No more posts. This is it. I'm not Mr. Rogers, or Carol Burnett, or Douglas Adams; no clever farewells here. Since I announced that Pittsblog would be shutting down, I've received several invitations to guest blog from time to time at other blogs around Pittsburgh, and I may accept some of those. (Is that a threat or a promise? You decide.) It's not the topic or the audience that I need to leave behind; it's the time that I invest in blogging that I need to recapture. I may appear here and there in the future, but not all on my own. One person even suggested that "Pittsblog" is a brand that means something. I'm not so sure about that, but I appreciate the thought. This blog will stay up, of course, as long as Google permits.
In general, I appreciate everyone who's read the blog over the years, whether from time to time or regularly, and I especially appreciate those who took the time to comment. I know well that lots of people didn't agree with me (even earlier today!). Thanks to everyone, including the last group, for taking the time to pay attention -- even briefly. Writing and corresponding here has been a lot of fun for me, and I've learned a lot (whether or not you can tell!). You can still find me in the blogosphere at Blog Lebo (our little microcosm of Pittsburgh -- really -- down in Mt. Lebanon), and at my law-and-technology-and-other-interesting-things blog, co-authored with a bunch of fellow law professors, at madisonian.net. Around Pittsburgh, my proto-entrepreneurial interests will get expressed through a new program in entrepreneurship that we're working on at the law school at Pitt. Look for more early next year.
With that, I'll sign off. Here's a Joe Grushecky video that I like. It has nothing particularly to do with me, but it's a lot of fun. And it seems to capture a spirit that a lot of people think of when they think about the best of Pittsburgh. I really do like this place.
Showing posts with label 42. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 42. Show all posts
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Final Pittsblog Wrap Up Post
Can Pittsburgh dig out of the narrative hole that it's dug for itself? My last post was melancholy, to say the least. But I want to close out the blog on an upbeat note. There are good things happening in Pittsburgh. There is reason to believe that more good things are yet to come. (Still, read this piece on equilibrium-based economics from yesterday's New York Times. Everyone should.) I want to call out some of them, focusing on economic development and the tech sector in particular.
I've written before that I've convinced myself that Pittsburghers themselves aren't capable of turning the region around. Finding better, smarter, harder-working, and more innovative souls among the million-plus who call themselves "Pittsburghers" simply won't do it. Whatever the solutions might be, they are structural, not personal or individual, and they require insight and input from people and firms who know how the world works outside of Southwestern PA, who in most cases have lived in that world, and who are willing to suffer the burdens of bringing knowledge from the outside to what ails the Burgh. And there are burdens: Local resistance to outsiders and outside knowledge is deeply-rooted. The inverse of the Pittsburgh Diaspora that I'd like to promote today is the Scots-Irish-Welsh diaspora that settled much of Appalachia, including Pittsburgh, and the populist descendants of those groups still influence cultural things in the region today.
Here, then, is a non-exclusive list of local institutions, groups, firms, structures, and innovations that have impressed me over the last four years and that I think stand a good chance of impressing in the future, though in different ways. This is a non-exclusive list! By naming names, I'm breaking a Pittsburgh rule of sorts: Don't needlessly run the risk of omitting someone who be offended simply by being excluded. (The best example of this rule has always been Henry Hillman's decision to invest his millions in a venture capital firm -- in the Silicon Valley, not in Pittsburgh. Kleiner Perkins. You might have heard of it. Fabulously successful, fabulously rich.) I haven't done a comprehensive study of this, but having met most of the people involved in these initiatives, it's my distinct impression that many if not most of them were raised outside of Pittsburgh, spent a significant part of their professional careers outside of Pittsburgh, or both.
Innovation Works. Head and shoulders above every other economic development shop in Pittsburgh.
Alpha Lab. An IW spin-off of sorts. (Entrepreneurs getting entrepreneurial -- that's a good thing.) Among other things, AL now offers something that Pittsburgh has long needed: a place for entrepreneurs to get together informally and hang out with one another.
Project Olympus. Both Pitt and CMU have technology transfer offices (TTOs, in the jargon of the trade), and both offices have gradually gotten stronger and more competent over the decade that I've lived in Pittsburgh. But research faculty who want to play in the entrepreneurial space are still frequently stymied by university bureaucracies (of course, research faculty aren't alone in that!). Lenore Blum at CMU is putting her students in the same room as investors. The next "show and tell" is Oct. 22.
Pittsburgh Technology Council and the TECHburger blog. After years of running around in unhelpful circles, the PTC is a player again in the Pittsburgh tech community around Pittsburgh. The energy coming out of its Hazelwood HQ is palpable. Regis McKenna, Pittsburgh native and once a Kleiner Perkins partner (hmmm!), is speaking at the Tech50 bash on Oct. 16.
Donald Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at CMU's Tepper School of Business. A great collection of entrepreneurs teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Enterprise Forum Pittsburgh (formerly the MIT Enterprise Forum). I was delighted when these folks dropped "MIT" from the name; the mission is clearer and broader. On Oct. 24, they welcome MIT president Susan Hockfield, who is a spectacular catch for MIT and for the Forum. Go!
Entertainment Technology Center at CMU. For all the talk about life sciences research in Pittsburgh, the ETC is quietly making a big impact on the computing world.
Vivisimo. Entrepreneurship done right. It's a mystery to me why this firm isn't celebrated from one end of Allegheny County to the other.
Ed Engler and Pittsburgh Equity Partners. Pittsburgh isn't a big enough market to support a huge range of venture-level investments, and I'm regularly told that the angel investors here get cold feet if they lose money in a single deal. As I understand it, PEP is trying to make a market in between those tiers. If it can raise money, and the current market may make that difficult, then it could do a lot of interesting things here.
The CityLIVE! series produced by No Wall. Keep prodding and provoking the power elite. Pittsburgh needs to recognize and respect thought leaders.
