University Entrepreneurship

I was a panelist yesterday at the Spring Plenary of the Pitt Faculty Senate, on a program that focused on commercializing academic research. Among the many interesting things that I heard was an announcement by Don Smith, who runs economic development initiatives in a joint appointment by Pitt and CMU, that the "University Partnership of Pittsburgh" has a new website that collects information and resources for economic development initiatives. The site is at http://www.universitypartnership.com/. There is more functionality to come, including a search option. I encouraged Don to think about including an RSS feed.

Here's the description of the University Partnership, from the home page:

The University Partnership of Pittsburgh is a joint economic development initiative between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, increasing coordination and the impact of the universities on the region’s economy. The University Partnership of Pittsburgh actively collaborates with and serves as a university liaison to a variety of economic development agencies in the region. The University Partnership of Pittsburgh provides university access and support for company attraction, faculty consulting and technology commercialization activities.

Pittsburgh Jobs Report

Harold Miller has an interesting new report on the state of Pittsburgh's job market. At his blog, Harold summarizes his findings:

Moreover, jobs in science, engineering, and health care are growing faster in the Pittsburgh Region than in the U.S. as a whole and faster than many high-tech regions of the country.

With appropriate funding support from the state and federal governments, the universities and health care systems could continue to create more jobs, as well as the ideas that lead to new businesses. In addition, more jobs in corporate R&D could be created through an aggressive marketing effort. The continued presence of long-standing corporate R&D Centers for companies like Alcoa, Bayer, PPG, and U.S. Steel, and the recent successes in attracting research centers for Google, Intel, RAND, Seagate, and others, prove that southwestern Pennsylvania is an ideal spot for growing R&D jobs of all kinds.

In evaluating the region's economy, it's important to look beyond changes in total employment and focus on whether job growth is occurring in the sectors that bring new revenues into the economy, such as manufacturing, higher education, and research and development. These are the sectors that attract and retain talented young people and build regional wealth. Growth in these kinds of jobs will, over time, lead to population growth in the region, which in turn will lead to higher rates of job creation in the population-dependent sectors of the economy. That will move total job growth in the Pittsburgh Region closer to the national rate.

ThinkTank in Bellevue

Jonathan Barnes has a nice post about ThinkTank in Bellevue, which I've also posted about before.

Pittsburgh Roars Artists

Thanks to David Edwards for filling me in with the names of the artists behind the giant inflatables that are now on display in Oakland, in connection with the Pittsburgh Roars! campaign. The names of the inflatables, and the artists, are:

Bessie by Steve O’Hearn

BLAM! By Shannon McMullen

Green Monster by Brian Holderman

GRRR! By Fabian Winkler

Houndstoothy the Squirrel by Sylvia Kay

Like A Lionfish Out Of Water by Alison Zapata

Monongahela Monster by Blaine Siegel

Pittsburgh Is The Zombie Capital Of The World by Jessica Jacob

Pittsburgh’s Painted Pachyderm by David Edwards

The Thinker by Daniel Franke

David Edwards has his own site at http://www.davidedwardsart.com/, and he has a solo exhibit opening this weekend (Saturday, April 1) at Artspace 303, 303 East 8th Ave., in Homestead, from 7 to 10 p.m. The show is titled "Realism and the One Man Band." His painted pachyderm is pictured above.

If any of the other artists have portfolios online or websites that show off their work, I would be happy to update this post with the links. Feel free to send the info via email.

The Giant Inflatable Art Project was organized and administered by the Sprout Fund.

UPDATE: A spec sheet has been posted that identifies all of the artists.

Aldo Coffee is Hot

According to the Kansas City Star, in a story on business blogging:

Aldo Coffee, a single coffee shop in suburban Pittsburgh, has become the coffee hot spot in that city because of its active blog. It’s the shop out-of-town visitors ask for when arriving in Pittsburgh.

And it's not just the blogging; they deliver a great product. Fortunately, Aldo's is walking distance from my house. Congrats to Rich and the gang for the notice!

Y*nzerama!

Blogger doesn't do trackbacks very well, when it does them at all, so I only just now caught up to Jonathan Barnes's post on the word "y*nz" and his reaction to my posts that used the word and then responded to his initial comment on it.

All I can say is: Wow. Really touched a nerve there, didn't I?

Jonathan is from Pittsburgh. His argument is partly that the word "y*nz" is inherently derogatory, but he's also making a kind of possessory argument -- that "y*nz" somehow "belongs" to long-time Pittsburghers and their families, and derogatory or not, "outsiders" can't and shouldn't appropriate the word. This is a cousin of the argument that African-Americans can use the word "n*****" because they're appropriating and transforming its derogatory connotation; others can't, because they don't have the "insider" status that entitles them to make that linguistic move. Similarly, I live in Mt. Lebanon, but I'm not from this area. I'm "from" California; in a metaphoric sense, I'm an outsider, so I'm "stealing" a local word.

