BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist
Brave New World Dept.
Kristin Hertko's business card is a pleasing dove gray, with one corner rounded, a quirky touch. The company she works for is prominently featured -- "Flashpoint: The Academy of Media Arts and Sciences" -- but it is her title that really stands out, "Web Evangelist."
"That's my official title," says Hertko, 25, sitting at her desk. "People ask me about it all the time."
"Evangelist" has nothing to do with faith, except I suppose faith in the bright, shiny future of the online world of digital media, where everybody carries an iPad and the ability to create the images and sounds on those devices is a ticket to a good job.
"I use Web tools to communicate with people who'd be interested in what we do here," she said. "Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, message boards, forums, etc. etc."
Think of it as the 2010 version of someone who shows up to high school Career Days with a card table and a stack of brochures, only better.
"People aren't always at career fairs," she says. "But people are always online."
Hertko spreads the word about Flashpoint, a two-year technical college -- it would have once been called a "trade school," back in the day when that meant learning how to gap spark plugs on a V8 engine, but somehow the term seems inadequate for the $20million worth of film and recording studios and high-tech computer classrooms.
Touring the place is jaw-dropping -- it makes Columbia College look like the old Pacific Garden Mission.
Still, as with so much online, there seems to be a disconnect between the big numbers and the actual making of money.
Take Twitter.
"I'm following 930 people," she said. "Not reading every tweet, though." That's a lot. But when I ask her if anybody has actually attended Flashpoint through her efforts over the last year, Hertko puts me in touch with a Colorado girl who came to Chicago and looked at the school, but isn't attending, not yet anyway.
This is not to take anything away from Flashpoint. If the future looks like this, maybe it won't be so bad. The place is well worth a visit, if only to view CEO Howard Tullman's collection of contemporary art, a mind-bending, knee-weakening array of modern gems and an unspoken reminder to Flashpoint's 450 students that if you work hard and get lucky, there are prizes at the end.
