youngstown diaspora is pitching in - can YOU connect?

a recent post highlighted last week's regional sustainable energy conference held in Youngstown - and the need for the mega-region to skate where the puck is going - in terms of government support.

but what is the back story on how this conference came to be?

The Youngstown Vindicator shines some light on this quandary:

"Abraham credited YSU alumnus Jack Scott with being the driving force behind the conference.

Scott earned a degree in mechanical engineering and worked his way up to become president and chief operating officer of Parsons Corp., a California-based engineering and construction company that has $3.4 billion in annual revenues.

Scott said he has a passion for sustainable energy, but he wanted to hold the conference in Youngstown because of his love for the Mahoning Valley and its people.

“One of the greatest assets of this area is the work ethic,” he said. “We hire people from all over the world. You can always tell people who were hired from this area.”

Scott said the forum has to produce action to be a success. The goal is to link researchers with innovative ideas to people who can bring those ideas to market, he said."

And looking at the mega-region, those assets are already in place, to name a few:

- a national laboratory (NETL) National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh
- a centralized location of energy production
- firming up university research strengths into formalized Centers of Excellence
- connectivity to an educated workforce

but what's missing here?

you.

- - -

as illustrated in the story of the Sustainable Energy Conference and other examples, people from Youngstown are helping their hometown out.

in a big way.

and you can become a part of it.

Connect to the Greater Youngstown 2.0 LinkedIn group today.

- - -

Be a part of the global Youngstown team.

Listen. Help Others. Engage.

npr today: "there is good economic news, and it comes from youngstown"

About 13 million listeners nationwide (give or take a few hundred) tuning into NPR's Morning Edition show on Tuesday definitely heard this story:

Youngstown, Ohio: The Rust Belt's Silicon Valley?


You can listen to the clip here, as Steve Inskeep begins:

"There is good economic news, and it comes from Youngstown, Ohio.

Part of the city is seeing a renaissance due to high-tech startups housed at what's called the Youngstown Business Incubator."

And by 11:30am, just hours after the story aired, inquiries about the YBI and its companies came via email from Nashville, Boston, New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Naples, St. Petersburg, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Houston, San Diego, San Jose, Detroit, Lexington, Charlotte, Denver, Portland, and Baton Rouge.

And that was before lunch!

I wonder how busy the phones were at the YBI for the rest of the day.

- - -

For any individual - born in the Mahoning Valley or any place else on this earth - you can follow the news of the YBI via MySpace here, or via Facebook both here and here.

For any entrepreneur - with only an idea, or looking to beta test a product - Youngstown is willing to listen to you.

For anyone who is curious - who has seen the building only from the outside, or only heard about Youngstown on the radio - come for a tour.

- - -

As an economic development professional operating outside of the YBI who comes into contact with business incubators across the country, here are some opinions on how the Youngstown Experience is different than others:

1 - YBI is a managed cluster, aka, a place where firms and individuals learn from each other due to proximity

at many other incubators, after a few years, you leave or graduate and are on your own - apart from your contemporaries

2 - YBI is primarily (not exclusively) focused on a particular technology: business to business software

at many other incubators, the businesses cover many areas, lacking focus and inefficiently using resources

3 - YBI is adjacent to learning institutions/beta testing sites/hospitals in a central business district

at many other incubators, the structure is a spec building in the middle of nowhere, no "knowledge spillovers" to use a term in the biz

4 - YBI is an urban laboratory for both technological and civic innovation, and will be implementing some very unique programs in the near future.

at many other incubators, low rent is the only main benefit offered to companies

- - -

You can follow a wide array of past stories about the YBI in the Shout Youngstown blog here. More from Burgh Diaspora here. More at Reason here. and more from Rust Wire here.

and kudos to Jim Cossler for his efforts to support his home city.

what's at podcamp pittsburgh oct 18th & 19th?

why i'm going to podcamp pittburgh 3:

