Holding Us Back?

Jonathan Potts asks, via the Comments, whether Pittsburgh's continuing association with the steel industry isn't what's holding us back. OK. I'll bite. What is holding us back?

Or -- is Pittsburgh being held back at all?

Here's what I see when I look at the Steeler hard hat, which prompted Jonathan's comment. I see a tribute to two industries -- steel and mining -- which have their best days behind them. I see an idealization of Pittsburgh's history. Does it hold Pittsburgh back to say that this is still a steel town, even metaphorically? Ask your friends around the country and around the world about their impressions of Pittsburgh. Are they good ones? I hope so. Are those positive associations based on the history (and continuing presence) of steel? I'd like to know the answer, but I'd wager that the answer is no.

Here's what I might see when I look at the Steeler hard hat. I might see the fruit of an innovative trademark licensing deal between the NFL and local outfit Mine Safety Appliances, which makes the hats. I might see the kind of blend of old (hard) technology and new (soft) technology that Pittsburgh needs to develop across its entire economy in order to generate jobs and grow.

Right now, my intuition is that most people, both in the region and outside, share my the first look at the hard hat, and not the second. Am I wrong?

And Another Thing

I've started another blog, this one more specifically focused on law and public policy affecting high technology. It's located at Madisonian Theory. The title and layout are prone to change. Suggestions are welcome.

Pittsburgh Icon

I'm a member of a professional association in town that customarily rewards its guest speakers with a Pittsburgh Steelers hard hat:



Kind of old school, no? What would be a better, more contemporary Pittsburgh icon? The requirements: It should be emblematic of the city and/or region, and it should fit under your arm (or on your head).

Women on Top

This has little to do with Pittsburgh, but still . . .

Yesterday was a great day for American women, in two completely unrelated disciplines.

MIT, the world's greatest research university focused on science and technology, elected Susan Hockfield, now the Provost (second in command) at Yale, as its next president. This is the first time ever that a woman will have led MIT. It's also the first time that MIT has ever appointed a life scientist to the job.

As a Yale grad, I've met Susan Hockfield, I've heard her speak, and I've seen the amazing things that she has done for bioscience and engineering research and teaching at Yale. MIT made a great decision. And it's a great day for science, as well as for education, and for women.

The other fantastic development yesterday was the victory by the U.S. women's national soccer team over Brazil in the gold medal match at the Olympic Games. The media are celebrating this as a fitting end to the national team careers of the "Fab Five" -- Hamm, Foudy, Lilly, Chastain, and Faucett. NBC did a classy thing last night and showed the team's singing the national anthem at the conclusion of the gold medal ceremony. (The singing was a classy move in itself. Think the men's basketball team could handle that?) Mia Hamm was all over the NBC broadcast last night, and again on the Today show this morning. Very sweet.

But I'm not so into the emotional arc of the thing. I think that this is a great thing for sport. It's not the wake-up call to the United States that World Cup '99 represented. These women have taken the game to another level. This wasn't women's sport, or women's soccer. It was just sport. Just soccer.

In other words, as a soccer fan, I loved how this team won the tournament. This was a team that rediscovered the secret of its early success in the early 1980s and 1990s, before anyone outside of soccer (and before a lot of people inside soccer) ever heard of the team. They're not the fastest players in the world, or the most skilled, but they're just going to be stronger than everyone else. Physically and mentally. The U.S. intimidated its way to the top.

In that sense, neither Mia nor any of the other "Fab Five" has ever been the soul of the team, no matter what the mainstream media say. For years, the soul was Michelle Akers, who was the truest warrior on any field of sport that I've ever witnessed. Other teams were just plain scared of her -- her size, her power, her skill, and her willingness to lay the whole package on the line. When she retired after 1999, there was no one else to assume that role. (Mia Hamm is a terrific player, but no one on the field of play is scared of Mia Hamm. They might admire her, but they don't fear her.) The team was lost in the wilderness until it found Abby Wambach. Abby used last year's World Cup to find her feet with the team, and the team with her, and the Olympics was her coming-out party. She's big, she's powerful, she's skilled, and she'll do whatever it takes to win. She doesn't scare opponents quite the way that Michelle Akers did, but in time, she may. Yesterday and for the future, the U.S. women's team is Abby's team.

Is This Happening?

I've been thinking about last week's feature on ThisIsHappening, the local site that has done a nice job of aggregating and distributing information about cool stuff going on around Pittsburgh. (Here's the link to thisishappening.com) The bit that I wasn't aware of before I read the story -- though it's relatively easy to figure out, if you think about the site a bit -- is the plan to convert what is currently a free service to a paid subscription service.

