TCG National Conference 2003

KIRK WATSON
TCG National Conference, June 14, 2003

KIRK WATSON: Thank you all. I'm very pleased to be here and I really appreciate the introduction. I've got to start off here being candid, though. I'm really proud of that 84 percent [vote achieved in the Austin reelection]. All right, let me just lay it all out there. I'm real proud of it. It is a record. It's the highest percentage a mayor ever got reelected—but here's where I've got to be honest with you. I also have the other record. I was the mayor elected with the lowest percentage the first time. What happened was I was running against eight people. It was a typical—where are the Austinites in the room? Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. They'll get this for sure. It was a typical Austin election the first time I ran. There were eight of us in the race. That's number one. The second is, it had all sorts of folks, including a guy who had come out of the witness protection program. And for those who—anybody who might have been casing a B-grade mafia movie would have put this guy in there. What had happened was—in fact, he got mad at me at one point—he was a former mafia hit man, and that's where he got mad at me. He was a former mafia wheel man, he said. He wasn't a hit man. He was the wheel man in the deal. And they moved him to Austin and he went into the witness protection program and ultimately came out of it because the only people in town who knew he was in the mafia, or that he was in the witness protection program, were the cops, right. And so, the way he was making a living was he was selling fajitas and hotdogs in the entertainment district on Sixth Street. And these cops on mounted horses would back their horses up next to his hotdog stand and just leave them there until they did their business and then they would walk off. Well, this irritated him. So, he came out of the witness protection program and became a candidate for mayor of Austin, Tex.

Now, that's a long—I didn't mean to tell that long story. What I was going to say is that we had eight people in the race and, on the Saturday of the election, I got 48.7 percent of the vote. On Monday, the guy who came in second dropped out, making me mayor elect. So, I have the record of being the only guy ever elected with less than 50 percent of the vote. So, when we ran for re-election—and I'm very proud, 84 percent—I'll never forget being down at Threadgill's in Austin, Tex., where we're all standing around drinking beer, and a young political groupie comes running up to me. She says, "Oh, Mayor, it's a record, it's a record." I say, "Well, yes." I was trying to act humble about it. "Yes, yes, yes," and off she goes. And my wife was standing next to me—we've been married, next week it'll be 24 years and we started dating when I was 14, so we've been around each other quite awhile—she leans over and says, "Yeah, but if you average 'em both together, it ain't shit." [laughter] So, I gotta say—almost because I feel like Liz is bumping me any time anybody says, "84 percent of the vote," and people applaud something like that—I gotta be honest with you and lay it out there.

The other thing I want to tell you is that I'm real pleased to get to be with y'all today and talking to this group in particular because I feel a kinship in a lot of ways. I have a bias, is what I'll tell you. I have a bias and so part of what I want to talk to you about is what I think is going on in our economies and what I also believe is the fundamental role that you folks will play in these economies. But I want you to also know that I come at it with a bias. I was a kid that, when I was in high school, Boswell High School in Saginaw, Tex., and if you're in Saginaw, Tex., you'd better be playing football. And I dropped out. I stopped playing football in the middle of my high school career so that I could concentrate on one-act plays and debate and all that. And some of my fondest memories are going to Austin, Tex., from Saginaw, both as a sophomore in high school and as a senior in high school, and being in that Hogg Auditorium. I think they're redoing that. They're on the University of Texas campus. But that was really my first opportunity to be in—that program, going up through Area and Regional and on to State, was my first time to actually get to be in theatres and actually get to see what theatre was like. In Boswell we had what was called the "Little Theatre." And it was the little theatre. It sat about that many folks, right there. The parents of the kids in the play were about all that got to see the thing. And I was one of those kids who had on the back of his car—which, by the way, drove my father nuts—a bumper sticker, which was kind of iconoclastic with the athletes, "Drama freaks are people, too." I'll never forget putting that on my car, really to kind of shoot the finger at some of the other folks in the school, and my dad just saying, "Now, son, why would you do that? Somebody's going to beat you up, boy!" Then I got off to Baylor and participated in some chamber theatre and some things like that at Baylor. Didn't end up majoring in drama and that kind of thing, but, again, having a great bias and a great love for it and fun.

I did that and, I was saying back in the green room just a few minutes ago, it provided great training for what I ended up doing. I ended up being a lawyer, so a little acting there. But where it really provided the training—I ended up running for mayor only after I got real sick. Back in 1992 I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had three surgeries and, for those you who are counting, it wasn't all three…. [laughter] Some of my political enemies would say that I had more than I needed, but that ain't, that's really not what I was suggesting. Ended up with three surgeries and chemotherapy and, later, I thought I was going to live through it and I went back to work like a madman and they found another tumor, so, for the hunters in the group, they field dressed me and went in and took out all the lymph nodes and, at that point, Liz and I made the decision we were going to do something different. And, so, that's what prompted me to get involved directly in public service—being the only idiot in America who thought that being mayor of Austin, Tex., was better than chemotherapy. But the point I want to make, as I was saying back in the green room, my background in drama provided great training because I could actually act like I gave a shit whether your garbage was picked up…thus leading to 84 percent of the vote. [applause]

So, let's talk a little substance. What I want to communicate to you today—and I'm going to be quiet here, in a little while, and let you ask me questions—but what I want to communicate today is that we're in a different world. We're in a different world even than we were 15 years ago when it comes to our communities and our economics. And lots of folks in this room, I'm sure, don't think of them playing a role, themselves playing a role in economic development. But you do think of yourselves as having to scrounge and try to find money and financing and that sort of thing—and I'm going to come around full circle here in a minute—but what I want to say is that you play such a fundamental role in this new economy, in this new creative and innovative economy, that you ought to be at the table. And you ought to find yourself a way to the table. Now keep that in mind as I kind of walk you through what my theories are.