Finally, blogs that seriously address economic issues around the region are few and far between, but there are some good ones. What I read and recommend:
Pittsburgh Ventures blog by Alan Veeck and Matt Harbaugh.
Harold Miller at Pittsburgh's Future.
Chris Briem at NullSpace.
and
Jim Russsell at Burgh Diaspora.
This is the final wrap up post, but I'll have one more so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish / I'm-so-glad-we-had-this-time-together / It's-such-a-good-feeling post in the future.
I've written before that I've convinced myself that Pittsburghers themselves aren't capable of turning the region around. Finding better, smarter, harder-working, and more innovative souls among the million-plus who call themselves "Pittsburghers" simply won't do it. Whatever the solutions might be, they are structural, not personal or individual, and they require insight and input from people and firms who know how the world works outside of Southwestern PA, who in most cases have lived in that world, and who are willing to suffer the burdens of bringing knowledge from the outside to what ails the Burgh. And there are burdens: Local resistance to outsiders and outside knowledge is deeply-rooted. The inverse of the Pittsburgh Diaspora that I'd like to promote today is the Scots-Irish-Welsh diaspora that settled much of Appalachia, including Pittsburgh, and the populist descendants of those groups still influence cultural things in the region today.
Here, then, is a non-exclusive list of local institutions, groups, firms, structures, and innovations that have impressed me over the last four years and that I think stand a good chance of impressing in the future, though in different ways. This is a non-exclusive list! By naming names, I'm breaking a Pittsburgh rule of sorts: Don't needlessly run the risk of omitting someone who be offended simply by being excluded. (The best example of this rule has always been Henry Hillman's decision to invest his millions in a venture capital firm -- in the Silicon Valley, not in Pittsburgh. Kleiner Perkins. You might have heard of it. Fabulously successful, fabulously rich.) I haven't done a comprehensive study of this, but having met most of the people involved in these initiatives, it's my distinct impression that many if not most of them were raised outside of Pittsburgh, spent a significant part of their professional careers outside of Pittsburgh, or both.
Innovation Works. Head and shoulders above every other economic development shop in Pittsburgh.
Alpha Lab. An IW spin-off of sorts. (Entrepreneurs getting entrepreneurial -- that's a good thing.) Among other things, AL now offers something that Pittsburgh has long needed: a place for entrepreneurs to get together informally and hang out with one another.
Project Olympus. Both Pitt and CMU have technology transfer offices (TTOs, in the jargon of the trade), and both offices have gradually gotten stronger and more competent over the decade that I've lived in Pittsburgh. But research faculty who want to play in the entrepreneurial space are still frequently stymied by university bureaucracies (of course, research faculty aren't alone in that!). Lenore Blum at CMU is putting her students in the same room as investors. The next "show and tell" is Oct. 22.
Pittsburgh Technology Council and the TECHburger blog. After years of running around in unhelpful circles, the PTC is a player again in the Pittsburgh tech community around Pittsburgh. The energy coming out of its Hazelwood HQ is palpable. Regis McKenna, Pittsburgh native and once a Kleiner Perkins partner (hmmm!), is speaking at the Tech50 bash on Oct. 16.
Donald Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at CMU's Tepper School of Business. A great collection of entrepreneurs teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Enterprise Forum Pittsburgh (formerly the MIT Enterprise Forum). I was delighted when these folks dropped "MIT" from the name; the mission is clearer and broader. On Oct. 24, they welcome MIT president Susan Hockfield, who is a spectacular catch for MIT and for the Forum. Go!
Entertainment Technology Center at CMU. For all the talk about life sciences research in Pittsburgh, the ETC is quietly making a big impact on the computing world.
Vivisimo. Entrepreneurship done right. It's a mystery to me why this firm isn't celebrated from one end of Allegheny County to the other.
Ed Engler and Pittsburgh Equity Partners. Pittsburgh isn't a big enough market to support a huge range of venture-level investments, and I'm regularly told that the angel investors here get cold feet if they lose money in a single deal. As I understand it, PEP is trying to make a market in between those tiers. If it can raise money, and the current market may make that difficult, then it could do a lot of interesting things here.
The CityLIVE! series produced by No Wall. Keep prodding and provoking the power elite. Pittsburgh needs to recognize and respect thought leaders.
Finally, blogs that seriously address economic issues around the region are few and far between, but there are some good ones. What I read and recommend:
Pittsburgh Ventures blog by Alan Veeck and Matt Harbaugh.
Harold Miller at Pittsburgh's Future.
Chris Briem at NullSpace.
and
Jim Russsell at Burgh Diaspora.
This is the final wrap up post, but I'll have one more so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish / I'm-so-glad-we-had-this-time-together / It's-such-a-good-feeling post in the future.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Pittsblog Wind Down Wrap Up Post #3: Back to Pittsburgh's Future?
It's Pittsburgh valedictory time, in the blogosphere and elsewhere. In this still-not-quite-the-final-end-yet Pittsblog post, I want to tie together some narrative themes.
I start with the premise that Pittsburgh is an insanely nostalgic place. Most fading Rust Belt cities wallow in their fair share of nostalgia; perhaps all do. I've long wondered whether Pittsburgh's nostalgia industry is more powerful than its Cleveland and Milwaukee cousins, that it might be so insidious, so pervasive, and in the end so corrosive that it's a nearly absolute bar to meaningful economic, political, or social progress. The names sometimes change, but the underlying stories never do. Pittsburgh may well be way, way too caught up in validating its own history -- and I'll include individuals and institutions alike in this claim -- to see its way to writing its future.