My reaction is mixed. On the one hand, kudos to Jason Simmons (the promoter of thisishappening) and to his investors for taking the initiative to put the site together. If he can figure out a way to make some money, and if that enables the site to get bigger and better, more power to him. Pittsburgh needs more than its share of energetic entrepreneurs. On the other hand, I have this nagging sense that this is the sort of thing that really shouldn't be part of just-another-tech-startup. Really great independent bookstores have community bulletin boards that anyone can post to; if you really want to know about the great stuff happening in town, you check the board. Sure, the board wouldn't exist without the bookstore, and the bookstore needs to make money. But the bookstore makes money by selling books, not by selling access to the bulletin board. Functionally, the board is a free, shared, volunteer-based resource. That's how I think of thisishappening.com and its cousins (PittsburghBuzz and element 5).

Can thisishappening.com be a a virtual community center and a profit center all at the same time? Or is there -- dreaded word ahead -- a "business model" that would keep the listings free and finance the site in other ways? I know, for example, that Jason can sell data about people who register at the site to event promoters -- anonymized data, not names. Maybe the site architecture can be licensed for use in other cities. There's always advertising -- and if there's more content (how about thisishappening.com bloggers?), there's more traffic.

Enough early Internet idealism, right? We'll see. I'll leave the questions this way: If Jason does convert the site to a subscription model, will it still be as popular? Or will charging for information kill it? And which does Pittsburgh need more? A successful but limited tech startup, or a popular and broadly useful -- but money-losing -- community site?

Cool and Scary, All at Once

Local tech startup Hyperactive Technologies got a nice plug in the most recent issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine. Hyperactive develops software that helps fast food stores deliver products more efficieintly: it monitors incoming cars and uses historical data to predict what the cars' occupants are likely to want to eat. This helps the restaurant get the right food into the cooking queue more quickly, leading to fresher food in the takeout sack.

If you own a fast food franchise, or if you order the same thing over and over and over again when you go to McDonalds, then it sounds great. And it seems to work.

But it's more than a little creepy too, no? We crave spontaneity in our lives, and here's a firm helping to automate fast food restaurants that want to stamp it out. You can still hold the pickles (keep singing: hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us: Have It Your Way!). But you'll. Have. To. Wait.

Watch List

One of the better things I encountered in the Bay Area was a weekly feature in the San Francisco Chronicle called "Chronicle Watch": Readers submit information about broken or non-functioning public resources around the area. Not the huge stuff, but the small-scale, highly irritating little things. Big potholes, cracked pavement, broken facilities in public restrooms. The newspaper tracks down the responsible public official, publishes that person's contact information, extracts information about when the problem will be solved, and -- this is important -- publishes status updates. The series archive is here. The most recent installment appears here.

Something like this couldn't find a home here. Or could it?

Catching Up 2: Films

With the support of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers, the Cultural Trust is sponsoring a summer film series at the Byham Theater, downtown.

I've already missed most of this, but tonight's film is All the President's Men, with Dustin Hoffman and Bob Woodward. Still to come: Dr. Strangelove (Friday), and a Bringing Up Baby and Sabrina double bill (a week from Friday), among others.

Congrats to all involved for an inspired film fest!

Catching Up on the News: Literacy

Among the things that I missed while I was away was the release of an academic report that ranked Pittsburgh as the third most literate city in the US -- behind Minneapolis and Seattle and ahead of such bastions of would-be pedants as Boston and San Francisco.

Since some seemingly obvious information (say, support for independent booksellers) suggests that the results are upside down, my first instinct would be to critique the study's criteria. But the criteria (which are online along with the report) don't seem obviously unreasonable to me -- especially the bit that tries to capture the quality of public and public school libraries. Any city in California that tried to compete on that basis would lose every time.

Back in the 'Burgh

I landed in Pittsburgh late last night after 2+ weeks of camping, conferencing, and vacationing. Some impressions:
Wellsboro, PA lies in the heart of a beautiful area, home to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania and the Pine Creek Rail Trail.
In Chicago, by chance I ended up staying near one of the city's most impressive architectural landmarks, the Monadnock Building. What a city.
And I spent almost two weeks in my native territory, in and around Menlo Park and Palo Alto, in the heart of the Silicon Valley. In San Francisco, I got reacquainted with the fantastic steamed pork buns at Yank Sing). A visit to REI's Berkeley store encouraged me about that firm's impending arrival in Pittsburgh. Finally: camping without hunting. Late one night at the Union City In-N-Out Burger, I was reminded of how the Asian, Asian-American, and Latino populations are exploding throughout California. Mostly, though, I was overwhelmed by the sheer ostentation that has overtaken most of the mid [San Francisco] Peninsula, and the intolerance toward economic diversity that Silicon Valley wealth has come to embody. Housing prices (median price of a Bay Area home these days: $600,000) aren't the worst of it. The mini-mansions being built lot-line to lot-line aren't the worst of it. For me, the worst of it is the automobiles. SUVs seem to be out; Porsches and very high-end Mercedes are in. They're everywhere.