In the past, one of the indications of being good in business and a successful and respectable person in general was job stability. You graduated from high school or college, you got a job and you stuck at it for 40 years. If you did well, you d work your way up through the ranks and end up in management. But even if you didn t, you appreciated the security, you were loyal to the company, and you retired with a decent pension. That s all changed. Markedly. These days there is usually no pension waiting for you. And far from any stigma being attached to changing jobs, we regard change and new challenges as positive. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Aileen Bennett meets two people who have both recently made big changes. For 11 years Dana Baker was Executive Director of Festival International. For most of us, running the most popular music festival in town, and one of the greatest in the country, would be a dream job. Dana s new job keeps the dream alive. As of late 2016 Dana is the Executive Director of the Acadiana Symphony. Harold Bernard has started a new business at the time of life most people are retiring. Harold is 65 and as of January 2017 the founder and owner of Glide Studios, on Jefferson Street in downtown Lafayette. Harold is a dancer and dance teacher. Glide Studios is a place where you can learn dance, watch dance, or just plain old dance. In Acadiana our cultural life is an integral part of every aspect of our lives. From the symphony to the zydeco dance hall, in this conversation we discover the audiences are not so different. Often they re the same people. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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Here in Southwest Louisiana we are buffeted by elements and forces largely beyond our control. We don t have the luxury of debating whether climate change is man made or a natural phenomenon. Whomever is causing it man or nature we have to live with the reality that changing weather is bringing one hundred and 500 year storms far more frequently than centuries apart. And eroding coasts are robbing us of the very land that some of us live on. Alongside that, the economies of our urban centers and small towns have been, for a long time, at the mercy of the vagaries of international oil prices. You might wonder what the heck these broad brush subjects have got to do with you, your house, or your daily errands. YOu re about to find out Aileen s lunch guests are both involved in making the link between where we live and how we live. It s a link you might not normally think about, but it s fascinating. And vital. Geoff Dyer is the CEO and Director of Design for the Downtown Development Authority in Lafayette. Geoff is an urban designer with an international reputation. He s designed more than 80 projects in 18 states across the US. He s both an enthusiast and an authority on downtown revitalization. Which is what he specializes in here in Lafayette. Ursula Emery McClure is a founding partner in the firm Emery McClure Architecture, and occupies the prestigious seat of A. Hays Town Professor in the School of Architecture at LSU. Ursula has won numerous international prizes for her architecture and her firm s work is internationally recognized as well. Here at home, Ursula s designs are sometimes controversial as she champions forward thinking design while, as she puts it, "being caught between the global petro chemical infrastructure and an alligator." Photos from lunch at Social in Lafayette.

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It s not totally unheard of for a husband and wife to start up a business together. There are small businesses that are labor intensive and require long hours that a couple can split, and keep whatever profit they can make in the family. Traditionally, businesses like family farms come to mind. Or convenience stores. Gas stations. And, perhaps more stereotypically than true these days, the mom and pop scenario where dad is a plumber and mom handles the phone and the books along with the kids. You can probably think of other examples. But, unless you already know Sandi and Richard Chalmers, I doubt that your list of businesses a couple might start up together would include a baseball team. Sandi and Richard Chalmers met in college, where they got married. Richard brought Sandi back to his hometown of Lafayette, and some 28 years later, in 2010, they decided to start up The Acadiana Cane Cutters. The Acadiana Cane Cutters baseball team is member of The Texas Collegiate League. They re based at Fabacher Park in Youngsville. Couples have come up with all kinds of ways to re energize their relationship after years of being together. And families have come up with all kinds of businesses to go into together. Starting up a semi professional sports franchise together after a quarter century of marriage has got to be one of the most creative, inventive, and challenging ideas anybody has come up with. But it s certainly working out for The Chalmers. Photos from lunch at Cafe Vermilionville.

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Muhammad Yunus is a Nobel Prize winning economist. He is the inventor of what is called the micro economy. He came up with the idea of making micro loans to people in 3rd world countries so they could start a small business. Yunus s latest thoughts on the capitalist economy include the opinion that one of our biggest stumbling blocks to happiness and the fulfilment of our true human nature is that too many of us think about getting a job. Instead, we should be thinking about how we could be entrepreneurial and work for ourselves. Here in Acadiana, Aileen Bennett s lunch guests have unwittingly followed Yunus s call to action and thrown off the shackles of education and employment, respectively, to follow their own entrepreneurial paths. Nathanael Johnson was majoring in business at LSU when he decided to short circuit the whole process. He dropped out of business school to open a business. In 2007 Nathanael opened Caf Mosaic, a coffee shop in Eunice. Then he moved to Lafayette and opened another one. Reve on Jefferson Street. Today, Reve is more than a coffee shop. It s also a brand of coffee, available around the state and across the country, made from beans roasted by Nathanael or one of his 42 employees. Nathanael is quite a success story. And a role model for kids in business school everywhere Kelly Guidry has a website called chainsawguy.com. If you ve ever stood in front of a mirror rehearsing how you re going to explain something difficult to your husband, wife or parents, you can only imagine Kelly s speech in which he had to rationalize quitting work as a successful graphic designer with a paycheck to throw himself into the career of chainsaw artist. Going on for 20 years later, you can find Kelly s artworks in homes and collections locally, and all over the country thanks mostly to his marketing strategy of selling his pieces at festivals including Festival International and Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Aileen Bennett, Kelly Guidry, and Nathanael Johnson find a surprising amount in common as they discuss their adventures in self employment over lunch at Cafe Vermilionville.