Jonathan writes:

I find Mike’s way of provoking people into discussion to be less than honest. I also find it less than true to Pittsburgh, since we Pittsburghers are a blunt people. I could be wrong, but I can’t help but think that Mike has seen my Rant in the City Paper, in which I ripped on non-native journalists busting on this city and its people.

Well, I'm not sure what he means by "less than honest"; I thought I was being pretty up front, and the comments and commentary on a couple of other local blogs seemed to bear me out. (Maybe he means that I can't provoke unless I'm blunt? If I live in Pittsburgh I must talk or write as "true" Pittsburghers do? More on that thought in the last paragraph.) No, I hadn't read his Rant in the City Paper (at least, I hadn't until just now). And the implication that I'm a closet classist (or perhaps not such a closet classist?) because I live in Mt. Lebanon represents the worst kind of old Pittsburgh stereotyping. Lebo is far from perfect, but really, can't we all just get along?

I wouldn't write again just to respond to Jonathan. He's entitled to his opinion. But there is a somewhat larger point, and it goes to the complex relationship among language, culture, and change:

People who grew up here, in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, have to get used to the fact that there are an awful lot of us who live here but didn't grow up here. In fact, I'll go out on a short limb and argue that the economic future of the region depends on its ability to attract more in-bound immigrants, so the proportion of the region that isn't home-grown either grows, or the region continues to fade. The vast majority of the people I know who moved here from other places did it by choice, and are glad they did. Pittsburgh has its problems, but on the whole it's a great place.

But with new populations comes critical examination. Traditions, culture, language, all of which are things that may have survived and prospered within stable communities (and even defined those communities), get jostled around and sometimes scrutinized and disrupted. Language changes; meanings change. The flap over "y*nz" is an example of that (and this isn't the first time that I've stepped in this sort of thing). I'm not arguing that "y*nz" does or does not mean what Jonathan argues it has meant historically, but I am suggesting that people who live in Pittsburgh today (whether or not they were raised here) will decide what that word means, and they won't be bound by insistence on historical or cultural authenticity.

Language and culture are lived things; change happens. My guess is that "y*nz" ends up with multiple meanings, and that's the way it's going to be. (A morning update: In other words, I reject the "insider"/"outsider" distinction, and for that reason, I reject the comparison of "y*nz" to the N-word.) I'll plead guilty to not knowing all the nooks and crannies of Pittsburgh history, but not to being disingenuous about provoking a conversation about alleged classism. I don't speak or write as a "true" Pittsburgher speaks, whatever that means. So what? Pittsburgh is going to have more of this sort of thing (critique and conversation, I mean), and Pittsburgh is going to have to have it, if it's ever going to get itself going as a city.

Venture Capital Deals

Take a look at this running summary of recent venture capital deals around the country. Pittsburgh, I think, falls into the Great Lakes region, and Pittsburgh companies are listed as part of the PA list. It looks to me like Western PA makes a poor showing by national standards. If someone wants to look at the data more carefully, I'd be happy to be proved wrong on this.

Brillobox at MySpace

You can keep up with The Brillobox at myspace.com.

While I'm at it, check out PittsburghMusicScene, which also has space at myspace.com. And if you follow *that* link, you'll happen across what looks to me like some new energy coming to the local music market.

Questions to Ask a Startup

Guy Kawasaki posts a series of questions that a job candidate should ask a potential start-up employer. The list offers implicit advice for the employer (for the would-be start-up entrepreneur, investor, and innovator): Make sure that you know the answers to these questions, and whether and when you're willing to share this information.

Pittsburgh Roars

The Pittsburgh Roars! campaign gets underway today. While I'm usually skeptical of these civic psychology initiatives, this one actually sounds like a lot of fun. For example, what could be better than making silly inflatables out of the dinosaurs that dominate Pittsburgh? And take a look at the list of Pittsburgh Roars! partners. Can you spot the missing giants?

More Cubanomics for Pittsburgh

Earlier this year, Mt. Lebanon native, dot-com billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner, and emerging digital entertainment mogul Mark Cuban lit into Hollywood for its refusal to allow most movie theatres to show Cuban's co-produced film "Bubble." The problem? Not only is Cuban a Hollywood outsider, but the film, which was directed by Steven Soderbergh, was released to DVD at the same time as it was released for theatrical distribution.

Meanwhile, here in Pittsburgh, the Denis theater in Mt. Lebanon closed a year-and-a-half ago and has been sitting dark and silent on Washington Road. All around it, the Mt. Lebanon business district has undergone a steady food-and-drink based revival. Bringing the Denis back on line would be a perfect complement to the existing business zone.

There's a wistful line that pops up around Pittsburgh this time of year that wonders why Mark Cuban doesn't buy the Pittsburgh Pirates. That, I think, is a fantasy that will never come true.

But if anyone has Mark Cuban's ear, please pass along this thought: Why not buy the Denis? Build your own theatrical distribution network, starting in your home town, and use it to break Hollywood's grip on filmmaking and film distribution. Talk about putting Pittsburgh on the entertainment map. How about it? Make the owner of the Denis an offer he can't refuse.

