the Burgh bandwagon grows

Now Bloomberg (as in the news service, not the NYC Mayor, though it is his company) has voted for Pittsburgh. See the story Google, Intel, Microsoft Researchers Spur Pittsburgh Startups that ran today. Like all such pieces it captures a lot of big issues that it nowhere near has enough space to treat appropriately. So skipping a lot of the economic development story there, I do have to say I appreciate Max Kings quote at the end..

``It's remarkable to see how resilient the people are.''

If you are interested, my own comments on a similar theme were in this oped a few years ago: It was twenty years ago today.

CityVitals report: Innovation Metrics for Cities

Worth a look are the summary slides of a report just put out by CEO's for Cities called CityVitals by Joe Cortright. This is partially a cross-post. On my other blog I have some longer ramblings on what's in these slides, but I didn't want to clutter up Mikes blog here. This report discusses everything from venture capita raised per capita to the proportion of the regional population that has traveled outside the country.

Cleveland likes us too?

For some other-regional perspectives I like Cleveland 2.0 which covers a lot of the economic development stirrings up there. But the most recent post "Time for a New Business Leadership?" has an extract from a recent Crains magazine (sort of the local Pittsburgh Business Times) that says outright:

Pittsburgh seems to have a clear focus on building a regional innovation economy, while in Cleveland -- as we have seen -- our future is harder to define.

Not only that... if you scroll way down in the blog there is an entry "Pittsburgh makes the Top Ten" contrasting Pittsburgh income growth with income over the recent quarter century. I'll be honest I am not quite sure what to make of it. I do not really study Cleveland particulars much. Maybe I should since there is the potential of the greater regions eventually integrating to the point we will talk about a greater Cleveburgh (I know I know.. that sounds like that screeching sound people make on chalkboards.. but nonetheless). What is the world coming to? Does this all mean there will never again be one of those parking lot rumbles before a Browns game?

The Twenty-Minute "Rule"

From yesterday's New York Times:

Meet the “20-minute rule” that guides fateful decisions in Silicon Valley. Craig Johnson, managing director of Concept2Company Ventures, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif., who has 30 years of experience in early-stage financings, said he knew many venture capitalists who adhered to this doctrine: if a start-up company seeking venture capital is not within a 20-minute drive of the venture firm’s offices, it will not be funded. . . .

It’s convenient for venture capitalists to have entrepreneurs close by, but the reverse is true, too, said Allen Morgan, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, which manages $2.3 billion in venture capital and is also on Sand Hill Road. Mr. Morgan made the case by pointing out that a prospective entrepreneur would, on average, need to have three to eight meetings with a venture fund before he or she was successful, but would have to go through a similar process with 5 to 10 firms before finding the one that approved the funding request.

Even if the process goes smoothly and requires only 15 meetings — the fewest possible, given the lowest range of possibilities — and even if most of those meetings are set up in advance, the time consumed in getting to Sand Hill Road, even using local highways, can be significant. The problem is that much worse when, as often happens, a meeting is called with just an hour or two of notice. “If you live in Santa Clara, it’s doable,” Mr. Morgan said. “If you live in Dubuque, it’s not.”

It's the way the VC world is, though the "one hour notice" problem strikes me as more symbolic than functional. It's all about who can exercise power in the relationship.

Angels in the Architecture

Some of my corporate law professor colleagues are studying the role of angel investors in the entrepreneurial economy. So far, the findings are no surprise: There isn't a lot of systematic research done on angels (for example, researchers don't have a standard definition of what an "angel" is), so no one knows much about exactly how they work, what value they contribute, or whether public policy should find ways to encourage them (or discourage them).

Read these two posts over at the Conglomerate blog for more details: One, and two.

So what? Anecdotally speaking, startup funding in Western PA depends heavily on angels and angel networks -- so much so that when the angels get cold feet, the startup economy gets the flu. Maybe (hopefully?) this isn't as true today as it was a short time ago. The research question is whether there is anything that public policy can do about it.