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In the tech industry there s always a "next big thing" on the horizon that s going to change everything. It happens so often there s a name for this syndrome. It s called "disruption." The next big disruption that everyone s talking about is driverless cars. While we don t know when a driverless car is actually going to pull up outside your house or whether anyone is going to have the courage to get in it the funny thing is that, thanks to a much quieter revolution, we already have pilotless planes. You probably won t be getting on a flight to New York on a pilotless plane any time soon, but Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAV s as they ve come to be known are hard at work on military and commercial flights. Here in Acadiana, DaCoda Bartles is at the forefront of the UAV industry. DaCoda s company, Aerobotics, is an aerial camera company. Aerobotics aircraft buzz around checking on everything from oil rigs in the gulf to wildlife in the swamp. There is one kind of car that will probably never be driverless. A race car. Motorsports wouldn t be quite the same if the driver was sitting at the side of the track, or even in another city, driving the car by remote control. Motorsports is one of the most popular, most costly, and most highly rewarded sports in the world because race car drivers are so highly skilled. And daring. Unlike most other sports, a race car driver s life is on the line every second. You can count the race car drivers in Acadiana on one hand. And you can count the female race car drivers on one finger. Her name is Sarah Montgomery. Sarah drives a Mazda MX5 Global Cup Car, and she s a race winning and award winning driver. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Aileen Bennett notes that DaCoda s aircraft hsa been unmanned by technology, but Sarah s race car has been unmanned by a woman. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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Here in Acadiana, one of the things we value is tradition. By that we mean not just Cajun and Creole culture, but the old fashioned ways of doing things. We don t mind if business takes a little longer to conduct and includes a long lunch and longer conversations about our families and football than business cause that s just how it s done around here. On the other hand, we like to keep up with what s going on in the world and to have access to the same cutting edge ideas and technology that you can get anywhere else. Aileen Bennett sits in for Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to Lunch and introduces two people at either end of that spectrum. They re both in versions of the health and fitness business, but pretty much everything about their approach to it is 180 degrees apart. John Williams is the co owner of a second generation family business called Pack and Paddle. Pack and Paddle is an outdoor lifestyle store that specializes in, among other pursuits, rock climbing, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, fly fishing, and family camping. Besides selling equipment, John and his wife Becky lead trips into the Acadian lakes and bayous. And if you re looking to buy outdoor equipment online, don t Google Pack and Paddle cause they don t do business that way. John, Welcome to Out to Lunch. On the other end of the healthy lifestyle spectrum, there s a new business in town called Orange Theory Fitness. It s a hi tech gym where you work out in a group. You re wired up to a personal monitor and y all s vital signs are displayed on giant screens while you re working out. The workout is based on a scientific principle called EPOC which stands for Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption. In case you think this is a bunch of crazy talk, Orange Theory is one of the fastest growing companies in America. Entrepreneur Magazine calls it one of the top franchises in the world. Here in Lafayette, Blane Arnold is Orange Theory s head trainer. By the end of this conversation John and Blane come to realize they have more in common than they might have thought. Photos at Social by Gwen Aucoin.

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Over the last couple of years we ve had to deal with the fallout from big changes in the oil business. We have been far less battered by equally cataclysmic changes in the film business. If you haven t been keeping up, here s the thumbnail sketch. In 2003 the Louisiana legislature decided to attract film production to the state by giving film productions 30 of their budget. In cash. That meant, if you were a Hollywood film producer making a 100m movie here, the State of Louisiana would write you a check for 33m. We started getting more film production than we d ever dreamed of. So much so that Louisiana came to be known as "Hollywood South." It seemed like a win win. Hundreds of local people became film crew and started working non stop. Mostly in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Shreveport. In the middle of 2014, the Legislature realized it was giving away about 250m a year to already wealthy film executives. And that figure was about to balloon. So they put a much lower cap on the amount of money they would give away in any one year. As a result, most of the film companies instantly picked up left. Through all these Hollywood South ups and downs, here in Acadiana we ve managed to keep our film business humming along quietly. Actor and Producer Marcus Brown was raised in Jeanerette and lives in Lafayette. You may have seen Marcus in the Academy Award winning movie, 12 Years A slave or in any of the 74 movies or TV shows he s been in since 1995. Marcus s production company, Believe Entertainment, has completed its second major motion picture. Andrew Morgan Smith comes from Lafayette and still lives here. Andrew is a musician. He writes and plays as much music as any working musician around here, but don t look for Andrew performing at The Blue Moon. If you want to hear Andrew s music you can listen to the score of any of the 61 big screen movies and TV movies he s composed. Including Jeepers Creepers III and the cult classic shark movies Ghost Shark and Trailer Park Shark. The film business, at the end day, is just another business. It comes with the same stresses that come with any business. Maybe more. But then again, Marcus and Andrew are making movies. And that is, well, just more glamorous than what most of us are doing. Photos at Social by Gwen Aucoin.