Pop City on Google-Comes-to-Pittsburgh

Perhaps my earlier skepticism about Pop City was misplaced. The most recent issue has an engaging story about bringing Google to Pittburgh:

Although the new Pittsburgh office—Google’s fifth satellite-- is housed temporarily in One Oxford Center, it is likely to be permanently located on or near campus. Google has established offices in New York, Kirkland, Washington, Santa Monica and Phoenix. One reason? It's become increasingly difficult to recruit talent to their home office due to the high cost of housing in California. People visit, see how much house their money can buy and decide not to relocate there, says [Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research]. “We had noticed we were making offers, and they were turning them down….We were having success hiring people right out of college, but when people were established with a house and family, it was harder to get them to move.”

He adds, “Certainly Pittsburgh is more affordable.”

It’s a win-win for talent that refuses to leave and for firms like Google. “CMU has a long history of being practical rather than theoretical,” Norvig says. “It’s hard to imagine a better partner.”

[Trivia bonus: Peter Norvig is the author of the greatest PowerPoint presentation ever.]

F2F Folksonomy in Pittsburgh: Web Analytics

My neighbor Robbin Steif, who runs her own web analytics consultancy, is trying something that Pittsburgh needs more of: grass-roots entrepreneurship. Here's Robbin's pitch:

Web Analytics Wednesday is the world's only distributed networking event for web analytics professionals. Open to everyone, and free (except for food you buy for yourself) for practitioners and vendors alike, Web Analytics Wednesday is a free event allowing you to meet folks with similar work interests. Whether you're interested in first-party cookies or just want to eat them, come out and join us on Wednesday, April 5, 6-8 at Panera's in Oakland on the Blvd. of the Allies. We'll be in the back room where the fireplace is, and I'll be carrying a copy of Web Site Measurement Hacks.

Send RSVPs to info@lunametrics.com or online at http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/

Nordstrom News

Nordstrom is coming to the Ross Park Mall in the North Hills -- in 2008. That's more than 2 years away, so any celebrating right now is clearly premature. Stilll, in case you want to get a head start on your list of "10 Reasons Why Nordstrom is Good for Pittsburgh," here are a few to work with:

4. Now, everyone in Pittsburgh can have shoes that are as nice as the shoes in Seattle . . . and San Francisco . . . and Providence . . . and St. Louis, where Nordstrom already does business.

3. Pittsburgh is too as nice as Cleveland . . . where Nordstrom already does business.

2. People who live in the South Hills will have to learn to cross a river.

1. Two words: display ads. Department stores advertise in local papers, and that means ad revenue for the Post-Gazette and the Tribune-Review, assuming that one or both of them are still in business in 2008. More ad revenue means a bigger news hole, which means -- in theory -- a better newspaper.

Pgh Venture Capital Blogging

Mark Stroup commented that I should take a look at Guy Kawasaki's blog. So I did, and I've added his feed to my newsreader and added a link to the right side of this blog.

That raises a question:

Are any Pittsburgh-area venture capitalists blogging? If so, who? If not, why not?

Entrepreneurship Basics at Carnegie Mellon

I dropped by the McGinnis Venture Competition last Friday at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. The Venture Competition featured business plan presentations by MBA student teams from all around the country, and at least one team from a Canadian program. This was a little bit like a moot court for business school students, except that they were presenting real companies and real proposals, and they were angling for real prize money. The judges were a very impressive mix of local entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers. I learned a few things:

1. The typical business student and the typical law student should spend some time together learning techniques of rhetoric and persuasion. Not everyone can be a great presenter, and some people are great presenters without any training, but everyone would benefit from some basic training. People in business need the same sort of training that people in law do.

2. "Intellectual property" protection for the ideas in the plan was fairly far down on the list of issues that reviewers considered important, at least judging from the questions that I heard put to competitors. This is consistent with what I teach my students: Intellectual property rights, and patent rights in particular, aren't as important to the start-up venture as some other things. In particular, entrepreneurs need to carefully assess the competitive landscape and understand barriers to (competitive) entry. IP rights may supply barriers -- or they may not.

3. There is no shortage of good ideas out there -- though often, the best ideas are copied, legally, from other people. (Sometimes the difference between success and failure is simply timing.) And there seems to be no shortage of money to invest. There is a shortage of ideas that are compelling enough to justify investment, and a shortage of ideas that are married to management teams that have track records that justify investment.

Cuban on Entrepreneurship

I like Mark Cuban's willingness to put himself out there. On entrepreneurship, a taste:

I learned a lot from Don Nelson when he was coach and GM of the Mavericks. He told me something early on, that opened my eyes. I forget the exact conversation, but we were talking about players, and I asked him why he didnt talk to a specific player about something that was going on. What he said was that “THe worse evaluator of talent is a player trying to evaluate himself.”

The same applies to business people and particularly to entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs. We tend to be less than honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.