A month or so ago, in an email conversation with a new acquaintance here, I talked about the stories that the new Pittsburgh might tell. Here's an abbreviated version of my end of the exchange:
There are other narrative possibilities, of course, but the culture of Pittsburgh, when it looks inward, is generally defensive and backward-looking, rather than open to the new -- new ideas, new people, new anything. "Critical engagement" is hardly a Pittsburgh watchword (or a pithy Pittsburgh phrase, which would be better, syntactically speaking). Instead of "Back to Pittsburgh's Future," we have "Building a Better Past." I borrowed that last phrase from a Pittsburgh expat that I met recently, who left years to ago to find a career in San Francisco and who now lives in Connecticut. To him, Pittsburgh is warm and fuzzy memories, but it's basically cooked.
I'm hardly the first person to point this out, but it's been a consistent theme of this blog since I started posting early 2004. Trying to turn lemons into lemonade, colleagues and I concocted the idea of the Pittsburgh Diaspora as a social movement and posted the ambitious but little noticed Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh. Has the needle moved, even just a little? Bill Toland has picked up the theme, and a few in Pittsburgh's tech communities (more on those in a future Wrap Up post) but elsewhere, I have my doubts. Consider today's valedictories in the Post-Gazette:
Valedictory #1: Chad Hermann, late of Teacher.Wordsmith.Madman, posts a blistering explanation of his abrupt departure from the blogosphere:
I had my share of vituperative rose-goggled critics (search the blog's archives for the keyword "yinz"), but nothing ever rose to the level that Chad experienced. For more on this theme as it relates to the blogosphere in particular, see Saturday's post by the Hon. Peckham, J., at the Pittsburgh Men's Blogging Society. And don't miss the Comments there.
Valedictory #2: Barry Balmat, who founded and ran the RAND Corporation's outpost in Oakland, is returning to California. Comments that I noticed:
Right on the merits, disappointing on the tactics. Note that Barry Balmat (who I've never met) is leaving Pittsburgh, never to return -- and he's still not willing to name names. Who's in the way, Barry? I hear things, I hear names -- but I'm just a guy with a keyboard. (Cf. Hermann, Chad, supra.)
Valedictory #3: The most poignant and tragic valedictory of them all, Michelle Massie's "Loving/hating Pittsburgh: It's not easy being black in my hometown," by a native who is in many ways more comfortable living a healthy distance away:
This echoes a Pittsblog post from 18 months ago on the different Pittsburghs out there, what I called First World Pittsburgh (the Allegheny Conference, the SEEN section, the corporate and emerging high tech communities); Second World Pittsburgh (our working class forbears, Steel Valley communities); and Third World Pittsburgh (communities, largely but not exclusively black, cursed by structural poverty and crime).
What do I make of all this? When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1998, I had lunch with a colleague (since departed for other pastures himself) and talked about what might be labeled the "Rocco Mediate Rule": Pittsburgh's obsession with its place in the world, and especially with its former place in the world, and its hypersensivity to reasoned criticism (again, cf. Hermann, Chad, supra). He and I agreed that the Rule could be compared to what I had once observed about San Jose, California, which passes as the largest urban center in the Silicon Valley (which is not to say that it is the heart or the HQ of the Silicon Valley), which in the 1970s and 1980s was home to the San Jose Mercury, and the San Jose News (two newspapers then, one newspaper now). Back in those days, the San Jose newspapers of record behaved like Pittsburghers today often do: They lashed out at the real and imagined enemies of what had once been great and good about San Jose and what they believed was still great and good. To those who know San Jose's history, you might justifiably wonder just what that was, exactly. The answers were the small town bankers and businesses that built San Jose into the center of a vast agricultural economy, into which some techno-upstarts -- HP, IBM, Xerox, Ford, Westinghouse (Pittsburgh is everywhere!), Lockheed, and this thing called Fairchild -- had in recent years injected themselves.
Today, Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley. San Jose is a part of it but by no means the hub. Agriculture has been mostly but not entirely extinguished in the Valley. (Think steel in Pittsburgh.) And the San Jose Mercury News is a real newspaper, at least most of the time, not an apologist for the ancien regime. What happened? Newcomers. The Valley is overrun by them, and it has been for several decades now. The new is welcome. Ideas, and money, and people. The past is respected but not venerated. On the whole, and with some interesting and important exceptions, ancient tribal affinities (that is, neighborhoods and towns, not just ethnic, national, and religious identities) are not. In many ways, Southwestern PA should not want to emulate that part of the United States, but in some crucial respects -- this willingness to accept novelty and to put the past in perspective -- I wish that it would. Back to Pittsburgh's Future. Coming anytime soon?
I start with the premise that Pittsburgh is an insanely nostalgic place. Most fading Rust Belt cities wallow in their fair share of nostalgia; perhaps all do. I've long wondered whether Pittsburgh's nostalgia industry is more powerful than its Cleveland and Milwaukee cousins, that it might be so insidious, so pervasive, and in the end so corrosive that it's a nearly absolute bar to meaningful economic, political, or social progress. The names sometimes change, but the underlying stories never do. Pittsburgh may well be way, way too caught up in validating its own history -- and I'll include individuals and institutions alike in this claim -- to see its way to writing its future.
A month or so ago, in an email conversation with a new acquaintance here, I talked about the stories that the new Pittsburgh might tell. Here's an abbreviated version of my end of the exchange:
I've come to believe that letting go of the past isn't the right narrative [for Pittsburgh]. The narrative should be to let the past influence the future, but in different ways.
One possibility is to change the narrative of the past ("Back to Pittsburgh's Future"). We've seen a little of this with stories that re-invent Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse as proto-modern entrepreneurs, but I think that those stories aren't credible. "Pittsburgh was first in innovation before and it can be first in innovation again" ... is another "Back to the Future" narrative; again, I think that it doesn't quite work, largely because being first to invent something doesn't count for as much as people think. First to build a market around something that someone else invents (often, elsewhere) is much more important.