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According to the United States Geological Survey, 71 of the Earth s surface is water. And 96 of that in other words, almost all of it is ocean. Seeing most of the planet is ocean, you might wonder why it s called "Earth" at all. In theory, it should really be called "Water." And seeing there are billions more fish than there are humans, you would think we relatively few humans would be dominated by fish. Whether you explain the fact that we eat fish rather than them eating us as evolution, God s design, or we re part of an alien experiment fish are a vital part of the diet of humans almost everywhere. In our part of the world, seafood is elevated to somewhere between religion and a way of life. And it s a vital part of our economy. No place more so than Delcambre. Although Delcambre only has 2,000 residents, on the day in 2013 when the Port of Delcambre launched the Seafood and Farmer s Market, 1,000 of them showed up. Today, the monthly market is a staple of the area. People come from as far away as Arkansas, lured mainly by the chance to get their hands on highly prized Vermilion Bay shrimp. The Assistant Manager of the Delcambre Seafood and Farmer s Market, and the Community Relations Coordinator for the Port of Delcambre, is Tammy Gordon. Tammy describes show she and her crew started up an online system where you can find out what fish are coming in to the port and go get em fresh on Delcanbre Direct. As you know, there are a lot of ways to prepare seafood. Fried. Grilled. Saut ed. And cooked up in a gumbo to name a few. It s only relatively recently though, that here in Acadiana we ve been able to eat fish that don t require any of these methods of cooking. Meaning, sushi In 2002 Michele Ezell opened Lafayette s first sushi restaurant Tsunami for no better reason than she loved sushi. And she was tired of driving to Baton Rouge or even New Orleans to get it. Since opening Tsunami in Lafayette, Michele has opened another Tsunami in Baton Rouge, and more recently a third one in New Orleans. Photos in the courtayrd of Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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If you live in Acadiana there s a good chance you attend your fair share of festivals. It seems like there s a festival around here just about every week. That s because there is. If you re in a Cajun band and you think at one time or another you ve been booked to play all of them, Google "Acadiana Festivals." I bet there s a couple you haven t heard of. The crown jewel of our Acadiana Festivals is Festival International. Over 300,000 people attend the Lafayette festival every year. Artists come from 20 countries. Maybe it s just me but it seems to get bigger and more fun each year though I m just judging that by the time it takes to recover. The Executive Director of the Festival since 2016 is a gentleman you might also know as a mild mannered software designer. Or, conversely, the badass drummer from Scott s Drum Center. He s one in the same, Scott Fehan. Two of the newest festivals around here are the Acadiana PoBoy Festival and Plate Lunch a palooza. The Poboy Festival is designed to celebrate the legacy of the humble poboy sandwich. And Plate Lunch a palooza is all about making a big deal about our local love affair with a good deal good meal. Both of these local food centric celebrations are the product of a company called S.E., which stands for Social Entertainment. If you like being social and being entertained you may already be familiar with the creative force behind S.E. He s also the guy behind Dix Daiquiris, Tropical Smoothie, and the Jefferson Street Pub. He s Gus Rezende. photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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We hear a lot in the national news about the global economy, and how we re all connected. Here in Acadiana we can certainly see how our families are connected, but it s often difficult to see our connection to the rest of the state, much less the nation, and the world. Sitting in for Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to Lunch, Aileen Bennett introduces two local businessmen who are both part of the bigger picture. They re using skills they ve picked up outside of Acadiana to grow businesses that extend beyond our borders. Tommy Hebert is Manager of Public Affairs for the Atmos Energy Corporation. If you re not familiar with Atmos, they re the country s largest, natural gas only distributor. They have more than three million customers in eight states from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the East to the Rocky Mountains in the West. You might be surprised to learn that there are folks with names like "Rodier" in the U.S. outside of Acadiana. In places like Montana. That s where Bill Rodier came from before settling in Acadiana, a decade or so ago, and becoming Executive Director of St Landry Parish Economic Development. Both Bill and Tommy stress the importance of the one thing we in Acadiana pretty much all agree is at the center of all business people. Both businessmen agree that above all they are people people. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Cafe Vermilionville in Lafayette.

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