I have been just as bad at this as anyone, particularly when I was getting started in the business world. For those of us who dream of starting and running a business, we know that we have to have a level of confidence in our own abilities. We dont want to believe that there are things we cant do. We want to believe that if we try hard enough, work long enough, and get a little lucky, that the sky is the limit. The problem is that we let our confidence cloud our judgements of what we truly know about ourselves.

I (Heart) Pgh Feted

Congrats to www.iheartpgh.com for this nice bit today:

Straight from the heart

Existing in the vast recesses of the Internet are sites celebrating every flavor of life.

So imagine our delight when we happened across a quirky little place called I PGH (or www.iheartpgh.com). According to a little blurb on the home page, I PGH is meant to be "a guide to greatness in the city of Pittsburgh. The places and things we love the most about Pittsburgh are not always the easiest to find, so we started this little Web site to share all of the good stuff with people who are looking for reasons to love this city more."

We? Here's all we know about the founders, pulled directly from their "about us" link:

"I PGH was started by Natalia and Lindsay in the fall of 2005. After having studied, worked and lived all over the world, Natalia and Lindsay moved back home and met while working on a political campaign to engage young voters. Relieved to be back in a place where everyone knew their name (and a thousand bucks rent got you a house and not a shoebox), they agreed that their hometown was one of their favorite places in the world. ...

"Sometimes the things we love about Pittsburgh are not so easy to find, and we hope this site can help uncover some of those hidden gems. We encourage longtime and honorary Pittsburghers, transplants and ex-pats to spread the word about its awesomeness."

That's it. No last names, no contact info. Just lots of tidbits about Pittsburgh events (arts, entertainment, politics), essays and the pre-requisite plugs for I PGH T-shirts and more.

Not much more to say other than it's always noteworthy when young (we presume) Web entrepreneurs return home to battle the perceived exodus of young Pittsburghers.

Schenley Plaza Trees

I walked through the nearly-complete renovated Schenley Plaza in Oakland on Friday morning and did a double-take: the double row of trees that bordered the plaza's Hillman Library edge are -- gone. It seems that I'm not the only one bewildered by this development. From this morning's P-G letters:

Fine old trees gone

They pulled it off Monday with SWAT-team precision, in broad daylight. The suspects couldn't move anyway, but still they were first fenced in. In retrospect, it's clear that was to keep anyone else out, but just for good measure, a rent-a-cop was on hand too.

Then, one by one, they were systematically mowed down and swiftly whisked away with a crane.

Not content to have chain-sawed all the nice ironwoods that had somehow managed to survive in those oversized planters late last fall (at a time when they were dormant and easily could have been transplanted somewhere or sold at a handsome price), now the Pittsburgh Parks "Conservancy" has seen to it that all the sycamores growing on the Hillman Library side of Schenley Plaza have joined them as mulch.

Apparently old trees need not apply for space at their new plaza. I hope they're proud of themselves.

JOHN HEMPEL
Braddock Hills

Editor's note: The writer is a member of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the Braddock Hills Tree Committee.

Were the trees sick or dying? Why did they have to go?

Pittsburgh-ese

If you remember the hornet's nest that I stirred up the last time I used "yinzer" in a sentence, you'll be interested in this story in today's New York Times, by a writer who goes road-tripping to test the linguisitics research of UPenn linguist William Labov. The man ends up in Pittsburgh:

After more conversations and cue-card spot checks with waitresses, farmers and hunters made it clear that the Inland North accent was thriving in these small towns outside Buffalo and Rochester, it was time to look at Professor Labov's atlas again. Directly south lay the Midland, a vast accent zone that stretches from Pennsylvaniato the Great Plains and borders the Ohio River to the south. A buffer between the linguistic powerhouses of the Inland North and the South, the Midland has few unifying linguistic features and in many respects is considered the default of American English: this is what American sounds like when small regional dialects have eroded.

The Midland would not hold much interest to a person searching out accents were it not for three enclaves that have retained unique speech: St. Louis, Cincinnati and, in particular, Pittsburgh, which seems to be the Galapagos Islands of American dialect.

"Pittsburgh is a special case," Professor Labov said. "Generally, local dialects have been absorbed by larger regional ones. But Pittsburgh, though part of the Midland, has retained its own speech patterns. In fact, Pittsburgh does things no place else does, like pronouncing 'ow' as 'ah' and very often dropping the 'l' when it comes at the end of a word." (Radial, for example, winds up sounding like radio.)

Julie Schoonover, the barkeeper from Corning, had described the dialect of the Steel City (a k a Pixburgh) more succinctly: "If you want to hear some freaky talk, go to Pittsburgh," she told me. "It's all 'yinz goin' dahntahn' down there." . . .

Outside Lou's Little Corner Bar in Pittsburgh's Little Italy, which is known as Bloomfield, it was snowing hard. Inside, a loud argument about the president and weapons of mass destruction was taking place. Did he know? Did he not know? The bartender, Donna Bruno, whose fiancé is in Iraq, did not have an opinion. But on the existence of Pittsburghese, she was clear.