First of all, I will tell you that I believe that the world, in terms of the economy, is going through a number of transitions, two in particular. The first transition is a transition about how we, or how places, create and hold economic power. Now, think about this: Prior to the last century, economic power, or economic wealth, was held by empires—was held by empires. That transitioned in the last century and it transitioned from empires into nation states that were superpowers. That's where there was economic power and economy wealth. In fact, in the last century, we had, we saw the fall of the Soviet Union; we saw the competition. I'm reading right now the book An Unfinished Life about John Kennedy that was written by Robert Dallek. And it's a wonderful book, if for no other reason than, at 45 years old, I remember Kennedy as a president kinda. And I remember, we all remember, the assassination, but so often we forget the battle of the cold war and the economic battle that went on and, ultimately, the failure of one of the forms of the economies, that being communism, in the Soviet Union. So, it was nation states that were superpowers. Now, it's not going to be about empires; it's not going to be about nation states that were superpowers; instead, it will be about regions. It'll be about regions. And this makes sense to me because the fact of the matter is that now—and, by the way, you already see regions competing with regions. And, when I talk about regions, many of us think of our cities, but it's really more than just the city itself. It's the surrounding areas. In Austin, Tex., the city of Austin's about 650 to 700 thousand people, but the surrounding five-county area is about 1.2 million to 1.3 million. And that is really the region and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But the point is, the economic power is now going to be about regions. Why is that possible? Well, for a couple reasons. Back in the old days, if you were going to have economic power, you needed to have a port. You needed to be close to water. You know, Houston is one of—when I think about, being from Texas, I think about an economic power in the state of Texas, I think of Houston and it's a port city. Well, you don't have to be a port anymore because you can be a portal. No longer do you have to have large quantities of land or large masses of people or do you need to be a financial center. Again, using my home state, one of the cities in my home state, like Dallas. You don't need to be a financial center like Dallas because today we can access labor, markets and capital anywhere in the world, any time of day, virtually. So, it's not about empires; it's not about nation states; it's about regions. And what that means: It's about our communities.

Now, that leads to the second transition I want to talk to you about and that is a transition—and it's parallel and it's going on right now and it's probably not as advanced as the other one—but that's a transition of the machine, to come up with a word to kind of describe it, the machine, the resource or the engine for economic growth or power to come about. And that pretty much started—again, going back to the old days—with land. Them with the land had the power. They had the money. You can think of it in any variety of ways. It could have been that there were natural resources on the land. It could have been that they were growing crops and it was an agricultural use of the land because, the growing of the crops and the selling of the crops, that's the way they amassed economic wealth. It could have been ranching, ranching cattle and sheep and goats. Actually, I don't think anybody ever made any money off goats, so take that out of the speech everybody. Go back to cattle. Cattle made money. You know, in some parts of the nation, it was timber. I just came from Spokane yesterday, doing some economic development stuff. Their big deal, again, it's natural resources, but timber and that kind of thing. I can remember also growing up, I can remember—I told you I grew up near Saginaw, Tex., and there was a guy from Fort Worth named Eddie Childs and Eddie Childs was a big oil and gas developer back in the old days. And he also did a radio commentary. He was one of these typical Texas guys who always seemed to be angry and he—there was even bumper stickers that you could buy that said, "I'm mad too, Eddie." And you saw them all over Texas. I have no idea what the guy was so pissed off about because he was very rich. But, anyway, one of the ways that Eddie made money, one of the ways he made money was he didn't invest his own money in his oil and gas wells. He would get you to invest money and he literally advertised on TV and on radio so that, what he would do is he would just get everyday folks to give a little bit of their money and he would use that money to drill the well and, if it was a dry hole, he didn't lose anything. And, if it was a well, then you made an override and you made a little money off it. And he advertised by saying, "If you don't own an oil well—git one." [laughter] And, by the way, that's a very good imitation. But it was all about the land. It was about how you amassed wealth because you owned property. Well, you know, Daddy Watson didn't own no oil wells. We didn't own any land. But, actually, there was a transition that went on. And that transition went from land into a second phase: what I'll call "industrial assets." We've all seen these. We see it every day in the newspaper. That's still going on today, but I'm going to talk about how it's kind of shifted. But the fact of the matter is that it went from land to industrial assets and the economic development paradigm was this: If I can get the plant, whether it's the glass factory or the rubber plant or the car dealership, manufacturer, whatever it is, if I can get it to locate in my community, that's what I want to do because that creates jobs. It was, "How do I get the industrial asset to locate in my town?" I mean, we've all heard that, we've all seen it, if we've paid attention. Well, I believe that's shifting. I don't believe it's about land; I don't believe it's about industrial assets. Now, today, it's about ideas. It's about ideas. The economic development paradigm has shifted. No longer is it just about, "How do I get the industrial asset to locate in my community?" Now it's about, "How do I get the creative and talented people to locate in my community? How do I attract and retain the talent of this new economy?" And, by the way, since now I don't need large masses of land and I don't need to be a financial center and I don't have to have a port, it can be in regions that we never thought would be economic powerhouses before. Regions that have not been considered to be the economic vital engines of a state or a nation will now be that way if they're the places that can attract and retain the creative and talented people, the ones with the imagination.

So, if it's not any more about empires; it's not any more about nation states that are superpowers; and it's now about regions—and it's not about land; and it's not about industrial assets; but it's about people—then that becomes a very important factor for those of y'all because the paramount issue, for the most part, is that people can go anywhere they want to go today. They can go anywhere they want to go. They can live anywhere they want to live because of technology and other factors. So, the economy is unlimited by the place; it's unlimited by the land, or the industrial asset; and people—particularly creative people—are going to go where they want to be. They are going to go where they want to be and where there's a high quality of life.