(1) - it's free
(2) - it's conveniently during a weekend
(3) - it's good opportunity to learn new things
(4) - i want to meet other Cleveburgh bloggers



It seems like the content of the conference is geared towards both beginners and pseudo-experts, and you can find the two-day schedule here.

some of the topics include:
"Intro to Blogging"
"Podcasting 101"
"Social Media Business Plans"
"Video Compression Best Practices"
"Using Analytics"
"Search-Engine-Friendly Blogging"
"Social Media and the Arts"
"Rustbelt Bloggers Roundtable"

so yeah, there will be a few of us caravaning from the Yo if you want to carpool.

It will held at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh downtown from 9am to 5pm both days and you can register here.


ps. I have been physically threatened to return to Youngstown saturday night from Pittsburgh because the following is going on that night downtown:

- Kelly Pavlik fight
- Ice event at the Chev which will air on Christmas on NBC
- YSU football game
- Oreo stacking cancer contest
- Mahoning River nude swim 2008

So there is also a chance some people will be returning Saturday night as well, or as was presented to me at knifepoint, I could actually bring some of the people attending Podcamp to Youngstown for the evening as the two places are so close.

While the jury is still out on my personal location Saturday night, I encourage you to attend Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 regardless.

blogging roundtable on louie

On Monday, the authors behind Meditations in an Emergency, The Stage at the Oakland, Defend Youngstown and I Will Shout Youngstown appeared for two hours on the Louie Free Radio Show - brainfood from the heartland.

You can listen to the show here, and the bloggers join in 1/3 of the way into the mp3 file.

Subjects discussed included:
- a girl without toes
- race and public transportation routes in Atlanta
- the moment you fail when creating community
- a region of storytellers
- promoting blogging in nursing homes
- 1st announced meeting for Wick Park revitalization
- the libertarian art movement in youngstown
- biking to get unpasteurized milk
- supporting the upcoming wrta bus levy
- in the yo
- prank calling the park burlesque and harry houdini

a thirty-year katrina, but this storm is passing

Youngstown, it's not your fault.

It sounds like a line from a twelve-step rehab program, but it was a lesson I picked up from all the Black Monday segments spread throughout the local media this week.

Youngstown, it's not your fault.

Many newpapers all over the country ran a piece by Marilyn Geewax, native daughter of the Mahoning Valley and Economy and Technology Reporter for the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers. There was a part of her audio report which referenced the similarities between Hurricane Katrina and the Steel Collapse that began in Youngstown 30 years ago. According to her story, in both cases, these places were "abandoned by the institutions that could have helped" but instead endured.

And that's why the Youngstown story is just so damn interesting. It's a story of struggle and survival. It's a story of missteps and promises. It's a story of remembering the past and living for the future.

Youngstown, it's not your fault.



So now is the time to think about how we are still all in this together.

To realize we are a place and a people with no limits.

no limits.



no excuses, no saviors, no regret.

we are the people we've been waiting for.




In coordination with the editor of the Vindicator, a few local bloggers provided some pieces for reflection. These seven blogs are a sliver of the people that represent Team Youngstown.

Our continuing push is not limited to one generation, and is extended to the many many individuals who are a part of this community. Individuals who represent different groups, of older and younger generations.

This is all our fight.

Keep thinking. Keep doing. Keep getting connected.


Mahoning Valley View
Reinvent the Wheel, or Encourage More Efficient Rotation?

Youngstown Pride
New Leaders, New Business, and a New Way of Getting Things Done

Youngstown Renaissance
Some Environmental Impacts of Black Monday

Defend Youngstown
Post-Steel Generation Fights for Change

Stark Raving Youngstown
From Black Monday to Bright Future

The Stage @ The Oakland
From Rust to Stardust

I Will Shout Youngstown
Youngstown’s Opportunity to Become a More Interconnected Community

defrag brought us together

Last Friday we had the good fortune to be guests on the Louie Free Show. The recording was posted today in the archives and you can listen to the show here. About an hour into the mp3 we start talking, and the interview lasts 90 minutes.