A second possibility, not entirely inconsistent with the first, is to essentialize the narrative of the past so that it evolves seamlessly into the future ("Citizen Carnegie," a la Citizen Kane, whose life turned out to be a search for the lost innocence of youth, or ... Star Wars/ Wizard of Oz: you have to discover the power of change in yourselves ..., and that's the power of "home"). ... Pittsburgh's modern life sciences sector builds directly on Jonas Salk's program to develop a polio vaccine. ... [There is a powerful] narrative of scientific enterprise that Salk's research created at Pitt, and that largely remained behind even after he left. ... Pitt may have been stupid to left Salk leave, but it was brilliant to let Salk's research out into the world, where it could do the most good. The current "patent everything" climate is crushing a lot of potentially useful academic research, at Pitt and elsewhere.
There are other narrative possibilities, of course, but the culture of Pittsburgh, when it looks inward, is generally defensive and backward-looking, rather than open to the new -- new ideas, new people, new anything. "Critical engagement" is hardly a Pittsburgh watchword (or a pithy Pittsburgh phrase, which would be better, syntactically speaking). Instead of "Back to Pittsburgh's Future," we have "Building a Better Past." I borrowed that last phrase from a Pittsburgh expat that I met recently, who left years to ago to find a career in San Francisco and who now lives in Connecticut. To him, Pittsburgh is warm and fuzzy memories, but it's basically cooked.
I'm hardly the first person to point this out, but it's been a consistent theme of this blog since I started posting early 2004. Trying to turn lemons into lemonade, colleagues and I concocted the idea of the Pittsburgh Diaspora as a social movement and posted the ambitious but little noticed Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh. Has the needle moved, even just a little? Bill Toland has picked up the theme, and a few in Pittsburgh's tech communities (more on those in a future Wrap Up post) but elsewhere, I have my doubts. Consider today's valedictories in the Post-Gazette:
Valedictory #1: Chad Hermann, late of Teacher.Wordsmith.Madman, posts a blistering explanation of his abrupt departure from the blogosphere:
I expected people to disagree with me and, when those disagreements came in the form of impassioned, respectful e-mail exchanges, always appreciated that they did. But as those responses gradually gave way to bunkered assaults, as my posts began to fuel not thought or reflection but the very sick, sad opposite of them, it became clear that the reach of my efforts had exceeded the grasp of readers willing and able to engage them. As my reputation grew, the caliber of my audience precipitously declined. And much of what I'd hoped to achieve with TWM no longer seemed possible.
I had my share of vituperative rose-goggled critics (search the blog's archives for the keyword "yinz"), but nothing ever rose to the level that Chad experienced. For more on this theme as it relates to the blogosphere in particular, see Saturday's post by the Hon. Peckham, J., at the Pittsburgh Men's Blogging Society. And don't miss the Comments there.
Valedictory #2: Barry Balmat, who founded and ran the RAND Corporation's outpost in Oakland, is returning to California. Comments that I noticed:
When you experience Pittsburgh versus a place like Silicon Valley, [Pittsburgh] people hold their cards close to the vest. They're not quick to say, "Let's partner and do this together." ...
People in the region should appreciate the change that has taken place and the progress the region and the city have made. It needs to continue to be open to change.
There are a number of key people in town who are bringing change and I think the population needs to be supportive of that. One is [Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent] Mark Roosevelt. It's not just outsiders like him. There are other people who have been here for a long time and have been working to change the area like one of our trustees, [PNC Financial Services Group Chairman ] Jim Rohr. I don't want to get into naming names because I don't know everybody in town. There's a mix of people who have been here for quite a while as well as some fresh blood.
Right on the merits, disappointing on the tactics. Note that Barry Balmat (who I've never met) is leaving Pittsburgh, never to return -- and he's still not willing to name names. Who's in the way, Barry? I hear things, I hear names -- but I'm just a guy with a keyboard. (Cf. Hermann, Chad, supra.)
Valedictory #3: The most poignant and tragic valedictory of them all, Michelle Massie's "Loving/hating Pittsburgh: It's not easy being black in my hometown," by a native who is in many ways more comfortable living a healthy distance away:
While Pittsburgh is being rebuilt as a technology hub and health-care mega-center brimming with jobs and opportunities, I can't help but wonder if that insightful gentleman from the bar might be a hiring manager charged with deciding a jobseeker's fate.Pittsburgh's social disgraces have existed since its founding 250 years ago. It's so ingrained in the psyche that most people don't realize it when they say or do something offensive.
Like a neglected child, I want to love Pittsburgh and I want it to love me. In fact, I think I love the city more than some self-proclaimed die-hard Pittsburghers because I am willing to recognize its flaws and challenge others, as well as myself, to do something to fix them.
I'm not going to pretend everything is fabulous when black neighborhoods remain blighted until developers feel they are ripe for gentrification or when the social and economic conditions of blacks remain unchanged or have worsened over the past 30 years. The only time we genuinely come together as a city is to rally around the Steelers; then we return to our segregated neighborhoods.
This echoes a Pittsblog post from 18 months ago on the different Pittsburghs out there, what I called First World Pittsburgh (the Allegheny Conference, the SEEN section, the corporate and emerging high tech communities); Second World Pittsburgh (our working class forbears, Steel Valley communities); and Third World Pittsburgh (communities, largely but not exclusively black, cursed by structural poverty and crime).
