Startup Digest offers the easy answer to “where should I network this week?” In order to do so, the team at Startup Digest gets local entrepreneurs to curate a list of hand-picked events each week. Spanning across the globe, including London, Paris, Nigeria and of course, Silicon Valley the digest has come to Pittsburgh.
“I am not looking for events. I am looking for idea-grounds. Places, where people can exchange ideas and also have fun.”
The Pittsburgh Startup Digest, being curated by Abhishek Sharma the co-founder of MobileFustion a South Side start-up, has published two weeks worth of lists including events from TiE Pittsburgh, Chatham University and the Duquesne University Small Business Development Center. Sharma believes that networking events is not the right title to give what he is looking for. “I am not looking for events. I am looking for idea-grounds. Places, where people can exchange ideas and also have fun.”
Pittsburgh may be a little-known city for startups compared to others with their own Startup Digests, but Sharma thinks it isn’t surprising at all. “Pittsburgh ranks as the 12th biggest destination for venture capital, and has the highest number of university spin-offs after Boston.”
For someone already in the network of startups in Pittsburgh, the events might not be new, but, Sharma is aiming for a new audience. “I expect to see our established entrepreneurial leaders I would be very happy if we could pull in borderline entrepreneurs.” We can expect the events to be places where a newcomer can come and feel welcome.
Startup Digest will be an excellent resource for successful and budding entrepreneurs alike. I suggest you sign up.
BioEnterprise, the Cleveland-based biomedical business formation initiative published their Midwest Health Care Venture Investment Report on Friday. The health care venture field is beginning to pick up. In terms of number of companies funded, Pittsburgh leads the pack with twenty-four totally almost $40 million in funding.
This high concentration stands out. In comparison the deals are smaller than the top city (in terms of amount funded) but the number of seed type funding provided is a good sign for Pittsburgh.
Comprising the report were mainly biopharmaceutical (48%) and medical device (38%). The larger Pittsburgh deals included Foundation Radiology Group, ALung Technologies, ClearCount and BodyMedia. The seed deals are hopefully companies to look for, including Almedtrac, Blacktown NC and Flexicath.
[via Pittsburgh Business Times]
myGov365 offers a new service to engage the public in the political process. Similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s OpenCongress.org, myGov365 allows users to support different politicians, bills, causes, etc. OpenCongress only gets as local as congressional districts, myGov365 takes the concept further by connecting at the “hyper-local” level such as city councils. This isn’t just a copy-cat idea, the best part of myGov365 is that it allows and encourages local politicians to interact within the network.
I recently was invited to join go the private beta and have had an opportunity to use the product. This is a perfect time for a product like myGov365 to launch – political participation was at an all-time high during the last presidential election and now with hot button issues such as the stimulus, health care reform and (for Pittsburgh) library closures and the tuition tax people are more interested than ever to know about the issues.
Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto spoke with me about his involvement and goals with working with myGov365. He became involved early on in the project and worked diligently for almost a year to clear the obstacles for myGov365. The trick was to allow for one-way communication and not put a burden on the City Clerks office. This is great news. Because of Peduto’s experience in working with open government initiatives and foresight this access is available free of charge to any group or individual interested.
Peduto goes on about myGov365’s goal to move beyond just government and into the community. He mentions that the beta will soon grow to include some “technically and social media savvy” non-profit organizations from the East End.
The goal of myGov365 is to give politicians and community groups an easy to use platform to engage with their constituents. I believe this is a great goal, but a lofty one. Politicians have numerous opportunities to interact and with their constituents via Twitter and Facebook – what compelling reason do politicians and constituents have to go to another network? Peduto belives that this is going to be the “Facebook or Twitter for Governments.” He may be right, but to get people to move between Facebook and myGov365 may pose a challenge.
Given that myGov365 is still in it’s infancy I think they have a chance to answer that question. Right now, they are working to refine their product. Despite some hiccups with the beta invites, myGov365 is a solid beta. Unfortunately the webpages look like a beta, right now it isn’t very polished (especially given the focus on design and usability in so many of today’s startups) and it takes some guessing to determine how to get information (like to find out what H.R. 3975 is, I have to click on the title and dig through the information there.)
Like most networks, you can comment on things (bills, etc), join or create groups and contact other members of the network. For the politically active this is a great tool to find like-minded individuals and discuss the topics. For the curious it’s great to see what representatives are promoting and discussing.
Overall I think it’s a solid product headed in the right direction for local politics and non-profits. But, I’m still going to use OpenCongress as my go-to reference for national issues because of the larger community and easier to navigate UI.
Malia Spencer has a new article up on Pittsburgh Business Times about ITSqc spinning out of CMU. While it isn’t exactly your typical sin-off, it does bode well for CMU and Pittsburgh. ITSqc works with companies such as IBM and Accenture to create models around the IT service sector.
“The research was done and the models were created and focus shifted from creating and gathering, which universities are great at, we produced the models and now it’s a more commercial adoption issue,” said company director Jeff Perdue of the decision to spin-off.
Now that the shift has moved from research to commercialization, Jeff thinks it’s time to spread their wings and fly. IT services is a maturing industry, it was only a short amount of time until a network of companies that support it was created. Not surprisingly, it came out of CMU. Good luck, ITSqc.
[Pittsburgh Business Times: IT service company ITSqc spins out from CMU]
The iBurgh app is coming to the Android Market the third week of January, at the latest, so says Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto. “iBurgh started as a conversation between Priya Narasimhan and I. I approached her because of our shared interest in hockey, and once I saw what she could do with YinzCam I wanted to hear her thoughts on opening up government.”
Peduto isn’t stopping with the Droid or just iBurgh. The Blackberry iBurgh app is next. And in 2010 Peduto hopes to follow in the footsteps of San Francisco and New York City in providing citizens with an “open data dump.” Pittsburgh has been on the cutting edge of open city government with iBurgh, Open Book Pittsburgh and other initiatives.
Also, be on the look out for a fantastic new tool for political bloggers of Pittsburgh. Monday, January 4th will be the first embed-able webcast of City Council meetings. They tested the software last week and expect an on-time launch.
This isn’t just a hours long YouTube style video. It is going to be search-able by speaker, bill or issue. If you’re interested in what Councilman Burgess said about an issue you can search for the issue and speaker to jump to their comments.
Peduto sees this as another way to keep people accountable. As a Pittsburgh City resident, I appreciate his efforts.