Now, Florida, Richard Florida, who was mentioned in the introduction, is a professor at Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh. And he and I just happened to bump into each other in the time I was mayor of Austin, Tex., and he was running around doing studies and writing books about the creative class. And he and I have kind of hooked up now. We kind of tease that it's the practitioner and the professor; we tease about who's better in that regard, by the way. But the point being that he has written a book called The Rise of the Creative Class and he has a theory. His theory is that the "Three Ts" play a role in where people are going to go: technology, talent and tolerance. And he says you need all three and, by the way, I agree with him and I'm going to come back to that. I kind of came at it from a different way because I was the sawed-off mayor of a city that was trying to become somewhat of an economic power at the same time we were trying to preserve the quality of life that had made it such an interesting place. In Austin, Tex., right now, the number one bumper sticker that you see is not "George W." The number one bumper sticker you see is "Keep Austin weird." Right? Am I right about that? Now, we just recently—the real estate council of Austin just brought in a big-name speaker that used to be the mayor of Indianapolis. He's a big dude that everybody in real estate and urban land, they know this guy. They bring him in and, of course, he's done a little studying on the city before he comes in so he can talk…well, when he saw that he thought it was a misprint. He thought it was supposed to be "Keep Austin wired," being the technology guru that he was. But it's "Keep Austin weird." Now, so what we—so here I am, being mayor, trying to figure out how do you keep Austin unique. How do you keep the qualities that you loved about the city, that caused us to stay there, but, at the same time, be able to grow the economy the way that makes sense. And I referred to it as a convergence and the fact that there were no coincidences. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to share with you some non-coincidences that I think played a role in Austin, Tex., so I can then make an argument to you about what you should be doing in your local communities in your home towns.

First of all, I don't think it's any coincidence—keep in mind what I've just told you about those transitions and keeping in mind what I've told you about Florida's concept of the Three Ts of technology, talent and tolerance. Let's talk about the convergence in Austin, Tex., and you apply it to your local communities as you think it through. First of all, I don't think it's any coincidence that we are surrounded by great institutions of higher learning, all the way from Waco to the north, which is about 110 miles to the north of Austin, to San Antonio, about 110 miles to the south, and 70 miles east over at Texas A&M. We're surrounded by institutions of higher learning, including having the University of Texas sitting right in the heart of Austin, Tex., which is, I guess, the largest institution of public education in the nation today and it has research, it has all sorts of things, but, for purposes of this discussion when I come back, it also was the regional supplier, if you will, of arts. In many ways it was the introduction that a lot of folks got to art in that region. And remember where I started in this conversation—of course, what you're remembering is the three—but remember where I started. Where I started was telling you that some of my first, some of my greatest memories of Austin, Tex., were being in that dilapidated Hogg Auditorium and getting to see theatre in that way. Having said that, it's no coincidence that we're surrounded by great institutions of higher learning at the very same time that we're becoming a center for an economy that's based upon intellectual capital. And that's part of what I'm talking about in terms of ideas and regions.

Second, I don't think it's a coincidence that we're part of a community that has always celebrated diversity—and worked at celebrating diversity, in terms of people, opinions, ideas. It's okay to take a little bit of risk. Keep in mind the bumper sticker: "Keep Austin weird." It's a city that has kind of celebrated that at the very same time as we're trying to attract and retain talent. Now, one of the things Florida—I'll never forget, I was speaking at the JFK School of Public Affairs and Florida and I were on the same panel. This is early, this was several years ago. And Florida was speaking before me and he got up and he was talking about the rise of the creative class and all the stuff that makes up his book and one of the things that he was talking about—remember one of his Three Ts is tolerance—and one of the things he said was that a guy named Gary Gates, who is from Washington, D.C., Gates had done a study. He's one of these sociologist guys and he had done a study to try to figure out, I guess, what he called the "gay index" and one of the things that he discovered is that those cities that were becoming technological centers were also those cities that had a high gay population. And he wasn't making the argument that you needed a lot of gay people to be a technological center. But his argument was that those communities that had a lot, that you had a feeling of tolerance, you had a lot of tolerance, a lot of diversity, you had a celebration of different lifestyles, were those areas that were attracting and retaining creative and imaginative people. I remember hearing Florida say that as I was sitting there getting ready to speak. Now, in Austin, Tex.—now, I'm from Texas, you know? I'm from Texas. In Austin, Tex., at the time he made that comment, Austin, Tex., which is located in Travis County, had the only lesbian sheriff in the state of Texas. Austin, Tex., had the only openly gay member of the Texas House of Representatives, which, by the way, is a hard job. So, it kind of—as he was making that point, I got to thinking about it and it's true. It's one of the reasons that Austin…. In my opinion, it's no coincidence that it has been able to attract and retain different ideas and different people. Think about it this way. Set aside gay, set aside whatever. Think about the nerd. Think about Michael Dell. The guy was a nerd—but, yet, he was in a place where it was okay to be a nerd. It was okay to have—one of my tag lines when I was mayor was I would always describe Austin as "boots and suits, hippies and nerds, all in the same board room." And it's really true. So, the diversity.