What do I make of all this? When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1998, I had lunch with a colleague (since departed for other pastures himself) and talked about what might be labeled the "Rocco Mediate Rule": Pittsburgh's obsession with its place in the world, and especially with its former place in the world, and its hypersensivity to reasoned criticism (again, cf. Hermann, Chad, supra). He and I agreed that the Rule could be compared to what I had once observed about San Jose, California, which passes as the largest urban center in the Silicon Valley (which is not to say that it is the heart or the HQ of the Silicon Valley), which in the 1970s and 1980s was home to the San Jose Mercury, and the San Jose News (two newspapers then, one newspaper now). Back in those days, the San Jose newspapers of record behaved like Pittsburghers today often do: They lashed out at the real and imagined enemies of what had once been great and good about San Jose and what they believed was still great and good. To those who know San Jose's history, you might justifiably wonder just what that was, exactly. The answers were the small town bankers and businesses that built San Jose into the center of a vast agricultural economy, into which some techno-upstarts -- HP, IBM, Xerox, Ford, Westinghouse (Pittsburgh is everywhere!), Lockheed, and this thing called Fairchild -- had in recent years injected themselves.
Today, Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley. San Jose is a part of it but by no means the hub. Agriculture has been mostly but not entirely extinguished in the Valley. (Think steel in Pittsburgh.) And the San Jose Mercury News is a real newspaper, at least most of the time, not an apologist for the ancien regime. What happened? Newcomers. The Valley is overrun by them, and it has been for several decades now. The new is welcome. Ideas, and money, and people. The past is respected but not venerated. On the whole, and with some interesting and important exceptions, ancient tribal affinities (that is, neighborhoods and towns, not just ethnic, national, and religious identities) are not. In many ways, Southwestern PA should not want to emulate that part of the United States, but in some crucial respects -- this willingness to accept novelty and to put the past in perspective -- I wish that it would. Back to Pittsburgh's Future. Coming anytime soon?
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Pittsblog Wind Down Wrap Up Post #2: One Web Day
Monday, Sept. 22 has come and gone, and that means that I just missed an opportunity to wish everyone a Happy One Web Day! A short time back, I asked whether Pittsburghers were planning any One Web Day celebrations, and I heard zip (or was that diddly, or even squat?). Guess we're not quite as techno-hip as we think, or the techno-hip stopped reading Pittsblog even before I decided to wrap things up.
Anyway, for the remaining Pittsblog faithful and the possibly techno-hip of the Burgh, Sept. 22 was indeed One Web Day, invented by my friend and law professor colleague Susan Crawford. To interpret it and to inspire (and give pause) I give you the remarks of my law professor colleague Larry Lessig:
I copied that from Lessig's blog, and I copied it partly because I share his mix of dread and hope, because I think that the mix applies to us, right here in River City, and also in the hope that some of you will remember that Lessig will be here in Pittsburgh this coming Thursday. Public lecture -- open to all -- free -- no RSVP required; just show up -- at Pitt's Law School, Forbes & Bouquet in Oakland -- that's across Forbes from the O -- 3 p.m. sharp. I'll look for you there.
Anyway, for the remaining Pittsblog faithful and the possibly techno-hip of the Burgh, Sept. 22 was indeed One Web Day, invented by my friend and law professor colleague Susan Crawford. To interpret it and to inspire (and give pause) I give you the remarks of my law professor colleague Larry Lessig:
There is an endless list of technologies with us today that forty years ago only science fiction writers, and professors at MIT, could have imagined imagined. But on that list, there’s only one that we could imagine celebrating with a day. There won’t be a one iPod day, Steve’s dreams notwithstanding. Nor a one PC day, whether or not Seinfeld offers to come. Only this technology — the Web; only this community — the Web; only this dream — the Web; makes sense to celebrate in just this way.
And of course, there is much to be proud of. This technology, this community, this dream, is far more than anyone who created it ever imagined. As Holmes said of the constitution — that it “called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters” — so too could we say of the Net.
Indeed, that is precisely what we cheerleaders have said of the Net, as we have fought to defend it from changes that would corrupt its most precious feature — that it repeatedly surprises even the most gifted of its begetters. Defend it, that is, by keeping it open to change, free from the inevitable design of those who have made it to make it so the platform on which they have made it doesn’t encourage others to displace them.
But as I reflect upon where we are today — and by “we” I mean we Americans, just one part of this world — I grow increasingly impatient with celebrations. I grow tired of self-confident pride.
We are in the middle of a war, paralyzed by terror. In this city, the financial system of our nation is collapsing. Across our nation, the financial system of millions of families has already collapsed. And yet at the center of this mess is a government — the product of a democracy — which too few of us respect. A president favorably thought of by less that a third of the Nation. A Congress favorably thought of by less than 10%. The only branch enjoying majority support is the one branch not elected by the people — the Court.
We should pause to think about just what this means. There were more who supported the British Crown at the revolution than support the US Congress today. And I suspect more who had faith in our government attending to the problems that were ours at every point in America’s history, save that one point that quickly slid to a civil war.
We must change this. It is time we turn this extraordinary platform for hope, the Web, to more of the extraordinary public problems that weigh us down today. It is time we use the inspiration and power of this technology, this community, this dream, to fix what is broken in this real world. It is time the virtual gets used to fix the real. Our crisis in governance has perhaps never been as profound. And it feels almost Hollywood-esque, or Harry Potter-esque, that just at the moment when things are as dark as they could possibly be, we get handed a magical tool that could, if used well, save this day.
But the fact is things are this dark, and we have been given that tool. And we must use it to learn again how citizens govern.
There is a government we are responsible for. There are enormous problems that it has either caused, or is not curing. Let us take this technology, this community, this dream, and use it to restore democratic responsibility. And community. And a dream.
I copied that from Lessig's blog, and I copied it partly because I share his mix of dread and hope, because I think that the mix applies to us, right here in River City, and also in the hope that some of you will remember that Lessig will be here in Pittsburgh this coming Thursday. Public lecture -- open to all -- free -- no RSVP required; just show up -- at Pitt's Law School, Forbes & Bouquet in Oakland -- that's across Forbes from the O -- 3 p.m. sharp. I'll look for you there.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Pittsblog Wind Down Wrap-Up Post #1: Thoughts on the Burgh-o-sphere
Thanks to the commenters who chimed in on my "Pittsblog is going to go" post below, including those who urge me to continue blogging about or posting or highlighting things in the communities of greatest interest to me -- entrepreneurs, economic development, technology and culture. I'm not Sean Connery; I won't say never again. But the moment seems apt for taking stock on a number of fronts. Here's one: the Pittsburgh blogosphere and media ecology.
