Cork 2005 - European Capital of Culture
Cork 2005 - European Capital of Culture
Ah yes. Cork. Capital of Culture 2005.
"Cork's designation as European Capital of Culture in 2005 inspires us to celebrate our past and anticipate our future; it accepts our individuality and adopts our spirit of community. It will demonstrate to all our vision of a confident 21st century city."
It brings a tear to my eye. "adopts our spirit of community." Beautiful. "our vision of a confident 21st century city." Moving.
And yet, wait a moment... site developed by rehabstudio - based in Belfast! Cork, this cultural capital, this city that has such community spirit, this 21st century city with such vision... it can't produce a web development company versed enough in the cultural sphere to execute a site for the occasion???
"The Cork 2005 Programme will include the best in Architecture, Crafts, Dance, Design, Film, Food, Literature, Music, Sport, Theatre and VisualArts." (emphasis added)
While technology may not be a key element to Cork2005, design and visual arts are... and surely with such modern vision and community spirit a local company could have been found to develop the website?
Well it seems not.
Please note I have nothing against rehabstudio, I simply think it might have been more in keeping with the spirit of Cork2005 to have sourced a Cork web development company.
Ah yes. Cork. Capital of Culture 2005.
"Cork's designation as European Capital of Culture in 2005 inspires us to celebrate our past and anticipate our future; it accepts our individuality and adopts our spirit of community. It will demonstrate to all our vision of a confident 21st century city."
It brings a tear to my eye. "adopts our spirit of community." Beautiful. "our vision of a confident 21st century city." Moving.
And yet, wait a moment... site developed by rehabstudio - based in Belfast! Cork, this cultural capital, this city that has such community spirit, this 21st century city with such vision... it can't produce a web development company versed enough in the cultural sphere to execute a site for the occasion???
"The Cork 2005 Programme will include the best in Architecture, Crafts, Dance, Design, Film, Food, Literature, Music, Sport, Theatre and VisualArts." (emphasis added)
While technology may not be a key element to Cork2005, design and visual arts are... and surely with such modern vision and community spirit a local company could have been found to develop the website?
Well it seems not.
Please note I have nothing against rehabstudio, I simply think it might have been more in keeping with the spirit of Cork2005 to have sourced a Cork web development company.
6 Comments:
Hi Mark, thanks for responding, I appreciate, and respect, your view on the matter. However, I don't feeel wronged. I feel it's ironic that a Cork company couldn't be sourced who had, as you put it, 'the right skill level and experience to implement the front end of this system for the right price'.
I do realise that it is not within your brief to employ only Cork people, but it does seem to go against the general spirit of Cork2005 to have the front end of the site developed outside of Cork. The front end, the very part of the development which the kind involves artistic endeavour that Cork2005 seeks to embrace. I am interested to hear about the involvement of PM Centrix as it wasn't mentioned to me at all by your colleague who replied to my initial enquiry to Cork2005, and I didn't notice any mention of them on the website - though it may be there.
As for my bitterness, I'm afraid that's a very deeply ingrained character trait and I doubt that it is treatable via email, but I appreciate your curative efforts. ;)
that should read:
"The front end, the very part of the development which involves artistic endeavour of the kind that Cork2005 seeks to embrace."
:)
To quote from another Cork2005 representative:
"rehabstudio [...] was engaged to develop the website after consultations with various website development companies from Cork, Dublin and beyond. Cork 2005 was particularly looking for a company with significant experience in the cultural sphere. "
There you have it folks!
Digital Crew - good enough for Nasa and good enough for Paramount, but not, it seems, cultural enough for Cork2005!
(well it must have been the cultural aspect - the technology is there, the design skills are there and they say they're very good value for money...)
Roll up, roll up... any other contenders out there?
Seriously though, there's been some talk on one of the lists I subscribe to (an Irish tech list) and so far nobody on the list tendered for the project, or even heard about the tender, so who exactly were the companies from 'Cork, Dublin and beyond' who were consulted???
It has been pointed out by some that it would not have been legit to limit the tender to Cork, and this may be so, but so far nobody I've spoken to (in Cork or otherwise) was even consulted. I'm not saying that there *weren't* companies consulted, I'm just saying that Cork2005 could have used various channels to broadcast the tender and if they had used those channels a lot of Cork companies would have been given the opportunity to tender.
Regardless, nothing will take from my enjoyment of the irony of the Cork2005 site being developed by a company not from Cork. ;)
"The ironing is delicious." - Homer J. Simpson.
WRT this issue, as well as some "who cares" responses, I have also had some comments from people saying "well, it's water under the bridge now"... below is my view on that response.
[...] I do have a problem with the 'water under the bridge' approach because, sure, it is water under the bridge, but it's the type of water we don't necessarily want to continue flowing under the bridge.
In other words the core issue here is that the company Cork2005 did not take a Cork centric or even Cork-aware approach to this project. In my humble little opinion they should have. If nobody gives a damn then they may continue to organise our year as Culture Capital with little or no regard for local industry.
That's why I think everyone should email them (info@cork2005.ie)expressing disapointment at the fact that not more Cork Companies were consulted or made aware of the tender.
Cheers,
Frank
Wow! I can't believe that, or rather unfortunatly I can.
After reading this I decided to go to the website in question to see what was so technically advanced that it couldn't have been done in Cork and I'm flaberghasted - Now that's a word I've never used before because I've never had cause to use it but I think this is a flaberghasted moment if ever there was one.
There are so many open-source content management systems out there that are all so well deisgned that anyone with a fairly basic knowledge of well anything computery could set up a site like cork2005 in a very short space of time. (Take for example PHPNuke.) I somehow doubt greatly that a company in cork couldn't have done it.
The sad part is that I bet they paid an absoloute fortune to get it all designed from scratch.
Sure it's all about the politics isn't it - bet the site was done by a friend of a friend of a friend of the person in charge of it all. Sure tis the Irish way.
I hereby embrash my newfound frenchness
Au-Reviour mes amis!
I myself recently revisited the site to check events and discovered the site had been re-skinned. It now looked completely different to when I originally posted this article. And guess what? There is now no credit and link to the design company that I can find... how odd- in the last design it clearly stated 'designed by rehabstudio' or something similar, with a link to their site.
I guess this is an Irish (or Cork) answer to an Irish problem - hide it.
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