory Doctorow present, and have subsequently come across the writing of Daniel Pink and Richard Florida.

All of these individuals have in part built their reputation online, and use the web (and in some cases especially Twitter) to enhance and promote their work. Their follower numbers and, especially for @DanielPink and @JeffJarvis, their degree of engagement via Twitter is impressive.


Aside from that all of them, except Doctorow, are American. Doctorow was born in Canada and lives in London, although how ‘UK’ that makes him I am not sure.

Essentially my point is this: where are the UK and European public intellectuals either active in this space between the internet, politics and society? The only person getting close in Europe that I am aware of is Markus Beckedahl @Netzpolitik with 33000 followers and considerable interaction. In the UK @RichardDawkins has more than 100000 followers, but all the content there seems to be an auto retweet of work of his foundation – what an opportunity he is missing!

I tweeted about this issue earlier, and the suggestions in reply were @crookedfootball @philipjcowley and @stephenfry. The first two might be intellectuals, but are not exactly stellar on Twitter. Fry might have 1.8 million followers, might be an intellectual, but is not best known for that.

So the search goes on… If you have any good suggestions please tweet them to @jonworth or comment here.

[UPDATE]
@simonblackley has pointed me towards @edyson – born in Switzerland, one of the few women in this bracket, 10k followers.

[UPDATE 2]
More excellent work from @simonblackley has found @MarcusduSautoy. And I had somehow managed to forget @bengoldacre – surely with 60k followers he’s the best match yet?

[UPDATE 3]
Some further suggestions from @amonck: @georgeprof @charliebeckett @martinjemoore @arusbridger @emilybell

[UPDATE 4]
This is getting a bit long now! @evgenymorozov and @sambrook to be added

[UPDATE 5]
A slight tangent, but nevertheless interesting from @klang67 – a list of UK female science bloggers

[UPDATE 6]
Finally the European answer – step forward Brit Sir Ken Robinson, speaker on this tremendous RSA Youtube film, has 33k followers @SirKenRobinson. I’ve also just come across Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof- 969k followers – incredible, even for an American in this sector!

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The importance of place – a personal mashup of Richard Florida and Wikinomics

I’ve just finished reading Who’s Your City by Richard Florida and, in short, it strikes me as intuitively about right. The essence of the book is that where you live is as important a choice as what your job is or who your partner is. Additionally Florida argues that the creative economy is making the world more ‘spiky’ – that individuals in particular sectors cluster together and for the best career prospects you need to be where these clusters are.

Reading the book now has helped me try to structure my own thoughts about these matters. For the last two and a half years I’ve lived mostly in Brussels with plenty of time also spent in London for work. Now it’s high time that something changes. That might not necessarily mean a change of home city, but freelance web design and EU politics training based in Brussels is not working. I’ve not found the creative kick I need in the political web design arena here and the practical EU training is not as challenging or fun as it once was. I first blogged about these dilemmas in January – this post is a more detailed follow up. If I am to move it would be from sometime this coming summer.

There’s also a common misconception among friends about my work – because I do web strategy and web design plenty of people assume I can do the work from anywhere. Yes, that’s true, I can work from anywhere, but I cannot get work anywhere. Because the work I get is all thanks to word of mouth, via people I meet at events, colleagues of colleagues etc. I need to be based in a place where the market for political websites is strong and vibrant.

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