I think it's no coincidence that, in Austin, Tex., we are aggressive and we're effective at protecting the environment at the very same time that we are growing an economy that's relatively clean and that's based on ideas. Because, again, if you want to have, be a powerhouse in this new economy, people are going to go where they want to go and they're going to where there's a high quality of life. Now, I'll diverge just a second to make a point about this. I ran for mayor, in part, because the city was tearing itself apart. We had a de facto two-party system in Austin, Tex. And it was not—you don't run as Democrat or Republican for mayor. Then you ran in—either you were an environmentalist or you were with the developers and it was as nasty a two-party system as you've ever seen, I don't care what state you're from. It's certainly as nasty as anything you've ever seen in Washington, D.C. And it was one of these situations where, "Oh, you're with the development community, oh, chamber of commerce—I know all I need to know about you." "Oh, you're with the Save Our Springs Alliance…." It was the Sierra Club versus the chamber, the real estate council versus the Save Our Springs Alliance, environmentalists versus developers. And I ran saying, "I don't want to be a part of either party. I want to bring the community together." And they wouldn't even let me do it that way. And the business community had their candidate and they said, "Okay, Watson, you may be running, but you're in the other party and we're going to beat you." The environmentalists said, "Watson, you're in our party." And that's pretty much how I ran—and I got elected. Now, I'll never forget—I told you on Monday my opponent dropped out. Well, on Tuesday, the chamber of commerce board was meeting and I went to the meeting—uninvited. [laughter] Yeah, that's exactly it. I walked in that room and they all thought, "Uh-oh." And I said, "You mind if I speak?" What are they going to say? So, I get up to talk and when I get up to talk I say, "Listen"—there are about 45 people in the room—I say, "Listen, I know if I ask y'all for a show of hands, who voted for me, five or six of you would lie and raise your hand—but it'd be a lie. I know I didn't get any votes in this room, but what I want to do is I want to be everybody's mayor." So, the point I want to make is how we went about doing that, to make the point about quality of life. I said to them, "Tell me what you would do if I could wave a magic wand and I could give you, the business community, what you want." I'm making this up a little bit, but you'll get my point. [laughter] Because, frankly, they weren't this smart about it. But what they said was, "Mayor, we have to attract and retain the talent of the new economy." "Okay, how you do that?" "Well, the way you gotta do it is you gotta protect those beautiful green hills. You know, we're right on the edge of the hill country of Texas and they're beautiful and the talented people, the creative people—they're going to go where it's pretty. So, we have to protect those hills. And, you know, when we have Samsung and Applied Materials and all of those big semiconductor wafer manufacturers, they need water to clean those wafers and they need lots of it and it has to be clean, so we need lots of clean water. And, by the way, we've got to have clean air because they're going to want to raise their little kids and they're going to want that kid to play t-ball and make it out to second base and not need one of them nebulizers." Okay, I got it. I got it. So, then I go to the environmental community. I sit down with the environmental community and say, "All right, if I could wave a magic wand and I could do what you want me to do, what would you have me do?" "Well, Mayor, we gotta protect those hills because, you know, those trees, those cedar trees, they got endangered species in 'em. They got the black cat virio and the golden-cheeked warbler songbirds and we got to save 'em. And we gotta keep the water clean because, you know, Barton Springs, Barton Springs pool—it's got the Barton Springs salamander. And we don't want that to die because it's endangered. And we gotta have clean air because we want to be out on hike and bike trails, riding our bikes and backpacking." And I'm thinking, "Man, this is the easiest gig I ever had!" These folks are all saying the same thing! So I bring 'em all into the office and I say, "All right, business community, tell the environmentalists what you told me. Environmentalists, tell the business community what you told me." When it's over, I said, "Guys, this is easy! We're all saying the same thing." They looked at each other. They looked at me. They said, "Yeah, but they don't want it for the right reasons." [laughter] Now, we had to push through some purity of thought. But my point being, my point being, that when people can go anywhere they want to go, they're going to go where it's nice. They're going to go where there's a high quality of life. And, from an environmental standpoint, it becomes just as important to the economy as it does for the protection of endangered species. So, I don't think it's any coincidence that we've been effective and we've been aggressive about trying to protect the environment at the same time as we've seen this economic boom.

I also think that it's not a coincidence that we offer lifestyle choices—and I mean where people live—that a lot of communities don't involve. For example, not everybody wants to live as urban as Kirk Watson. I live—I don't live downtown, but I live walking distance from downtown Austin, Tex., and walk quite a bit—which, by the way, used to give the chief of police a heart attack because, when we say, "Keep Austin weird," we got some weird folks. We have one guy who never thought we had enough cops—and he is a very well-known guy, e-mails everybody and he was on me all the time about how we didn't have enough police. I'll never forget, walking down Lamar Blvd. one day on my way into downtown—and people would honk and wave at you and that kind of thing—but I felt this Suburban slow down next to me. I just kept my head down and kept walking and it doesn't move on and, finally, I turn to look and the window goes down and it's this fool that I don't care for, who thinks we don't have enough cops. He says, "Get in, I want to talk to you." I said, "I don't want to get in." He says, "No, get in." I say, "No, I'm not getting in your car. I don't want to talk to you." "No, come on, we'll just talk on the way. We need to talk about this." And I pulled out my cell phone and I said, "Do you want to see how fast I can get one of these cops over here? We'll just see if we've got enough cops in this town." [laughter] But the point I'm making is that I live right downtown, but not everybody wants to live right downtown. Some people want to live small town, rural and semi-rural. So, when a region can provide those different kind of opportunities, then they're going to be able to attract and retain lots of diverse people. When that occurs, though, they're still participating in that overall region.

I also don't think it's any coincidence that we brag that we're the live music capital of the world at the very same time that we're cultivating an economy that's a creative economy. In my opinion, it's all the same creative energy. It's all the same creative energy. And just to give you a quick example of where I think cities sometimes do the right thing—and it's gonna get cut out of this year's budget because it's bad budget times—but Austin, Tex., may be the only city in America that has it's own Music Network, which, by the way, ain't no way, as a public official, that you can defend that Music Network. But I voted for it every time because I always saw it as an incubator of creativity. Because somebody that may not be that good a guitar player is getting themselves on TV and they're getting—it's a incubation. And maybe some people who are real good are getting seen and that will turn into something bigger for them. When we closed our old airport—we were going to close our old airport and open a new airport. I'll never forget, Robert Rodriguez, who you may recognize his name, he did Spy Kids. He's the director and producer of Spy Kids, well, his wife is actually the producer, the director of Spy Kids and he also did The Faculty. And I'll never forget, we were at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Tex.—and I didn't care much for The Faculty, but since I'm not in Austin, I can say that—but we're watching, Liz and I are watching the premiere of The Faculty, and Rodriguez is up and saying one of the problems in Austin, Tex., is that we don't have big warehouses where you can make these films. You don't have sound stages. So, I said to Liz, I said, "We're getting ready to close that dadgum airport and we're going to have all those hangers. Wonder if those would work." Well, if you watch Miss Congeniality, you know, where they make Sandra Bullock up, doll her up there in that one scene. If you look, that's in an airplane hanger and, as she's walking out and trips, if you look behind that big old white building, that is an airplane hanger. And, by the way, I have two more months to go on the restraining order for stalking Sandra Bullock. [laughter] There aren't that many perks to being mayor. But my point being, my point being on that—I hope this is my water—my point being is that it's the same creative energy.

