Who're all these people in the city?
I've spent a lot of the last few weeks in the city during the daytime, which leads me to a strange question, who the hell are all the people wandering around the CBD during the day? I thought maybe tourists but then I noticed a lot of them were speaking English with Australian accents and tourists don't tend to just hang out in the Queen Street Mall all day long. So I started to run the numbers with a friend of mine. He and I were both thinking about it one night last week when we were driving around.
Brisbane has an estimated population of 2 million people, of those I can assume about 1.5 million of them are of the right age to be employed in some form or another leaving 800,000 people who can just wander around during the day. The unemployment rate is about 4% or so so that means that there are about 60,000 people plus the 800,000 who're just walking around with nothing to do during the day.
Also factor in that there are shift workers, people with RDO's(two days a month, means that 10,000 people aren't at work every day who have jobs) and the people who work in the city who can just walk around the CBD in their spare time. So in a city of 2million people, there are about maybe 870,000 people(this includes kids and the elderly) who every day are able to wander around doing their own thing. Factor in tourists and maybe include international students who might not be counted in the ABS stats and you get a good number of people.
What does this mean for libraries? In all honesty not very much, but it does show that there is a good market of people who're out there during the day with not much to do who could be enticed to use the libraries and other services. Libraries seem to be marketing themselves to kids and families but there is a huge market of people that we might not be watching or trying to get to come into libraries that we have to start thinking about.
Having free Wi-fi and getting teenagers used to using the library as a more public space has been a good start.
My Day:
I slept in, despite setting two alarm clocks, and woke up late enough to be worried about taking my Audio recorder back to QUT, I drove straight to Toowong and took a train instead of a bike because honestly I'm a bit tired of riding all the time and then made my way to the university, ran to the AV people and got the stuff back. I was wearing these old boots I used to own from forever ago, I couldn't remember why I'd stopped wearing them. Now I remember it clearly, the left heel is broken so you slope down and it hurts and the inner soles are crinkly so my feet end up bleeding for the most part. I ended up in the library, trying to rest my feet as well as trying to basically relax and play some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. My hope was that Operation Mastiff had suceeded over the weekend and I'd get my free upgrade pack, but they haven't done the release yet. So I played a quick game that was interupted half-way through by my mother phoning me up about some customer satisfaction interview from Centrelink so I died in the game from a Banshee and did the interview. We ended up winning the round and afterwards I managed to unlock a new character, the Geth Infiltrator which I've been after for a while now. So that was good.
I took a train back to my car, but looking back on it it would have been faster just to ride a CityCycle, and then went home for a few minutes to get a new battery for my phone and check my emails. My course co-ordinator had emailed me back about my minor project, which apparently I've been making much too complicated in my attempts to back out of it, so we're meeting on Thursday to sort it all out. So look forward to that entry people.
After all this I drove myself to Matts place where I started cooking dinner, Butter Chicken Curry, which was actually pretty good. I made some steamed veggies and rice and overall really enjoyed it. Matt ate all of it except the rice because he doesn't really like rice very much. After cleaning up one of his neighbours came over and asked if we were planning on doing anything with the hot water system we had sitting in the front garden, he wants the metal for scrap I told him he could have it if it was okay with my mum, I'm not entirely sure who owns the thing right now so once its cleared up they're all his and I'll be glad to see the damn thing gone.
I've also been feeling really thirsty all day for no good reason.
Now I'm sitting around watching Penelope which is really a decent enough movie so far. If not a bit too whimsical and cute for its own good. I'm also an hour early compared to my BlogJone post last night which was two hours late.
YouTube Clip of the Day: Jean Ralphio Accountant Job Orientation. This is how I imagine all job interviews going.
Brisbane has an estimated population of 2 million people, of those I can assume about 1.5 million of them are of the right age to be employed in some form or another leaving 800,000 people who can just wander around during the day. The unemployment rate is about 4% or so so that means that there are about 60,000 people plus the 800,000 who're just walking around with nothing to do during the day.
Also factor in that there are shift workers, people with RDO's(two days a month, means that 10,000 people aren't at work every day who have jobs) and the people who work in the city who can just walk around the CBD in their spare time. So in a city of 2million people, there are about maybe 870,000 people(this includes kids and the elderly) who every day are able to wander around doing their own thing. Factor in tourists and maybe include international students who might not be counted in the ABS stats and you get a good number of people.
What does this mean for libraries? In all honesty not very much, but it does show that there is a good market of people who're out there during the day with not much to do who could be enticed to use the libraries and other services. Libraries seem to be marketing themselves to kids and families but there is a huge market of people that we might not be watching or trying to get to come into libraries that we have to start thinking about.
Having free Wi-fi and getting teenagers used to using the library as a more public space has been a good start.
My Day:
I slept in, despite setting two alarm clocks, and woke up late enough to be worried about taking my Audio recorder back to QUT, I drove straight to Toowong and took a train instead of a bike because honestly I'm a bit tired of riding all the time and then made my way to the university, ran to the AV people and got the stuff back. I was wearing these old boots I used to own from forever ago, I couldn't remember why I'd stopped wearing them. Now I remember it clearly, the left heel is broken so you slope down and it hurts and the inner soles are crinkly so my feet end up bleeding for the most part. I ended up in the library, trying to rest my feet as well as trying to basically relax and play some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. My hope was that Operation Mastiff had suceeded over the weekend and I'd get my free upgrade pack, but they haven't done the release yet. So I played a quick game that was interupted half-way through by my mother phoning me up about some customer satisfaction interview from Centrelink so I died in the game from a Banshee and did the interview. We ended up winning the round and afterwards I managed to unlock a new character, the Geth Infiltrator which I've been after for a while now. So that was good.
I took a train back to my car, but looking back on it it would have been faster just to ride a CityCycle, and then went home for a few minutes to get a new battery for my phone and check my emails. My course co-ordinator had emailed me back about my minor project, which apparently I've been making much too complicated in my attempts to back out of it, so we're meeting on Thursday to sort it all out. So look forward to that entry people.
After all this I drove myself to Matts place where I started cooking dinner, Butter Chicken Curry, which was actually pretty good. I made some steamed veggies and rice and overall really enjoyed it. Matt ate all of it except the rice because he doesn't really like rice very much. After cleaning up one of his neighbours came over and asked if we were planning on doing anything with the hot water system we had sitting in the front garden, he wants the metal for scrap I told him he could have it if it was okay with my mum, I'm not entirely sure who owns the thing right now so once its cleared up they're all his and I'll be glad to see the damn thing gone.
I've also been feeling really thirsty all day for no good reason.
Now I'm sitting around watching Penelope which is really a decent enough movie so far. If not a bit too whimsical and cute for its own good. I'm also an hour early compared to my BlogJone post last night which was two hours late.
YouTube Clip of the Day: Jean Ralphio Accountant Job Orientation. This is how I imagine all job interviews going.