I started Pittsblog at the dawn of 2004, not quite five years ago. I surfed extensively in late 2003 to identify Pittsburgh-based and Pittsburgh-focused blogs, and I found only a handful: Copeland, Potts, Closkey, Brannen, Togyer, a few others. It's safe to say that Pittsblog was there more or less at the beginning.
Re-read that list: Copeland -- moved out of town. Brannen -- suspended the blog in mid-07. Potts -- suspended his just recently. Cindy Closkey carries on at My Brilliant Mistakes, undoubtedly because she has uncommon determination. She's also a web designer, and as Forrest Gump might have said, geekiness is as geekiness does. That's a compliment. Jason Togyer just cares too damned much to stop or do anything else. That's a compliment, too.
The rest of the Burgh-o-sphere, on the other hand, has exploded, thanks in no small part to Woycheck and Pgh Bloggers, but also thanks in part to some very, very high quality stuff. Though there are several local blogs in this category, including some that have embraced the cause of stripping politicians of their new clothes with admirable zealotry and a couple that succeed more often than I do in bringing reason to debates about local public policy, I'll shout out here only to one blog that receives and deserves nearly universal praise: the Carbolic Smoke Ball (a/k/a the Carbolic Smoke Blog). With leadership from the likes of Judge Rufus Peckham, local media have nowhere to go but up. That's a compliment, too. Really.
Coincidentally, CSB is going through a transition of its own these days, and that's as good an excuse as any to wrap some of this nostalgia into a modestly broader theme. Don't look now, Pittsburgh, but there's one media property in town that not only has a lock on a local market but is making a legitimate play for the national market, and it's not owned by the Block family and it doesn't have call letters that begin with W- or K-. "Peckham" may end up soon in the pantheon of all-time best (or at least best-known) judges, along with Wapner, and with Judy.
CSB, in other words, is Pittsburgh social media's great success story. It may be the one great current success story of Pittsburgh media across the board, social or otherwise. The Burgh-o-sphere's explosion hasn't all been to the good; there is a lot of self-indulgent bathrobe blogging out there, as there is everywhere, and sports-oriented blogs often are indistinguishable in tone and content from sports radio. Fan-dom is absolutely fine, but how many Steelers blogs does the world really need? Above all and most important, however, Pittsburgh's mainstream media are mostly unchanged by all of this -- and that's a disappointment.
Pittsblog came about for three reasons. One, as a newcomer to Pittsburgh, I was frustrated by the under-exploitation of what I believed were some extraordinary local economic resources and what I thought was incessant and needless self-pitying that I read and heard in local mainstream media. Two, there was a nearly complete absence of public analysis and commentary -- even brief, amateur commentary -- on some of the longer term challenges and opportunities confronting the region. Three, I wanted to play around with a blog and to see what would happen.
Several years later, what result?
The underexploitation and self-pitying mostly continues. Pittsburghers have an Oreo-like identity: Tough and proud when Pittsburgh takes on the outside world; chewy and marshmallow-ish when it comes to self-scrutiny. I'll post more about this later, but in connection with this post it means that the MSM here just can't bring itself to really invest in critical examination of the city's and the region's weaknesses (the ridiculous bickering in city government, the need to cater to nearly 100 municipal "neighborhoods," the bullying and posturing of the unions representing public employees, and the embarrassing perpetuation of an entitled power elite, just for starters) and strengths (a natural beauty, community culture, and cost of living that should be the envy of every region in the country, with newcomers banging on our doors to escape the expense and stress of less -- yes, I'll use the word -- livable places).
Big, theme-based public analysis and commentary is somewhat more frequent, thanks mostly to Harold Miller and Chris Briem, and beyond the blogosphere (but right next door) there is the intriguing experiment known as GLUE, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (which includes a blog), and some elements of Pittsburgh Quarterly. With my attention divided among multiple blogs (not to mention the rest of my life), I wasn't able to sustain a contribution here. (With one exception, I think: Flogging the idea of the Cupcake Class. Folks, just to be clear: that was a joke!) But Pittsburgh still needs much, much more of this.
Over at the Post-Gazette, the most interesting development on that score has been John Allison's The Next Page, which appears once a week. (Check the back of the Sunday Forum section -- but don't search the online archives. The pieces aren't collected in any sensible way. Sigh.) Otherwise, for the last several years One of America's Great Newspapers has continued to sink slowly in the (mid)West, having taken tiny, tippy-toe steps into the giant and growing pond that is social media. If the Post-Gazette serves no other purpose, it should serve as the paper of record chronicling, dissecting, and ultimately analyzing the machinations of the pooh-bahs that run the city and county, some of whom hold elected office and some of whom work for our local governments. Often, however, the most interesting political commentary in town these days, and even some of its most provocative investigation, is online, not in print, and I don't mean the alleged PG blogs. Quick: Go to the Post-Gazette's homepage and find a blog. I dare you. "Pittsburgh Mom" counts only technically; blog it may be, but there's no conceivable definition of journalism that embraces PM. The gang at the City Paper has more of this figured out, and the folks behind Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine -- like CP, a publication with a different model from the get-go -- are experimenting in interesting and potentially productive ways. But the fragmented Pittsburgh media landscape of 2008 largely resembles the fragmented Pittsburgh media landscape of 2003/2004, even if some fragments have come and gone and others have moved around. The region doesn't need consolidation and integration on this media environment score so much as it needs a better sense that there is a there there. That takes resources and leadership. Right now, it's more of the same. Bueller? Bueller?