"Of course we talk funny," she said. "We string words together. East Liberty becomes S'liberty. Down the street becomes dahnthestreet. And it's always what yinz doin? Why we talk this way, I don't know, but it might be because each neighborhood was settled by different ethnicities during the steel years." Professor Labov basically concurs with this theory. . . .

Professor Labov agrees, up to a point. "I love the variety of language," he said. "The puzzling thing about this whole business of dialects is that sound changes do not help us communicate. Dialects prevent us from understanding each other. And yet, instead of growing weaker, as one might expect with television and telephonic communication, regional dialects are strengthening. That's the mystery."

As some Pittsburghers might say, and your point is?

Useful Fun

With multiple blogs, sometimes I let Pittsblog get a bit quiet while I pick up the pace on law and technology at madisonian.net

Kevin Werbach had a post recently that bridges both worlds:

Fun, perhaps, is America's secret weapon. A billion people in India and more in China want the quality of life we've been blessed with, and in an era of globalization, they can suddenly beat us at our own game. In the struggle for wealth and productivity, there are no entitlements. Many American individuals and corporations find this deeply scary. Yet, we, who have the luxury of starting off fat and happy, can more easily devote our energies to what we love. If we are to succeed in the post-networked century, we must learn to kindle innovation in this way. I don't mean leisure and entertainment; I mean passion with a purpose. Useful creativity, if you will.

The Enlightenment Arrives in Pittsburgh

at Carnegie Mellon . . . but too late to help the Turkish community and the West Penn Cultural Center, or the IB students and families in Upper St. Clair.

McGinnis Venture Competition

The CMU Tepper School of Business and the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship are sponsoring the McGinnis Venture Competition for entrepreneurially-oriented MBA students with technology-oriented business plans. The competition gets underway next Thursday. There are a lot of hungry entrepreneurs headed to Pittsburgh for this -- let's be sure that they see and hear the best that the city has to offer.

The competition website includes some cool technology of its own -- Abby, the AI/natural language technology produced by local firm Eidoserve. That's entrepreneurship in action. The Eidoserve founder and CEO is local entrepreneur and Tepper School faculty member RF Culbertson.

Tech News of Note

Technology and entrepreneurship gems from this morning's P-G:

In this report on technology jobs:

Dr. [Jerry] Paytas [director of the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Economic Development] and the tech council cited Pittsburgh's history as a "company town," where throngs of residents worked in large companies built by innovators such as Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie, as the reason that entrepreneurism lags locally.

For generations, it was easier to work for someone else than to strike out on one's own, particularly given the comparatively high wages and broad employment offered by the big corporate titans before their downsizing in the 1970s and 1980s.

"People who might be quite capable of starting a company just didn't have the legacy of doing that," said tech council spokesman Kevin Lane. "But I think we are turning a corner."

Mr. Lane cited an increase in the number of federal grants awarded to local small businesses seeking to commercialize promising technology. The total amount of these so-called Small Business Research Innovation grants hit $13 million in 2004, up 17 percent from 2003.

Ben Chinitz said it before; I repeat it from time to time. Will it make a difference now that the local MSM is picking up on the message? I hope so.

From Cori Shropshire's column today:

David Jaffe, the attorney who used to co-chair the emerging business practice at Downtown law firm Schnader Harrison, Segal & Lewis, has jumped to another law firm, FoxRothschild, to beef up its technology practice. The firm, which already has a tech practice in New Jersey and Delaware, has created an angel investor network and a nonprofit organization providing expertise to pre-seed and early-stage life sciences companies. Mr. Jaffe is expected to build that network locally.

This is good news. Local lawyers need to take a leading role if the tech community is going to get moving. The Pittsburgh business community hasn't pressed its lawyers hard enough to do this..

Allegheny Conference Goes Back to Basics

The Allegheny Conference on Community Development knows it has a problem, and conference chair and PNC CEO Jim Rohr wants to solve it. The ACCD wants to "tighten its focus." Let's review the plan:

* Potential consolidation of the city and Allegheny County. (Comment: Promising, particularly if there are real cost savings and elimination of multiple taxing authorities.)

* Get business taxes down, particularly Pennsylvania's corporate net income tax, which is the second highest of any state in the United States. (Comment: Promising again, but it's not likely to happen soon, and it's not a panacea.)

* Figure out how to hook up Oakland, Hazelwood and Downtown via new transportation. (Comment: Promising, again. Too bad that it's not possible to take the T-to-the-North-Shore money and divert it, and the train, to T-to-Oakland.)

* Develop better education and training programs. (Comment: By whom and for whom?)