Much thanks to those who took the time and effort to come to Youngstown and join us. The panelists on the recording are:

- Ken Warren, Lakewood Public Library and Lakewood Observer
- Sherry Linkon, YSU Center for Working Class Studies
- Hunter Morrison, YSU Center for Urban and Regional Studies
- Phil Kidd esq., Defend Youngstown

The discussion revolves around various topics including connecting people with technology, citizen journalism, why history matters, the unique sense of place in Youngstown, and channels to more forward.

This guy was outside the studio:



and picking out few words here and there...
- gypsy punk music
- catholic school beatings
- pickpocket poetics
- bedrock of democracy
- hyper-local dojo
- ambushing a priest
- extracting passionate people
- operation in chaos making
- jim traficant on phil donahue
- the politics of resentment
- "those people"
- the succession of the successful
- getting screwed; being militant
- the new competitive position
- 40 years in the desert
- antibalas afrobeat
- the generation of social capital
- every neighborhood gets a blog
- youngstown as experimental laboratory
- good news grounded in fact

Also here is the show from last week's show about Youngstown on Ideastream wcpn.

youngstown incubator, meet MySpace

A new website has entered the social networking sphere...

Click here to see the MySpace page of the business incubator, launched today.


If you would like to have the Youngstown Business Incubator for a "friend", please do so through your personal MySpace page. Check the site often for future blogs and information:

www.myspace.com/ytownbusinessincubator

three-part series on allentown on 33 news

This week, Amy Radinovic from 33 wytv news did a three-part series on the history and economic development of Allentown, Pennsylvania. You can watch these three segments here, here, and here.

One of the first stories this blog ever covered was a three-part review of Safford´s Allentown PhD thesis which compared the Youngstown and Allentown regions from a social network theory perspective. You can read these three segments here, here, and here.

let's start an International Neighbors Group in youngstown

A few weeks ago, I became a member of a little organization in town named the International Neighbors Group. It’s mainly composed of locals who are interested in meeting newcomers to town from other cultures. Some of the members meet every week for coffee and conversation; another bunch meets every week for crafts and cultural exchange. I’ve mainly stuck to monthly bigger events like road trips, and Dutch classes in volunteer’s homes. An individual is pretty much free to attend whatever one wants.

I’ve been especially happy with my Dutch classes recently, organized by a professor’s wife in the middle of the old town. Her house has stunning views of the four oldest churches and the main canal through town. Each week, five other students and myself sit around the table in her home as she prepares snacks and we talk in Dutch. Here is a picture of a recent snack, beschuit mit aardbei:


It’s basically a toasted piece of bread spread with butter, with sliced strawberries and grain sugar sprinkled on top. It’s a simple gesture to have snacks and tea in the afternoon, but one that has made a big impact to me, a virtual stranger in a new country. I think we should start this type of organization in Youngstown.

Who’s with me?

We tend to think of Youngstown State as a place attracting people only from the region, but that’s just not true. Many students from a variety of countries get their degrees here. This week when YSU has their spring commencement, they will present an honorary degree to the Undersecretary of Energy from Kuwait. His son will be graduating with a degree in chemical engineering.

It would be great to have an organization to welcome and assist new international students and immigrants in our community. Here are a few positive benefits this type of organization may provide:

- It’s helpful for arrivals from other countries to become oriented to our city and region. Small things such showing the location of ethnic markets, demonstrating how to use public transportation, and assisting newcomers with the paperwork that often comes with relocation may ease their transition to Youngstown.

- Organizing monthly events around the community, as well as around Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, may present newcomers with a sense of the cultural things we Youngstowners find important, plus provide economic support for local attractions. Students especially may enjoy this if they don’t own a car.

- Teaching English to newcomers, their spouses, and their children may supplement their already existing language skills.