As to seeing what blogging wrought, mostly it wrought one very unexpected but very welcome and ultimately (hopefully) durable benefit: Rather than extending my voice into virtual corners of Pittsburgh, I met people. I met lots of people. In person and face-to-face. Many of them are (or were) bloggers in their own right; many of them were simply interested in what I had written and wanted to engage, though not just in a comment to a post. More than a few of them work for recognized media properties. The real benefits of blogging to me required and still require that I persist in not being anonymous or pseudonymous (in general, and with rare exceptions, I think that anonymity and pseudonymity are corrosive of civil society -- but that's a topic for another day), because the real benefits aren't virtual. They are social.
At the end of the day, and to cap off my point about the Burgh-o-sphere and the media environment, that sociability has been one of the great strengths of the online group (thanks to the organizers of the Pittsburgh Blogfests; sorry I haven't been able to come to most of them!) and one of the major weaknesses of the local media environment in general. Professional journalists, when confronted with this new world, sometimes forget that the whole point of the information professions is to connect with people. Real journalists, folks who've been writing and reporting for a full career, know this. I grew up surrounded by people like that. Successful bloggers, too, have to get this. CSB gets it (the Judge is among the folks that I've met). But too many folks think that it's just about the information, or the advertising, or the market share, or self-promotion, or the site visits and traffic, comments, and links. They forget that it's about the relationships.
To illustrate and conclude:
Last night, I was driving home with a local reporter who thinks that way, and as we came off the Parkway and started to head up Banksville Road, we came upon a Pittsburgh Police cruiser blocking the highway. Flashing lights ways up the road made it clear that something uncommon was going on. My passenger stuck his head out the window and called to the officer manning the cruiser: I'm a reporter with XYZ [a proposition that could have been verified in an instant]. Can you tell me what's going on?
The officer looked over, with an expression that can fairly be described as contempt. "No," he declared. Then he turned away. Follow-up requests to acknowledge the question were ignored. (I've never had much to do with the Pittsburgh Police Department, fortunately. This episode did not impress.) We drove on.
I started Pittsblog at the dawn of 2004, not quite five years ago. I surfed extensively in late 2003 to identify Pittsburgh-based and Pittsburgh-focused blogs, and I found only a handful: Copeland, Potts, Closkey, Brannen, Togyer, a few others. It's safe to say that Pittsblog was there more or less at the beginning.
Re-read that list: Copeland -- moved out of town. Brannen -- suspended the blog in mid-07. Potts -- suspended his just recently. Cindy Closkey carries on at My Brilliant Mistakes, undoubtedly because she has uncommon determination. She's also a web designer, and as Forrest Gump might have said, geekiness is as geekiness does. That's a compliment. Jason Togyer just cares too damned much to stop or do anything else. That's a compliment, too.
The rest of the Burgh-o-sphere, on the other hand, has exploded, thanks in no small part to Woycheck and Pgh Bloggers, but also thanks in part to some very, very high quality stuff. Though there are several local blogs in this category, including some that have embraced the cause of stripping politicians of their new clothes with admirable zealotry and a couple that succeed more often than I do in bringing reason to debates about local public policy, I'll shout out here only to one blog that receives and deserves nearly universal praise: the Carbolic Smoke Ball (a/k/a the Carbolic Smoke Blog). With leadership from the likes of Judge Rufus Peckham, local media have nowhere to go but up. That's a compliment, too. Really.
Coincidentally, CSB is going through a transition of its own these days, and that's as good an excuse as any to wrap some of this nostalgia into a modestly broader theme. Don't look now, Pittsburgh, but there's one media property in town that not only has a lock on a local market but is making a legitimate play for the national market, and it's not owned by the Block family and it doesn't have call letters that begin with W- or K-. "Peckham" may end up soon in the pantheon of all-time best (or at least best-known) judges, along with Wapner, and with Judy.
CSB, in other words, is Pittsburgh social media's great success story. It may be the one great current success story of Pittsburgh media across the board, social or otherwise. The Burgh-o-sphere's explosion hasn't all been to the good; there is a lot of self-indulgent bathrobe blogging out there, as there is everywhere, and sports-oriented blogs often are indistinguishable in tone and content from sports radio. Fan-dom is absolutely fine, but how many Steelers blogs does the world really need? Above all and most important, however, Pittsburgh's mainstream media are mostly unchanged by all of this -- and that's a disappointment.
Pittsblog came about for three reasons. One, as a newcomer to Pittsburgh, I was frustrated by the under-exploitation of what I believed were some extraordinary local economic resources and what I thought was incessant and needless self-pitying that I read and heard in local mainstream media. Two, there was a nearly complete absence of public analysis and commentary -- even brief, amateur commentary -- on some of the longer term challenges and opportunities confronting the region. Three, I wanted to play around with a blog and to see what would happen.
Several years later, what result?
The underexploitation and self-pitying mostly continues. Pittsburghers have an Oreo-like identity: Tough and proud when Pittsburgh takes on the outside world; chewy and marshmallow-ish when it comes to self-scrutiny. I'll post more about this later, but in connection with this post it means that the MSM here just can't bring itself to really invest in critical examination of the city's and the region's weaknesses (the ridiculous bickering in city government, the need to cater to nearly 100 municipal "neighborhoods," the bullying and posturing of the unions representing public employees, and the embarrassing perpetuation of an entitled power elite, just for starters) and strengths (a natural beauty, community culture, and cost of living that should be the envy of every region in the country, with newcomers banging on our doors to escape the expense and stress of less -- yes, I'll use the word -- livable places).