* Aggressively pursue out-of-town life sciences, advanced materials and information technology companies and convince them to move operations here. Also, call on all big companies already here, asking what more can be done to help them expand. The goal is to double the number of "wins" -- companies that locate in the region as result of help from the conference -- from 20 in 2005 to 40 per year by 2008. "That is a pretty heady goal," said conference Chief Executive Officer Mike Langley. (Comment: Well, OK, but how about building a better business development infrastructure for local tech? Free the private sector from top-down "we know what's best for the region" planning. Support visibility for a wide variety of bottom-up legal, financial, and management resources for entrepreneurs and small businesses.)

* Bring back international service to Pittsburgh International Airport. (Comment: If I were prioritizing the items on this list, I'd put this one at the top. An excellent goal.)

* Celebrate Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary in 2008 and use the event to generate publicity for the city and shape its identity locally and nationally. The conference's preliminary plan envisioned spending $1.6 million this year on planning for that event. But the effort, led by Marc USA President Michele Fabrizi, "has nothing to do with a party," Mr. Rohr said. Instead, it is a project designed to change "how we think about ourselves."

Comment: Oh no! This list was actually looking pretty good, and because of the sun I'm in a particularly fair-minded mood this morning, so I'm willing to say that something good might come out of spending a lot of money on a 250th anniversary party. But changing how we think about ourselves? Doomed to failure, it is, as Yoda might say. If the ACCD or anyone else around here wants to market Pittsburgh to the world, go ahead. That's a good thing. If they want to try to change how the world looks at Pittburgh, they should knock themselves out. We're all exhausted from explaining that really, the steel industry is all gone and the place is quite attractive. (If they want a suggestion, here's a pie-in-the-sky-never-going-to-happen-but-it-would-sure-make-a-difference-to-regional-marketing idea: Change the name of the football team to almost anything but the Steelers. Everyone in Pittsburgh knows that it's a metaphor for local tradition; a lot of people outside of Pittsburgh thinks that we're still primarily a steel-making town.)

But change how we think about ourselves? Not only is that unlikely to happen anytime soon, but also I don't think that it's necessary. Unless the ACCD is simply going to hand out cash to every resident (hmmmm -- maybe they can spend it at the new Harrah's!), there's no amount of advertising and partying that will make Pittsburgh residents feel better about themselves. If the 250th anniversary celebration is an excuse for local feel-goodism, then it's a waste of money. More important, I'm increasingly persuaded that Pittsburgh's well-known general sense of self-pity isn't behind our slow-growth and no-growth problems. More on that, though, in another post.

More Bob and Ray

This has nothing to do with technology, economic development, or even Pittsburgh, but it turns out that I'm not the only huge Bob and Ray fan around here.

Gambling With Other People's Money

Fester takes a big swing at the Harrah's casino numbers (hint: they don't add up), but the game is fixed, in a manner of speaking.

Slots are coming to Pittsburgh. That's a done deal. The only question is where the casino goes. Wherever it goes, the proposition that the casino will be some kind of spur to broader economic development is laughable. The numbers that Bill Toland is reporting on make that clear. If gamblers don't spend what Harrah's is counting on, the casino will fail, sucking the life out of its neighborhood. If gamblers do spend what Harrah's is counting on, the casino will thrive, suchking the life out of its neighborhood. How, exactly, is this a good thing?

Cubanomics

Want to know why Lebo native Mark Cuban is never going to do big time business in Pittsburgh? My theory: Because Pittsburgh can't handle the way he runs a business.

Pittsblog Commenting Changes

There's been an increase recently in the number of way-off-topic and even offensive comments on Pittsblog posts. I've deleted some of the former and all of the latter that I can find. Reluctantly, I'm going to start moderating comments.

Also, I've finally deleted the HaloScan comment option from the blog. All commenting is via Blogger.

More TIF Madness in Mt. Lebanon

Abuses of the TIF (Tax Increment Financing) system in Pennsylvania are so well-known that only the die-hard few seem to care much any more, and the mainstream media doesn't seem to care at all.

Today's case in point: Out here in Mt. Lebanon, there's a nice-looking proposal on the table to build a large condo/retail project on the vacant parcel at the corner of Washington Road and Bower Hill road. The developer, Zamagias Properties, appears to have financing in place and is ready to move forward -- if the Mt. Lebanon Commission, the Mt. Lebanon School District, and Allegheny County hand over a TIF.

The Trib and the Post-Gazette have both carried stories about the proposal in recent days, but neither paper has questioned the Zamagias numbers. In fact, the online version of the Trib's story has been changed -- to make matters seem worse for Zamagias than even Zamagias argued they were before.

In fact, the numbers are dubious. Not only is it not clear at all that a commercial development project in one of the region's most wealthy communities needs a TIF under any circumstances, but in this particular case, Zamagias's own numbers suggest that the developer will make a healthy return on its investment even without a TIF. The TIF ends up being a mass transfer of wealth -- from Lebo and County taxpayers, to the hands of Zamagias, for a project that has a positive ROI already.

I've posted a couple of items about this over at Blog-Lebo, and I've posted an online copy of Zamagias' own project projections [pdf; 300 kb], written last summer.

UPDATE (March 7, 2006): The Tribune-Review takes note.

