MissingMethod

I came across this doozie today while trolling for interesting design links in Minneapolis. On the AIGA Minnesota homepage, a post announcing a recent site-redesign showed 51 new comments, so I thought I’d take a look at some of the praise.

Um, not quite. Here are some of my favs:

• “I can’t believe that you have now made the jobs password only. That hurts.”
• “BOOOOO! I think the new site is horrible”
• “Bring back the free job postings!!!!”
• “Soon we might have to pay to comment on the website.”
• “I can’t believe it costs $100 to post a job. That is a rip off. What are you thinking by instituting this?”

Well, I wonder what these users would like. Free job listings, perhaps?

Next, the president of AIGA hops on and says this:

Thank you for your comments on the new AIGA Minnesota website. We appreciate your feedback and are glad that you have taken advantage of our website’s new comment-posting feature…. You can post jobs or work-for-hire offers that can be viewed by over 18,000 AIGA members at 55 chapters throughout the country.

As an AIGA Minnesota member, you can now search local and national listings directly from our website. You can also post your resume and portfolio at a aigadesignjobs.org. If you haven’t done this, I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and complete your profile.

I wonder how many times he proofread it to ensure there was no human element in the writing whatsoever. I do enjoy how he brings up that their ability to complain is because of the new commenting feature. It reminds me of how George Dubbya smugly appreciates that his protestors enjoy the 1st admendment. The last paragraph reveals how out of touch AIGA must be. After all, why would AIGA begin charging for job postings when there are so many free services and aggregators? Why would AIGA charge to let its members post portfolios when there are so many wonderful photo services? If anything, I’d think the AIGA would want to make a freer and more distributable job listings, not a closed system.

It seems “Local Business Owner” is out of touch too when he calls out the “sense of entitlement from these vocally unhelpful freeloaders.” Huh, so if a job-seeking student complains that a useful service is no longer free, that student needs to drop the sense of entitlement? Is the design student (a potential life-time member of AIGA) entitled to post his portfolio elsewhere?

I think there is a business opportunity here staring me in the face (as well as the president of AIGA and “Local Business Owner”) but until it’s launched, job posters should post on craigslist (free) and job seekers should use indeed (free). And if you want to put your portfolio up on the web, I suggest that job seekers take pictures and put them on flickr (free).

Then the AIGA can do what it’s good at, charging membership fees to the old-timers with AOL accounts.

Last Modified : October 9th, 2006
Filed under : Entrepreneurship, Economics
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