Big, theme-based public analysis and commentary is somewhat more frequent, thanks mostly to Harold Miller and Chris Briem, and beyond the blogosphere (but right next door) there is the intriguing experiment known as GLUE, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (which includes a blog), and some elements of Pittsburgh Quarterly. With my attention divided among multiple blogs (not to mention the rest of my life), I wasn't able to sustain a contribution here. (With one exception, I think: Flogging the idea of the Cupcake Class. Folks, just to be clear: that was a joke!) But Pittsburgh still needs much, much more of this.
Over at the Post-Gazette, the most interesting development on that score has been John Allison's The Next Page, which appears once a week. (Check the back of the Sunday Forum section -- but don't search the online archives. The pieces aren't collected in any sensible way. Sigh.) Otherwise, for the last several years One of America's Great Newspapers has continued to sink slowly in the (mid)West, having taken tiny, tippy-toe steps into the giant and growing pond that is social media. If the Post-Gazette serves no other purpose, it should serve as the paper of record chronicling, dissecting, and ultimately analyzing the machinations of the pooh-bahs that run the city and county, some of whom hold elected office and some of whom work for our local governments. Often, however, the most interesting political commentary in town these days, and even some of its most provocative investigation, is online, not in print, and I don't mean the alleged PG blogs. Quick: Go to the Post-Gazette's homepage and find a blog. I dare you. "Pittsburgh Mom" counts only technically; blog it may be, but there's no conceivable definition of journalism that embraces PM. The gang at the City Paper has more of this figured out, and the folks behind Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine -- like CP, a publication with a different model from the get-go -- are experimenting in interesting and potentially productive ways. But the fragmented Pittsburgh media landscape of 2008 largely resembles the fragmented Pittsburgh media landscape of 2003/2004, even if some fragments have come and gone and others have moved around. The region doesn't need consolidation and integration on this media environment score so much as it needs a better sense that there is a there there. That takes resources and leadership. Right now, it's more of the same. Bueller? Bueller?
As to seeing what blogging wrought, mostly it wrought one very unexpected but very welcome and ultimately (hopefully) durable benefit: Rather than extending my voice into virtual corners of Pittsburgh, I met people. I met lots of people. In person and face-to-face. Many of them are (or were) bloggers in their own right; many of them were simply interested in what I had written and wanted to engage, though not just in a comment to a post. More than a few of them work for recognized media properties. The real benefits of blogging to me required and still require that I persist in not being anonymous or pseudonymous (in general, and with rare exceptions, I think that anonymity and pseudonymity are corrosive of civil society -- but that's a topic for another day), because the real benefits aren't virtual. They are social.
At the end of the day, and to cap off my point about the Burgh-o-sphere and the media environment, that sociability has been one of the great strengths of the online group (thanks to the organizers of the Pittsburgh Blogfests; sorry I haven't been able to come to most of them!) and one of the major weaknesses of the local media environment in general. Professional journalists, when confronted with this new world, sometimes forget that the whole point of the information professions is to connect with people. Real journalists, folks who've been writing and reporting for a full career, know this. I grew up surrounded by people like that. Successful bloggers, too, have to get this. CSB gets it (the Judge is among the folks that I've met). But too many folks think that it's just about the information, or the advertising, or the market share, or self-promotion, or the site visits and traffic, comments, and links. They forget that it's about the relationships.
To illustrate and conclude:
Last night, I was driving home with a local reporter who thinks that way, and as we came off the Parkway and started to head up Banksville Road, we came upon a Pittsburgh Police cruiser blocking the highway. Flashing lights ways up the road made it clear that something uncommon was going on. My passenger stuck his head out the window and called to the officer manning the cruiser: I'm a reporter with XYZ [a proposition that could have been verified in an instant]. Can you tell me what's going on?
The officer looked over, with an expression that can fairly be described as contempt. "No," he declared. Then he turned away. Follow-up requests to acknowledge the question were ignored. (I've never had much to do with the Pittsburgh Police Department, fortunately. This episode did not impress.) We drove on.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pittsblog to Wind Down
Anyone still following Pittsblog out there (Bueller? Bueller?) has noticed that the pace of posting over the last year has . . . slowed . . . down. The reason is simple: The rest of my life (teaching, writing, traveling, speaking; family; even the occasional other blog or two) has gotten increasingly busy. I haven't had time to put real energy into Pittsblog -- to keep up with what's happening in the region, to follow good and great blogs here, to say anything that folks might want to read. It's been a fun ride, but it's time to move on. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll post some wrap-ups of a sort. Then you -- or I -- will cut the cord. The blog as a whole will stay up as long as Google will have it.
In Pittsburgh, I'll be investing some of my region-rebuilding enthusiasm in the local entrepreneurship community. Pitt's Law School, where I teach, will be developing a law-and-entrepreneurship program over the next year, and I'll be helping with that project. Don't ask for details. We don't yet know what this will look like.
Beyond Pittsburgh, I will be blogging more frequently at my law-and-tech blog, madisonian.net, which is produced in collaboration with a group of like-minded law professors around the U.S. If you're curious about my mild-mannered law professor identity (Britt Reid, if you will), that's where you'll find it. And I still pitch an occasional inning or two for Blog-Lebo, which chronicles goings-on in the seething cauldron that Pittsburghers know as Mt. Lebanon.
In Pittsburgh, I'll be investing some of my region-rebuilding enthusiasm in the local entrepreneurship community. Pitt's Law School, where I teach, will be developing a law-and-entrepreneurship program over the next year, and I'll be helping with that project. Don't ask for details. We don't yet know what this will look like.
Beyond Pittsburgh, I will be blogging more frequently at my law-and-tech blog, madisonian.net, which is produced in collaboration with a group of like-minded law professors around the U.S. If you're curious about my mild-mannered law professor identity (Britt Reid, if you will), that's where you'll find it. And I still pitch an occasional inning or two for Blog-Lebo, which chronicles goings-on in the seething cauldron that Pittsburghers know as Mt. Lebanon.
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