- If strong connections are made with students, they may be more interested in becoming future employees or entrepreneurs in the region, adding to the knowledge-based economy and diversity.

- If engaged students instead decide to return home, they might have a greater understanding of our nation’s and region’s traditions and values, making them good ambassadors to others never to visit this country.

- Treating our international friends well now may encourage future investment in local businesses, future support of local tourism, and future lifelong friendships.

are there seats at the table for younger people?

The City Club of Cleveland has been posting podcasts of their past presentations over the past few weeks, and one was downloaded into my iTunes yesterday which particularly caught my attention. It was by Rebecca Ryan, who is the founder of Next Generation consulting. She did some consulting work for many midwestern cities, including Akron. The entire presentation can be listened to by clicking on this link.

One of her central talking points is the necessity for a community to accept younger people on their civic orgnization's boards of trustees. She cited how Akron recently added four seats on board of their Chamber of Commerce, in the attempt to engage younger people and entrepreneurs in the area. A recent posting on this blog reviewed academic research that theorized one reason for the stuggles of Youngstown is that the leadership of the civic organizations throughout the years have been a fairly homogeneous bunch.

Should the boards of Youngstown-based organizations take this idea to heart?

My question is this: what number of the board of trustees of the following organizations are held by people younger than 50 years old?

- The Butler Institute of American Art
- The United Way of Mahoning Valley
- The Youngstown Symphony Society
- The Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber
- Wick Neighbors Inc.
- The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County

The reason I chose these institutions is that they will be important drivers for the future of Youngstown. I have no clue who comprises their executive boards and leadership and I am not critizing them, but it may be an interesting exercise for these organizations to analyze their own leadership. maybe the best leaders are those who have been in the Valley for a while and with the most connections and experience. But maybe their future success will depend on the engagement of younger generations and where they receive their ideas for the future.

martinis in the museum

A few months ago I went to an event at a science center called "Martinis & Imax" which was a pretty cool idea. You have a movie, you have a martini, and voila! Next thing I knew, I was flying with the penguins in the Arctic.

Well it seems our little martini bar downtown is doing well, and Imbibe recently celebrated their official grand opening (watch it online).

So can we create these type of fusion events in the Youngstown?

Maybe there could be a late-night gallery tour at the Butler with martinis, or some type of cross-promotion with the indie film people affiliated with Keep it Reel, Inc? It says here that they are looking for venues to show movies.

It would be an interesting exercise for all the city businesses and arts groups to think about unique ways they could partner together in the future.

Maybe a live-music concert in the Planetarium?
Or ballet in the garden?

any other ideas?

why the garden club couldn't save youngstown (part III)

The previous two blogs (part I and part II) on this topic described the differing economic divergence and historical reaction to crisis between the Youngstown region and the Allentown region. In his research, Sean Safford hypothesized that the types of personal connections between different local social groups may have contributed to the actions taken by each community.

So how does one measure the connectivity of social networks? Safford delved through the historical records to find the names of every person in both 1950 and 1975 who was an officer or on the board of directors for all the major local companies, banks, utilities, universities, civic and cultural organizations, religious groups, and government for each community. He separated each organization into one of two categories: economic or civic. He then developed a mathematical method to quantify the strength of the ties between each of the organizations based upon their membership.

So what did his models show? In records from both 1950 and 1975, in both the Youngstown region and the Allentown region, many of the economic organizations shared the same people with other economic organizations, and many of the civic organizations shared the same people with other civic organizations. In other words, the network ties were extremely strong within these subgroups.

But what happens when the economic and civic subgroups are combined into one big group? The results are completely different between the two communities. In the Youngstown region, the numerical values for the social ties are still very high – the same people who ran the civic organizations also ran the economic organizations. In the Allentown region, the values were much lower – showing that the composition of people in civic organizations weren’t necessarily the same people in the economic organizations.