Take a hike: Zamagias Properties is telling Mt. Lebanon officials that it won't build a $28.8 million luxury condominium project without a $4.5 million tax-increment financing package. The 60 condos would sell for, on average, $475,000. Tony indeed. Why should the public help pay for such a thing? Pure and simple, it shouldn't. If Zamagias can't make a buck on this project on its own, the complex should not be built. Taxpayers are not venture capitalists.

Actually, that last line is misleading. The problem here isn't that a TIF would turn taxpayers into venture capitalists. Venture capitalists, after all, are all about returns on their investment. A TIF for Zamagias would produce returns for Zamagias, not for the taxpayers. The problem here is that Mt. Lebanon and County taxpayers are being asked to give up so much in return for so little.

Help the PTC EnterPrize Competition

Wanted: EnterPrize Coaches for small-scale business plan competition:

From the PTC:

Make a difference in the lives of our region's entrepreneurs. Volunteer to help EnterPrize Business Plan Competition participants navigate the business planning process. We need experts in management, product development, marketing, accounting and law. If you can commit four to five hours a month from March to June, contact Melissa Ungar at 412.918.4292 or mungar@pghtech.org.

Immigration and Productivity

By the way (thanks, Chris): A new study suggests that regional immigration boosts local productivity.

"Our work shows that cities with more diversity -- more immigrants -- in the work force exhibit higher productivity for the American-born employees," Peri says.

Cities with little or no growth in immigration, such as Cleveland, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, did not benefit from this phenomenon during the same time, according to Peri and Ottaviano's calculations.

They make four major findings:

The positive effects on U.S. wages stem from immigrants offering education backgrounds and job skills that are complementary to those of native-born Americans.

Immigrants are increasing the variety of services in cities, making them cheaper for American consumers.

The immigrant services complement American-born services, which implies a limited competition and little downward pressure for American-born wages.

The new businesses are attracting more investment in cities, helping the cities' overall economies grow.

South Asians in Pittsburgh

The Trib wakes up to the fact that there's an important South Asian population in Pittsburgh, and that population is highly entrepreneurial and innovative.

Here's another link to TiE Pgh, the local chapter of the Ind/US business network.

The Tech Council Presents the Web, Again

Robbin sends word:

IT Network: The Next Generation Of Online Marketing -- The Rules Just Changed, Again

Just when you catch up with Google AdWords and e-mail campaigns, another wave of Internet marketing develops that can leverage your existing programs and add new resources to help you compete. Learn about corporate blogs, RSS feeds, electronic loyalty programs and using advanced Web analytics to make the most of your time and money. Join David Radin, Columnist, Radio Host and Principal of Seasonal Experiences, and Robbin Steif, CEO of LunaMetrics, as they help attendees build traffic, increase conversion rates, build trust with prospects and cultivate customer loyalty. Presented in partnership with the Pittsburgh Radio and Television Club. Sponsored by Buchanan Ingersoll and Highmark.

Thursday, March 30
8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
[Pittsburgh Technology Council] Training Room

$20 for Council members, $30 for non-members

RSVP: Council Events or 412.918.4229

Venture Capital Follies in Pittsburgh

The P-G's "Tech Saturday" this morning has two venture capital-related items, one hopeful, one not.

The hopeful item is news that Adams Capital is raising another fund.

The not-so-hopeful item is David Radin's report of a Tech Council presentation on how entrepreneurs get funding.

Patrick Stewart of Idea Foundry and Mike Morneault of Innovation Works, both publicly funded economic development agencies, are interested in creating jobs for the region. They judge investments, in part, by how many new jobs will be created. Kenn Moritz of Stonewood Capital Management and Sean Sebastian of Birchmere Ventures are venture capitalists who are more interested in the financial gains that they'll be able to bring to their partners or investors.

As if "create jobs for the region" and "financial returns for investors" are equally important or relevant to an entrepreneur. But they're not. The region desperately needs jobs, but start-up, entrepreneur-based companies rarely generate them. If a funding agency is looking to entrepreneurs to create jobs, the agency is wasting its money and entrepreneurs' time.

So, all is not lost for the entrepreneur with a good idea -- especially if that idea involves a technical factor that gives a competitive advantage. There is money to help you turn your idea into reality, move it into production and grow your company. But you have to look in the right place. According to Mr. Morneault, not everything is fundable.

Mr. Sebastian put it into perspective, by quoting the old adage about whether you should look at the horse (the company/product) or the jockey (the management team) before making investment decisions. He says before looking at either, he looks at the race -- to make sure that the market they want to enter holds enough opportunity.

This quote shows up at the very end of the column, and in the news business, this is called "burying the lede." The most important thing to come out of the presentation is the idea that the most brilliant technical innovation isn't the key; a rock-solid, experienced management isn't the key. Those things matter, but they don't matter unless the market wants the innovation. Got customers? Then you'll get funded.

