A Delicious Coincidence

The Bookmark bookstore in downtown Oakland, CA is a great little indie with new and used books that supports their public library.  A few months back I picked up a copy of “Cheesemonger – A Life on the Wedge” by Gordon Edgar.  It finally made it into my summer reading rotation this past week.  Edgar is a punker turned cheesemonger-of-the-highest-degree.  He notes that it was thought provoking how he went from someone who simply needed a job, and found one at San Francisco’s famed Rainbow Grocery Cooperative, to a speaker at the American Cheese Society’s annual conference.  Who knew there was a cheese conference?  Who knew there was a cheese society!

And then the next day, by coincidence [though metaphysics teaches us there are no coincidences; only synchronicities] the Pittsburgh “Post Gazette” featured a story on two Pittsburgh cheesemongers attending this year’s ACA Conference.  And interestingly, their description of their first conference echoes stories Edgar relayed about his early attendance: awe over the cheese knowledge gathered and being star struck by the culinary firepower.  Here’s the link to the P-G story.  http://www.post-gazette.com/life/food/2014/08/21/Local-cheesemongers-take-a-cheese-field-trip/stories/201408180112

What’s great about the P-G piece is that it was 20 years ago that San Franciscan Edgar attended his first cheese conference, returned to his grocery cooperative and raised the bar on the City’s food culture.  That’s now happening in Pittsburgh.  All things happen in their own time so Pittsburgh might be 20 years behind the City by the Bay when it comes to food appreciation, but by my observation, it’s catching up fast.  From what I see, read and eat in Pittsburgh, the food culture has practically exploded.  What took other more recognized foodie towns decades to develop, Pittsburgh has taken on in the space of about 5 years.  Goodie foodie for us.  The momentum is unstoppable and it all goes to making Pittsburgh, like any city, a more livable and enjoyable place.

Revving Up Pittsburgh

A piece in this week’s “Pittsburgh Business Times” TechFlash section detailed a roundtable meeting Mayor Peduto hosted to discuss accelerating Pittsburgh’s technology sector.  Giving emphasis to these types of issues is a step forward and keeps this particularly important issue at the forefront.  The new Mayor should be praised for this type of initiative.

I noted the items discussed and some of the suggested actions needed to address perceived failings Pittsburgh and its region’s resources.  As a not exhaustive summary, mentioned were: lack of non-stop air service to the West Coast, a generally poor transportation grid, assistance to startups in obtaining customers, an organized marketing effort touting Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial scene, a defined process for networking startup businesses and local resources, and consideration as “desirable” businesses those other than “high tech”.

All of these ideas are important, especially taken as a whole.  I believe I’ve made this point before: that an ecosystem needs to develop where each aspect feeds on the others and that in turn accelerates the overall economic development.  Is this circular logic?  In a way, yes.  But how did “creation” begin?  With a Big Bang we are told.  But what initiated the “big bang”?  What was the ultimate void from which the universe exploded?  No one has still answered that one.  Well, city and regional [and national] socio-economic ecosystems are similarly created, especially in a knowledge based economy that doesn’t depend on natural resource availability [as a nascent Pittsburgh did when coal, iron ore and limestone came together to start a steel industry].

I agree with one of the roundtable participants who stated with appropriate faith and belief that Pittsburgh feels like it’s on the edge of another rebirth – something is about to explode are words close to what was said.  I agree.  You can feel a big bang about to happen.

However, allow me to add an item that I still believe is most important: money.  Or a more precise definition: the local availability of financial resources, since “money” sounds a bit snarky.  One roundtable participant commented that when a local startup gets to a certain level of growth, outside investors come in and “harvest the companies and take them away”.  Well, outside investors do that everywhere and all the time.  Pittsburgh is not alone in that respect.  The financing is concentrated in the Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle and increasingly, New York.  So that will continue until Pittsburgh develops more of an angel investor, later stage investor, and venture capitalist sub-ecosystem, shall I call it.   And while that can be encouraged by the Mayor’s office, or local economic development agencies, it mainly comes from individuals who believe in a location [Pittsburgh] and will invest their success in the efforts of others.  Here’s hoping more of those for Pittsburgh.