In general, not all the same people hung out together in Allentown, and the leadership of civic organizations was connected to people from different economic backgrounds. In Youngstown, both the leaders of the civic leaders and the economic leaders were for the most part, the same people. This may help to explain why Allentown developed centralized, community-oriented action that turned into success, and why Youngstown developed a variety of different plans, run by different people that ultimately did not succeed.

Regardless if you believe his conclusions or not, Safford presents us with some interesting food for thought, which may extend into how we as a community organize ourselves.

If his theories are correct, how can we create a stronger community in the future?

In our local organizations, we can continually strive to make sure people from a variety of economic and civic backgrounds are represented in their leadership. When facing a problem, we can organize one diverse group to explore solutions, instead of many organizations with competing interests.

What organizations and conflicts exist today in Youngstown that embodies these types of challenges?

why the garden club couldn't save youngstown (part II)

The first blog about Safford’s research showed that the Youngstown region and the Allentown region have taken two very different paths since the demise of the steel industry. But why is this the case?

Safford argues that there is two shared critical moments in both of these regions’ histories that may help to describe their diverging paths. The first one is the response in the 1950s to the realization that their inland locations made their cost of production higher, and thus less competitive. The second one is the response to the dramatic plant closings and mass layoffs that commenced in 1977 throughout the local steel industries.

Safford's paper does a very interesting job of digging into history. Here are some excerpts:

page 4

. . . economic leaders in both cities commissioned consultants to outline a course of action. In both cases, the reports that resulted had very similar recommendations. However, the historical record makes it clear that very different kinds of collective action emerged in response. Key actors in Allentown came to support the consultants’ conclusions and took action to implement them. In Youngstown, on the other hand, outside consultants’ reports were largely ignored. Instead, political leaders pursued a set of policies which they assumed to be in the best interest of the city’s core economic elite, but ultimately failed to win the support of those actors when it came to implementation.

page 16

An academic paper on Youngstown’s economy published in 1952 is illustrative of their conclusions. Noting that Youngstown production costs were approximately 55% higher than in Cleveland 70 miles to the northwest and 19% more than Pittsburgh, the report offered the following: In large measure, the future of [Youngstown] may be determined by forces beyond their own control because local operations are only a small part of the total capacity of the major companies operating in this area. On the other hand, local interests have it within their own power to initiate actions which may be the deciding factors in the continued industrial development of the region. There are at least three possible solutions for the problems faced… The first is to increase the size of the local market by the encouragement of steel fabrication in the Valley. The second is industrial diversification. This could be accomplished by encouraging the development of a variety of new industries in the region to take advantage of its latent possibilities. Finally, the third solution and one which is largely beyond the control of the Valley itself is a reduction in steel production costs.

page 17

The massive steel industry strikes of 1956 and 1959 catalyzed local action in response on concerns about the viability of the steel industry in both places. In Youngstown, despite the mounting and apparent need for change, diversification-oriented elements of the consultants’ reports went unheeded(Walker 1981). Instead, with the backing of the region’s banks, steel companies and labor unions, Youngstown’s Congressional delegation—led by the city’s long-time U.S. Congressman, Michael Kirwan—sought federal funding to build a canal linking Lake Erie to the Ohio River Valley through Youngstown. The proposal came up for approval in the U.S. Congress in 1961 and received initial support. But it was ultimately quashed by the intervention of rail roads interests which feared competition as well as by politicians in bordering states who questioned the benefits of the massively expensive proposal.

In Allentown, the strike catalyzed a very different set of actions on the part of the community’s leadership. The first was a decision on the part of Bethlehem Steel to construct a new research facility on South Mountain overlooking both the main steel plant and Lehigh University. This facility, the Homer Research Labs, was the first of what would become a large contingent of corporate research and development laboratories located in the city. The stated goals of the company in doing so was to shift into higher value added production.

page 18

As the economic crisis in Youngstown worsened over the next several years, these various proposals—and their backers—battled for attention and funds at the state and federal level. Strikingly absent from the deliberations, however, were the leaders of region’s remaining major employers. In exception of the construction of a light industrial park at one the closed steel mills, none of the four proposals were ever fully or effectively implemented(Buss and Vaughn, 1987).