Finally, there's an important thing that apparently didn't come out of the presentation, which is this:

For a lot of entrepreneurs, looking to venture capital (or even to Innovation Works or Idea Foundry) is simply looking in the wrong place. Since Spring Training has arrived, think of a baseball metaphor. Until you get to the public markets, venture funding and other institutional funding is the major leagues. Innovation Works is Double AA, or maybe (for some) Triple A. Many entrepreneurs with nothing but an idea are playing Single A -- or worse. If you need money to build a prototype, you're going to be riding a lot of late-night buses, carrying your own suitcase, and washing your own uniform. No VC is going to drive you around. Instead of looking to VC money, look realistically to how the minor leagues get funded. Build a record, find customers, and play your way to the top. Max out your credit cards. Leverage your house. Find a lawyer who can help put together "Friends and Family" money. Maybe, with some customers, you can get the ear of the Angel network.

The Pop in Pop City

When I posted about Pop City, it turns out I wasn't skeptical enough. Cori Shropshire's writeup this morning makes it clear that the site is Pittsburgh eye-candy, nothing more. (Pittsburgh eye-candy? Is that an oxymoron?)

* "a marketing tool for Pittsburgh"
* revenue comes from developers who have paid to advertise their properties as "the featured place to live"

Best of all, the site wants to write about all the cool stuff happening in Pittsburgh that "no one is writing about." "Our mission is to document the transformation of Pittsburgh and reframe how people view the city."

Reframe the view? Things no one is writing about? If you want to reframe how people view the city, give people the city the way it really is, not a developer's glossy wish-based brochure. And pay attention to the world around you! Have these people ever looked at the Internet?

Gladwell on PirateBall

More from the ESPN interview of Malcolm Gladwell. This time, something to think about as the Pirates again try to break .500:

First, what was your baseball meltdown?

Gladwell: It came after the Blue Jays (my team) won the second of their World Series titles. Economic reality hit, and they basically stopped trying to compete at the top level, and I wondered to myself: Why do I care so much about a sport where some teams have $200 million to spend and some teams have $20 million to spend? I know, I know -- as Rob Neyer and others point out -- that there is no necessary correlation between payroll and success. It is possible, as "Moneyball" reminds us, to win with less by being smarter. But the point is not that if you have more money than someone else you automatically win more games. The point is that if you have more money that someone else you're playing a different game than they are. Wal-mart is not competing against mom-and-pop corner stores. They're in a different business. And it isn't fun, at the end of the day, to watch a mom-and-pop compete against Wal-mart. It's painful and pointless.

I loved "Moneyball." I thought it was one of the best books of the past decade. I think it should be taught in psychology classes and business schools as a treatise on the subtle effects of bias on expert decision-making. But do you think that Billy Beane, for a moment, wouldn't trade his situation with Theo Epstein or Cashman? To me, the hard cap in football -- and, to a lesser extent, the soft cap in basketball -- are what makes those sports so interesting. It's what makes them sports. Contests where one player has significantly more resources than another are not sports. They are marketplaces. To root for the Yankees or the Red Sox is the functional equivalent of rooting for Microsoft or General Electric. No thanks.

Mindsets: Entrepreneurs vs. Corporate Culture

In Dignity is Deadly, Kathy Sierra breaks down the habits of entrepreneurs.

I'm not saying start-ups couldn't learn a thing or two from Big Business, but keep in mind the name of this blog. We're not doing Best Business Practices For Maximixing Profit. This is about creating passionate users. The good news is the big(ish) companies that "get it" are working hard to incorporate the best of both cultures. There's no REAL reason why a big, established company cannot keep the start-up spirit alive, while still running a business and yes, maximizing shareholder value. And as each day goes by, the chances that your users/customers/clients are from the gamer generation goes up. That's the best news of all... because the post-boomers don't give a damn about your "professionalism". They want to know how you can help them kick ass, and why you don't have a blog.

Gladwell on Big Ben

In the middle of a delirious email interview, Malcolm Gladwell throws in this gem:

To me, this is what Peyton Manning's problem is. He has the work habits and dedication and obsessiveness of Jordan and Tiger Woods. But he can't deal with the accompanying preparation anxiety. The Manning face is the look of someone who has just faced up to a sobering fact: I am in complete control of this offense. I prepare for games like no other quarterback in the NFL. I am in the best shape of my life. I have done everything I can to succeed -- and I'm losing. Ohmigod. I'm not that good. (Under the same circumstances, Ben Roethlisberger is thinking: maybe next time I stop after five beers). I don't know if I've ever felt sorrier for someone than I did for Manning at the end of that Pittsburgh playoff game.

Welcome to Pop City Media

Eve Picker, who runs developer no wall productions, is behind Pop City Media, which has just launched this pro-Pittsburgh site. (I've added a link to the right.) I'm always cautious about uncritical rah-rah Pittsburgh media, particularly Pittsburgh media with sponsorship from the Allegheny Conference. Hopefully Pop City be genuinely entrepreneurial, which is to say, I hope that it will be more than what the Downtown "powers" think it should be.