When Liz and I got to Austin, Tex., in 1981—we moved there in 1981—it was not uncommon to see somebody playing bass guitar in a rock-and-roll band that had an engineering degree out of University of Texas and now they're probably working at Dell, but they're still looking for someone playing a bass guitar in a rock-and-roll band. They want that creativity and that energy, so, and frankly, and I'm going to come back to the arts in general, but I think it has to be from the high cultural arts all the way to the street corner strange to really have the kind of artistic community that you need to have to have the kind of creativity that you need to have. Now, with that being said, let me get to some of the examples. Since I've been talking about creative arts, let me talk about the role I think you all play. The takeaway, in my view, is that economic development, the economic power, as I phrased it at the beginning, the strong regions of this century, economic development isn't just about creating jobs. It's about creating a culture that creates jobs. That, in my opinion, is the new economic development paradigm and the arts are a clear part of that culture. They are the part of that culture that is going to create those jobs. Now, I've just given some examples of what I consider to not be coincidences, but when we start talking about the Three Ts of technology, talent and tolerance, we can see the role that arts play in that. It is what contributes to the creative energy and, again, I want to say it. I think that the communities that are going to do well are the communities that not only celebrate the ballet, the opera, the symphonies, but they celebrate it from high culture all the way down to what some folks would say, "Whoa. That's weird. I now get the bumper sticker." You get my point. I was the mayor that got elected in May of 1997 and, by December of 1997, volunteered to play Mother Ginger in Ballet Austin's The Nutcracker—which, by the way, a side story. You know, you're up on a 10-foot pedestal with a huge skirt and these massive breasts and this big wig and they roll you out there and the Bonbons come running out from under your skirt and the whole bit. My Daddy was dying at that period of time. He had bad old cancer. He was 66 years old and he had bad old cancer and the Austin American-Statesman ran a front page color picture of me dressed up as Mother Ginger. And I go out—my dad was living in Wimberley, which is near Austin. They had retired and moved down there to be near their grandkids and I remember they ran it on a Saturday morning and I go out there to see my father and I'm sitting there at his bedside, and he was very lucid at that time, but this is the Saturday before he died the following Thursday. I said, "Daddy, have you seen the newspaper today?" He said, "No, I haven't seen the newspaper." So I say, "Well, let me go get you the newspaper." So I bring him the newspaper and I don't say a word, I just hand him the newspaper and I'm just kind of sitting there and the TV's on. He picks up the front page of the newspaper and sees his oldest boy, who he'd invested so much in, dressed like this and he looks over at me—and I'll never forget this—he says, "Aw, son. I'm way too sick for something like this." [laughter] But my message to you is the role you've always known, if you've thought about, the role you've always known you play in a community, that about creating creative energy, that about contributing to the culture of that community—that role is what I would call the soul of the community because I truly believe that the arts are the soul of the community. That role, I believe, is more true today. I believe it is more true today and will be even more true as we continue with this transition.

Consequently, you must seek a place at the table. What do I mean by that? You know, outreach for the arts has always kind of taken the same sort of course. It has always been this traditional way of, "How do I get this grant?" or "How do I maybe bang on the city council this time?", "Does the county have any money?", that kind of thing. Or, "I need private donors to take care of this or that," and that sort of deal. Now, I don't mean that to be demeaning, but let's face it: That has been the traditional way it always happens. I don't think it should be just traditional. I think the arts and the cultural arts ought to be at the economic development table when the plans are being made about how we're going to develop a community economically. That's how big a role I believe you play. Don't let your communities, don't let your regions, just focus on industrial assets or real estate when they're making their plans, when they're talking about where economic development is supposed to go. You need to be at that table and playing a functional role because you are going to be a part of what attracts and retains the talent of the new economy. By the way, that's what they will focus on. And this is not to demean anybody, this is not to be diminishing of anybody, not to be critical, but, if you say to the chamber of commerce, generally, "We need to put together an economic-development team," the first thing they're going to do is call the bankers. The next group they're going to call is the real estate guys, the title companies and the folks that develop land. And then they'll call the lawyers. They won't be calling the artists. But the artists are going to have to be at that table.

For example—let me give a couple examples. I'm going to give a couple of examples of things that I think you ought to be doing and then I'll be quiet and let you ask me questions, if you have any. First of all, play a role—I don't care how big you are—play a role in the big projects. Because lots of times what happens in communities is there's a whole lot of focus on the big projects. The big projects are going to be there for the symphony, are going to be there for the ballet, are going to be there for the opera and that's okay. That's okay. No matter what size you are, if they're going to the city, if they're going to the state and they're asking for help on doing that, you should be at the table saying, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Those SOBs"—and by that I mean symphony, opera and ballet is what I mean. [laughter] I meant that as a nice thing. But those SOBs are going to have that big facility, but they're not going to fill it up all the time and—though we like our facility—we ought to be playing a role in how that gets put together because we're also going to be in a position to use those facilities and we need to be a part of that. And let me tell you, that is also good politics, for those in political office. One of the speeches I give all the time to elected officials is about the top 10 ways that you can do a better job and one of the ways I say is to create new constituencies. And what I mean by that is, in a situation where maybe you want to support the symphony, the opera and the ballet, but if you go out and get other arts groups involved in that project, what you've just done is you've created a new constituency and you have a greater likelihood of success on what may be your primary goal, but you've created a new constituency. So, you need to play a role in that.