Page 19

The second proposal concerned a new initiative then being developed by the State of Pennsylvania known as the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership, which was meant to generate endogenous growth through partnerships between industry and research universities. Local business leaders, including Dealtrey, spoke with Walter Plosila, the State’s Secretary of Commerce at the time. Plosila was a vocal advocate of endogenous growth, an approach which contrasted with the more popular strategy of creating investment incentives designed to attract large employers which Plosila, among others, derided as “smokestack chasing.” The idea was to create public-private partnerships that would build on the state’s higher education infrastructure to support existing companies seeking to engage new technologies as well as to generate new ones. Initially, the Ben Franklin program’s creators planned on establishing three centers, one in Philadelphia, another in Pittsburgh and a third covering the rest of the state to be located at State College near Pennsylvania State University. The local group in Allentown, however, succeeded in advocating for a fourth located near Lehigh University. In addition to creating links between university researchers and the business community, the plan in Allentown called for a private venture capital fund which would be run in conjunction with the Ben Franklin center. The fund drew investments from several of the community’s companies and several wealthy individuals.

Page 25

Second, the political processes which emerged around at two key historical moments differed dramatically with the responses in Allentown coalescing around a relatively unified set of community-oriented actions and Youngstown’s Balkanizing along the narrow interests of a powerful faction. Thus, despite having access to the same information and ideas, the implementation of those ideas into policy and strategic action was very
different.

Do you agree with his assessment of history?

It seems that decisions made in the 1950s in Allentown are now bearing fruit. Is it too late, or can Youngstown get onto a similar path?

While you are thinking about this, an interesting story on some possible paths is available here. Maybe it is time to our leaders to request heavy participation in the Third Frontier, like Allentown did all those years ago in their state.

why the garden club couldn't save youngstown (part I)

About a year ago, I stumbled upon a research paper by Sean Safford, then a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The paper is an outgrowth of his PhD dissertation titled "Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown" and presents some theories on the diverging paths of Allentown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown since the time both cities had their major industrial breakdowns in the 1970s. The pdf can be accessed here, at the website of the Local Innovation Systems Project, a part of the MIT Industrial Performance Center.

Why were Youngstown and Allentown selected? Safford created a statistical model where the dependent variable was the change in the regions' average wage over the decades. After looking at 38 other midwestern regions with less than 10 million people, the two regions were extreme outliers - that is, the Allentown region had relatively high per capita growth, and Youngstown region had much lower growth when compared to other regions of the country.

One fascinating and deeply revealing figure (below) illustrates the change over time for the regions' average wages adjusted for inflation by the regional consumer price index. In 1969, Youngstown's average wage was greater than both the nation and Allentown, but today is lower than both Allentown and the nation as a whole. Just as dramatic is the stagnant average wage in the Youngstown region, essentially flatlining between 1995 and 2001, at a level comparable to the average wage in 1975. Wow. The Allentown region's average wage climbed dramatically over this same period, eclipsing the national average in the mid 1980s.


Another chart (below) from the paper showed the importance of certain traditional fields of manufacturing within the areas in the past thirty years. The Youngstown region has maintained production in traditional sectors such as automobiles and steel, where Allentown's metropolitan area shifted to chemicals, electronics, and other emerging industries.


Safford describes in his paper what historic decisions created this divergence, and provides an interesting theory based on the strength of social networks why these specific decisions were developed.

This paper is a fascinating account about the progession of the Youngstown region's economy since the demise of the steel industry, and offers new perspectives on the necessity of social institutions within a community. In fact, there is so much interesting information in this paper, I'm going to dedicate the next two blogs to its contents.