Women in Local Law and Business

The Post-Gazette runs this big story today on what wonderful things Pittsburgh law firms are doing to make women lawyers happier and more productive billable hour producers, and the paper uses Reed Smith -- Reed Smith! -- as its lead example. This is the same Reed Smith law firm that is notorious for having fired Denise Howell, the woman and lawyer whose Bag & Baggage blog was in on the ground floor of the blogosphere (er, blawgosphere) and who was -- then -- a one-person public advertisement for humanity amid the heartlessness of law firms. Once upon a time, we cheered Reed Smith. Way to go!, for not only implementing a reasonable part time policy but for encouraging Denise to put a public face on it. Then came July 2006, and Denise was fired for putting the "life" in work/life balance. Oops. I have friends at Reed Smith, some of them women, and I have a lot of respect for them. But law firms will never recruit, retain, and promote women in serious numbers unless the firms go beyond teaching women how to network like the boys. The boys could learn some lessons from the women -- and yes, I worked at BigLaw law firms for almost 10 years, and yes, I know how the business works. Reed Smith's publicist earned a bonus today.

Meanwhile, right next to the story about women moving up in law firms is a story about Innovation Works extending the Life Sciences Greenhouse's executive-in-residence program. This is a great idea, and congrats to the first two e's-in-r, Randy Eager and Desmond O'Connor. But I looked hard, and I didn't see a single reference to women in executive positions. It seems to me that if IW and the forthcoming master tech strategy for Pittsburgh want to move the regional ball forward, they need to address -- among many other things -- gender equity.

Schenley Plaza Review

I walked through the renovated Schenley Plaza on a warm day recently and made a mental note to blog about it. Then the note faded from my mind, only to reappear this morning along with Patricia Lowry's review.

But the city has missed the chance to right the long wrong wrought by the parking lot and honor the original vision of the plaza as the formal, symmetrical entrance to Schenley Park. There was, in Sasaki's first iteration of this asymmetrical design, some tribute paid to Beaux Art ideals: The pedestrian path was on axis with its terminal view of the Mary Schenley fountain. But soon the tent was introduced, interrupting that vista and becoming the focal point of the path and the plaza.

The original design was a link from the City Beautiful movement through Paris and Versailles to ancient Rome. Oakland was where the City Beautiful movement came to roost in Pittsburgh, and here was a chance to strengthen ties to the long tradition of Western design in the civic and cultural heart of our city. We chose not to do that.

Maybe it wasn't possible to do that and accommodate all the program called for. The classical ideals of the City Beautiful movement were always a difficult overlay on Pittsburgh's hilly terrain, with its limited flatlands. And formalism may seem a foreign dialect, and a dead language to some, in these casual times. The plaza and its tent, which provides shelter, shade and social space, certainly are honest expressions of today's values.

In aesthetic terms, you can't disagree. Functionally, though, I think that you have to credit the design. The new place is pretty welcoming, and Pittsburgh can use all of the welcoming public spaces that it can get. To visitors to Oakland, especially first-time visitors, the plaza is impressive, particularly as it effortlessly extends the grass that surrounds the Cathedral of Learning. Schenley Plaza doesn't belong to Pitt, but it symbolizes and manifests the idea that Pitt has a real campus. That has to be a good thing both for the university and for the city.

Kudos to the P-G, by the way, for continuing to showcase the writing of an architecture critic!

Business Arts Networking

I received a mass email invitation to a "Business Arts Networking Party" downtown, next Tuesday evening at Bossa Nova. Check out http://www.myspace.com/pypbanp for details.

Does the fact that the event site is up on MySpace send a message? Did invitations go out through LinkedIn as well?

Pittsburgh's Soap Opera

The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat is searching for a title for the soap suds now sloshing around Grant Street.

Do I dare suggest it?

Why not?

"Tales of the City."

(Someone should write a book about this.)

Plus ca change: Mt. Lebanon community board not going to remedy effects of township's racist history

From this morning's Post-Gazette South section:

"For decades, it was an unwritten rule that many minorities, including African Americans and Jews, could not buy houses in certain neighborhoods, according to Ruth Reidbord, one of the first community relations board members in Mt. Lebanon. Even real estate brokers said that, if they showed homes to minorities, they were threatened, said Elaine Wittlin, who believes she was one of the first to ignore such threats."

