Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Remember the character played by Ben Stein in the movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off? He was taking attendance in class and kept repeating "Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?"

I feel the same way about my interest in forming a team of people who have a special set of skills. I want to create a new economic index. You know what I'm talking about, right? There is the Consumer Confidence economic index created by, I think, the University of Michigan.

I want to test the correlation between live performances of music and the health of a regional economy. Could you begin to forecast the business climate based on how much live music can be heard in a narrowly defined geographic area? This is really interesting to me.

I have often used the "canary in the mineshaft" analogy to talk about the significance of the arts as a barometer of the economic storm fronts -- to mix a few metaphors. But there has been no way to measure that barometric pressure, that I know about.

An endeavor like this would take a team of people designing an economic index that would be intuitive and sensitive to the realities and exigencies of the music business. And then there would need to be a cadre of field researchers to gather accurate information.

Does anyone reading this have any suggestions how to proceed? I want to take the initiative and would be happy to be responsible for most of the organizational work. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?