And let me also give you some things that I just think are basic, but so often get lost. Invite your decision-makers to things you put on. And give 'em free tickets, if that's what it takes. And don't get your feelings hurt if they don't show up. But the point being, they don't always know what you're doing. You know, they know, "Oh, yeah, I know about that theatre" or "I know about that dance troupe," but invite them to be a part of it. For example, I just told you I dressed up as Mother Ginger. Well, you know, my kids get to go to the ballet. They get to see that kind of thing. And I'm not saying you have to put 'em as the lead, make the mayor the lead of your show, but what I am saying is make sure that they know what's going on and get 'em to the events, so that they're actually seeing things. And I don't mean just the council members or the mayor or the elected officials. I mean their staff, the people advising them, the people that are advising them because they need to know what it is you're doing and they need to understand that it's good. And it may be something they've never even thought they would like, but when they see it, they like it, they're thinking, "Well, that plays a role." But we so often just go about our—we're very happy with what we're doing and as long as we can fill the house, or even come close to filling the house, or maybe even just have three rows filled, we're happy. But we're not inviting everybody that ought to be invited.

Now, I also think that what you ought to do is think about getting your chamber and other groups to do the kinds of things that make sense for you to get out in the community. And I'm running out of time if I want to allow questions, so I'm going to be real quick. For example, why doesn't every chamber of commerce have a program where, if some company or some business or something's going on in the community that needs some form of entertainment, that they're not bringing the arts community out to do that. I'll tell you, we had a fundraiser for a political event of mine where we brought part of the cast of Hair from Zachary Scott Theatre over to sing at my fundraiser. The reason for that was that people got to see—no, they weren't naked. Actually, it might have raised a little more money. But my point being that there are events going on in your communities every day that it would introduce your activities to those communities, if programs like that existed and people would see, "Oh, I didn't know that was going on. I didn't even know they had Hair." That sounded weird. "I didn't know Hair was being produced," let me put it that way. That sounds even weirder. Maybe I ought to go to questions. My point being, you get my point. Get yourselves out in the community and do those kinds of things.

And let me just say: I'm going to give you five rules that I think you ought to emphasize as part of your activity with cities and regions—and, by the way, keep in mind that what I'm saying goes right back to the role I think you play. It's not about—economic development's not just about creating jobs. It's about creating a culture that creates jobs. Number one: Make sure that your elected leaders and your business community are cultivating and rewarding creativity. Your efforts in the community are part of the value chain and they need to understand that. They need to get that. So, cultivate and reward creativity and make sure they're doing that. Two: They need to understand that they need to invest in the creative ecosystem. They need to cultivate it. They need to find ways to invest in it and you are the best advocates for that. Three: They need to seek out and they need to embrace diversity. They need to seek and they need to embrace diversity and, again, you folks can be chief advocates for that. Fourth: You need to be arguing for the removal of barriers to creativity—and I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail, but you run into them every day. You know what I'm talking about and cities and regions can help fix that. And, finally, number five: You need to be arguing for the insurance that everyone, especially kids, are getting to particpate in the arts. If the school system decides, all of a sudden, that they're going to have more P.E. and less arts, the artistic community ought to be showing up and saying, "No, no, no. That ain't right—and here's why it's not right." And do it—if it requires putting on a tie, put on a tie, you know? Don't go down and sing it to 'em. Don't do an interpretive dance. My point being: Become advocates in the system to ensure that everyone, especially kids, get to enjoy their right to creativity—because, in my opinion, that right to creativity, if fully flourished, will become a key component to the economic development of that community and the economic health of that community.

I want to be sure I'm available for questions, so I'm going to stop right there. I very much appreciate y'all having me here today. I very much enjoyed it. Thank you. [applause] Thank y'all. Does anybody have any questions? Well, okay. You want me to sing "If I Were a Rich Man?" [laughter] Yes sir?

DANIEL STEIN: Daniel Stein from Dell'Arte. What you're telling us needs to be told to our chambers of commerce—so how do we get you there?

WATSON: kwatson@watsonbishop.com is one way you can communicate with me. I'm a big advocate for this, so if there's a role I can play, yeah, let me know. The best way to get me is kwatson@watsonbishop.com. I typically do charge for this. This is how I make a living. But the point being, I just wanted to say that heads up, so if you call, but what I will say, is that there is a role for you to play in doing that and I hear you saying that your chambers and your city leaders need to hear it and I'm happy to deal with that, but if you want to get in touch with me, try to do it that way.

ANDREW LEYNSE: Andrew Leynse, Primary Stages Company in New York City. In New York City and in New York State, we've had some major changes in our funding from the state, we've lost about 15 percent this year, which is—

WATSON: Big.

LEYSNE: Yeah. Compared to some people, I guess we're lucky. But one of the things that I've noticed is that there is not an awareness upstate in Albany in New York about our ticket, our taxes and the amount of money that is spent on, that we generate in the community, so it is increasing that awareness to the community, especially to our political leaders. And I wanted to know, in what ways have people in your area, in what ways have they brought that to...?