"So, in 1966, town convened a Community Relations Board to promote a feeling of openness.

'Community groups and residents can work together to reduce the barriers that sometimes separate population groups,' Mt. Lebanon Manager Stephen Feller said.

Has it worked?"

No.

Today,

"[i]n the municipality of 33,017 people, 31,766 are listed as Caucasians, 202 as black, 767 as Asians and 263 people are of Hispanic or Latino background, according to the 2000 census."

Check my math, but I think that means that fewer than 1% of the town's population is African-American. Just over 2% is Asian, and it looks like that figure includes both south Asian and east Asian populations. The Hispanic/Latino figure is consistent with Pittsburgh's small overall Hispanic/Latino population, but its size relative to the African-American community is striking.

"[A]at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the municipal building, 710 Washington Road, at a forum titled "Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been?" Five people will address quality of life issues for mixed-race families, people with disabilities, lesbians and gays, teens and people who practice less common religions."

Still to be appointed: A community-based board of people charged with reaching out to members of under-represented communities who don't live in Mt. Lebanon, but whose addition to the community would make it a more accepting and much more truly diverse place.

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06285/729149-55.stm

And more relevant background, also from the Post-Gazette:

Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_south/20010221sali3.asp

[Cross-posted at Blog-Lebo]

Silver Lining at Pitt

Cori Shropshire reported this morning that the number of tech startups spawned at Pitt last year dropped -- a lot.

There's a silver lining here. Marc Malandro, head of Pitt's Office of Technology Management (OTM), understands a big part of the problem, and understanding the problem correctly is step one on the way to solutions:

Finding qualified managers and capital to spin technology into the marketplace continues to be a challenge, he said, particularly with bio- and health-related research.

"Since universities can't start companies they need qualified management -- our challenge is finding qualified people outside to run these companies," Dr. Malandro said. "When you do find them -- the company takes off."

"The company takes off" part isn't always that easy, but he's clearly right that finding good management, especially finding good management locally, is a big barrier to successful commercialization of academic research. Pitt and CMU (and Duquesne and other local universities) have all the rocket scientists they need. They could use a large stable of entrepreneurially-minded Chief Financial Officers.

Pittsburgh Restaurant Update

In the Comments to this post on Pittsburgh Restaurants, Steve finally asked the right question: Where did we end up going?

The answer is Casbah, because it's convenient to Oakland, it can handle large groups (we ended up with a group of 13 people), because it has a decent wine list, because the service (in my experience) has been attentive but not rushed, and because I like the food. We weren't disappointed. A dozen of my colleagues flew or drove back to other parts of the country impressed with a very nice restaurant. And puzzled by the fact that on a pleasant Saturday night, it was so easy to show up at a quality restaurant with 13 people for a 10-person reservation and find plenty of space to add an extra table to accommodate us.

The weeklong blog-based investigation of the Pittsburgh restaurant scene taught me a few things:

One, Zagat or no, there are a lot of very good restaurants here. Pittsburgh has come a long way on this score over the last decade.

Two, too many of the very good restaurants are BYOB. I don't mind taking my own wine if I'm going out with a small, local group. For a large group, including lots of people from out of town, forget it. I assume that PA's medieval liquor laws are a big reason behind this.

Pens Not Worth a BlackBerry

Just so that hockey fans have a sense of what the local team is worth to its new owner:

Jim Balsillie is paying about $175 million to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Last March, Balisllie's company, Research in Motion, paid over $600 million to settle a patent infringement lawsuit that threatened to disrupt service to users of the BlackBerry.

The Penguins have a grand history and some great young players. At $175 million, they may be a bargain. But Jim Balsillie is the toast of Waterloo, and there shouldn't be any doubt about where the man's priorities lie.

Will Success Spoil the Carbolic Smoke Blog?

Will Judge Rufus Peckham let it go to his head? First the New York Times, then the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and now one of the world's great newspapers has anointed the CSB the most mediagenic voice of the Pittsburgh blogosphere.