WATSON: Well, I don't mean to tell you—and I bet the folks from Austin will tell you—that they haven't done a particularly strong job of doing that. The good news and the bad news—the bad news is that I think Austin probably does a better job of helping than a lot of communities do, actually the good news. The bad news is: They don't do enough and part of that is a money thing and part of that is a lack of understanding and knowledge about what's actually going on in the community. And what you've done is actually something that I didn't do, but makes a great point. In the more traditional economic sense, which is just how much money runs in the community for the arts does not get out there enough. And what I would suggest is, again, going back to what I just said: Make sure they're being invited to your events. It is not inappropriate, if you invite a mayor or a council member, or whoever you decide is the right person, if you invite them, ask them to come a little early and, when they get there a little early, don't overburden them, but just say, "Let me tell you a little about the theatre, a little about this production, a little about the company," so that they know what those numbers are and they have a basis for arguing for you. You know, arts budgets are always some of the first to get cut when they're going in to cut city budgets. I'm actually arguing to you that we ought to try to shift that paradigm a little bit, where they may still get cut, but they aren't going to get cut the same way because people see that as the fundamental part of the economy and the creative class. I wouldn't say they're doing that particularly good a job. Now, what has happened is the State Theater, Live Oak and all that, when there was an old theatre that needed to be redone, the city of Austin put a lot of bond money into that. But the reason that that happened, in a large part, was a) you had a mayor that wanted to see that happen, but the other part of that was that you were able to get council votes because that group was very smart about who they put on their board. It wasn't just the traditional arts folks. It was some people who had some names and I don't just mean rich folks. It was people like Jerry Jeff Walker's wife. Jerry Jeff Walker the singer, his wife, so that when she came out and was for it, it had a little pizzazz to it. So, my point being that that's another way of doing it is get folks involved who are not what people would normally think of as the traditional arts community so that there's a relationship built beyond—because of the person who'd actually done it. That word, relationship, is real important. I just think you've got to have a relationship with your elected leadership and you've gotta get this message to them that you're important beyond just…it's a neat thing.

CHRIS COLEMAN: Hey, I'm Chris Coleman from Portland Center Stage in Oregon. I'm just curious—I went to Baylor also, a long time ago, sic 'em Bears—and [laughter]

WATSON: Frankly, the Bears are sick.

COLEMAN: Bless their hearts.

WATSON: When were you there?

COLEMAN: '79 to '83.

WATSON: We were there the same time.

COLEMAN: What do you know? Probably in the same class—and look at us now. [laughter]

WATSON: This is an impressive reunion.

COLEMAN: I'm interested though, in thinking of Austin, some of the things that you say contributed to its success economically. Now, I think about the institutions around and in Austin, I think about its diversity, its weirdness, its music scene—a lot of those components have been there for a while and I wonder if the reason that it's so, if you have a sense of why it's moved forward so quickly. Is it external forces of the economy or the change in technology, or is it something conscious that you guys have done?

WATSON: I think it's a combination. Let's face it. Some of it's luck. Come on, let's face it. The fact that Willie Nelson didn't make it in Nashville, and dope and beer was cheap in Austin, Tex., probably played a big role in the music scene in Austin, Tex. [laughter] You know? I'm not in Austin, so I'll be a little politically incorrect and just say it. You know and he came down there and you had the Armadillo World Headquarters, which people don't know about here, but you could go in and for a buck and you could get—the cover charge was a dollar and, like I said, the dope was cheap and you had the rednecks and the hippies all kind of converged in one place. I'm sure you had a bunch of cowboys, goat ropers, come up and say, "Tell me about that little thing you're smoking. I saw you rolling your own. What's that mean?" But my point being that there was some luck and some of it was also the university and just the sheer fact that you had all those young people looking for a nightlife. Let's be honest about that: You drop 50,000 young people, 18 and 19 year olds that are away from home for the first time, wanting to find nightlife, that probably played a role.

But I think that there has also been a very conscious effort to play that out. Some of it has been entrepreneurial, you know, the South by Southwest, which is a music festival that brings people from all over the whole world. That is now expanded to the South by Southwest Film Festival, multimedia, but that was kind of entrepreneurial, but it was a very definite effort. We now, in Austin City Limits, Austin City Limits was a—it's a PBS program, for goodness sake. I mean, it struggled for 25 years. It's a great program, but the city of Austin had never participated as a sponsor of Austin City Limits until I was mayor. And I just, everywhere I went, no one knew who Kirk Watson was, which was a big disappointment, but everybody knew who Austin City Limits was. "Oh, you're from Austin, Tex.—Austin City Limits!" And they played everything from the Allman Brothers to redneck rock—actually, that is Allman Brothers, isn't it? Or just pure redneck, let's say. My point being that—country and western—what we then did because we wanted to expand the size of our convention center. I wanted to double the size of the convention center. When we did that, one of the partnerships I created was with Austin City Limits. We became a title sponsor of Austin City Limits. So that our money wasn't coming out of the general fund—we didn't take dime from police, fire, EMS, parks, playgrounds, libraries—we took it from the convention center and, every now, on every new Austin City Limits deal, you will see the Austin Convention Center, live music capital of the world, because we believed that was a major way of getting people to come to our city, spend their money and then go home. But the other thing we did, the deal we got out of that, was when we opened the new convention center, Bonnie Raitt was our title act that night, we filmed Austin City Limits. By the way, they tell me one of the great stories is—I was out of town. I didn't get to see Bonnie. Liz got to go. They tell me the great story was that Bonnie Raitt shows up and she thinks—Austin City Limits is filmed in a tiny little studio and when high definition TV really hits, we're in big trouble because everybody's going to see that that's cardboard with Christmas lights. We're going to have to work on that. So, Bonnie Raitt apparently shows up and they take her to the convention center to this big area for Austin City Limits and she says, "No. I was going to play in the little place." And they say there's a great story of her sitting on the stage reading her contract to see where she's going to play that night. And now, every quarter, they do something at our convention center, so we tie it in together and they help that. That helps the arts community. So, again, that was a definite effort. The Music Network. You cannot justify that dollar. I can't even tell you how people watch the dadgum Music Network. And the Statesman, the Austin American-Statesman, editorializes against it about three times a week it feels like. But it cultivates that creative energy. There's more the city can do, but part of the problem with that is, is the politicians don't have political backing to do some of that because we ain't getting support. All you hear from is the people who say, "Why you putting money into that sorry Music Network when you could be putting more cops on the street?" And it's really not an either/or proposition, but that's what happens.

So, it's been both, and what I would encourage—I was just in Spokane and they have a very good live music scene, but they downplay it. They don't talk about it. Well, they ought to have some festivals. I mean, I frankly think these arts festivals that go on all the time, you know, Shakespeare festivals, that kind of thing, you know, you may only have a very few people show up at first, but those are the things you do in a community that cultivate that artistic and creative talent and gets the political officials playing a role. So, that's a very long answer and I apologize.

RICK STEIN: I have a question. Rick Stein, I'm executive director of Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, Calif. It's a 25,000 population, small gold coast city. We've done such a great job in the past few years of organizing a coalition of the arts and getting a hotel tax and working with the visitor's bureau that the chamber of commerce comes to us first before they go to everybody else.

WATSON: Well, why are you here? [laughter]

STEIN: But, I want to follow up on something that you've just alluded to and that is backlash. We have a mayor that recently coined the term "Big Art" to castigate the arts community for our successes in getting these accomplishments. How do you deal with that and how do you deal with the—you know, we can lobby for issues and we know we can lobby for specific projects, but, boy, when it comes to supporting candidates, political candidates, that is something, as nonprofits, we cannot do.

WATSON: Well, here's how I was going to answer your question until you just said what you just said. How do you handle that? I was going to say: They call them elections. And let me just tell you, yeah, right, the nonprofit can't do that. But I'm looking at a bunch of people and I don't know where you're from. I don't know what group you're with. And I'll tell you what: Big Art? Yeah. Boy, I hope so. And let me just tell you the other thing is: What I would do is I would organize in such a way that Big Art kicks his big ass.

Why don't I take one more question. I'll take two—there are two here. I don't want to get y'all off schedule too much.

PAUL NICHOLSON: Hi, I'm Paul Nicholson from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and I think you've done a wonderful job of articulating the, sort of the long-term strategies that we, as organizations, can do in supporting the economic development of our areas. However, many of us are involved, right now, in dealing with legislators, either at the state level or at the city level, that are saying, "We can't fund the arts because we've got people dying on the streets and we've got people who aren't getting the medications they need and they haven't got the housing they need and so on and so forth." So what words of advice have you got for us in terms of going to these people and really convincing them of the importance of the arts. You know it and we know it, but how do we convince them?

WATSON: There are—the reason I'm pausing is because I think the hope I want to give is that there is—there is hope, I guess. But what I want to say is you guys know better than I do how hard it is and how hard it has been over time for people to understand the role. What I've tried to communicate here is that there is a shifting paradigm. I don't think—I really do not believe that many state governments yet get that there is no state economy. The state economy is really the sum of its regional component parts. You know, in Texas, Lord have mercy, the state government really doesn't get that. In fact, if they do anything, they try to hurt regions that are doing well. And I won't go into all that because that's a completely different political speech, but it ain't no more putting your thumbs behind your rodeo belt buckle and saying, "You know, we're an agriculture economy" or "We're an oil and gas economy." It is really the sum of its regional component parts. So what state governments need to be doing—part of it's going to be an education process, of educating them that, if they help their local regions cultivate the creative energy and creative talent, then there's going to be more tax dollars to pay for the people who are now giving you reasons to…. And, by the way, it's tough to balance those budgets, particularly in an age of "No new taxes." You know, that's become the mantra. What just happened in the state of Texas in this legislative session, in my opinion, is just completely wrong. But my point being the question becomes, how do you get more tax revenue? And the way you get more tax revenue is being able to grow your economy and you grow your economy by being able to attract and retain the talent of this new economy. And how do you attract and retain the talent of the new economy? You do that by building the creative energy—and that's going to take awhile to educate and people are going to need to be educated. The other thing I would say about that, and the other way I would approach it, is, and this may not be giving you the answer that you want, but it's a hard gig. The other thing I would say is that what we're seeing in these companies, creative companies, is that they're not saying, "I only want to go where my tax burden is nothing." What they're saying is, "I want to go where there are good schools and where there's good infrastructure and there's good arts." That's where they're—because that's where the people want to go. Just because you may not have an income tax or just because you may have low property taxes or sales taxes, it isn't going to drive this economy. It's going to drive where I want to live and I don't want to live in a place—I may not have very much taxes, but I don't want to live where the roads are crumbling and where there's no art. So part of what also needs to be conveyed, when they say they're going to balance the budget and they have to…. It's not a win or lose proposition. It's not a win or lose proposition. If they'll take care of the sick, as you just said, and, at the same time, cultivate the arts, the economy's going to be better for it. So, I don't know if that actually helps you, but that's the way I would approach it.

Let me do one quick question because I've put you over time and I apologize.

DONNA HEINS: As the phys-ed people—Donna Heins from Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill—as the phys-ed people in the schools have latched onto obesity in our students, what do you think the most compelling argument to the legislature is about keeping arts in the schools?

WATSON: I think—I would make it as an economic development argument. That's what people traditionally understand. But here's the problem for you. You're not seen as economic development people and that's the message I'm trying to make. You are. You've never seen yourself that way; nobody else has seen you that way; and, frankly, I could probably make the argument that, in the old economic development paradigm, you weren't. But you are now. So, the argument you have to make, and I think you win on the argument if you make it well—because you've never been in the position to do this before—is that, yeah, we don't want fat kids, unless they are playing Tevye, but it's also important…. I can make all your old traditional arguments because I get those too, and I agree with them. I mean, here I am and I loved my background being able to do all that, but I think you also need to make it as an economic development argument just that simply.

Folks, I put you over time and I apologize, but I really enjoyed being here. Thank you.