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“What
would you do,” Schulman joked, “have people solve programming programs at
the door?”
Schulman,
custom applications team lead for MediaSite, formerly ISLIP Media, Downtown,
doesn’t think tech industry folk should really be catered to, anyway, calling
Pittsburgh a “segregated enough city as it is.”
Still,
the co-founder of Geek Night, an every-other-month tech industry event at the
Foundary Ale Works in the Strip District, agrees wholeheartedly with plans to
build a membership club for tech entrepreneurs, students, workers and investors.
The
Pittsburgh Hot Team, a network of 30 entrepreneurs brought together by the Heinz
Endowments Civic Entrepreneurship Initiative to boost entrepreneural growth and
new-economy efforts in the region, last month announced efforts to create what
is temporarily being called the New Economy Club.
The
group has started fund raising for the $3 million necessary to start the
venture, has chosen an architect and is negotiating a lease for three floors at
922 Penn Ave., Downtown.
Preliminary
plans call for a restaurant, a cyber café with Internet portals and lost of
espresso drinks, a 200-person banquet facility, meeting rooms, a
game/entertainment room, an outdoor climbing wall and no dress code. Hot Team
members hope to have the club open by next summer.
“I’d
be inclined to check it out,” said Schulman. “Factors for me would be cost,
whether it’s open at night and are my friends there?”
Hot
Team member Ava DeMarco, co-founder of Littlearth Productions, a company that
designs and makes goods from recycled materials, said membership dues for the
club will be on a sliding scale to make it affordable for people right out of
college. She said the Hot Team has received plenty of positive reaction to the
club concept.
“The
reason for the New Economy Club idea is that tech industry people had no real
place to call home. People and companies are spread out everywhere, so there’s
no place where people naturally
congregate,” said DeMarco.
Geography
plays a huge role in where tech workers – or any workers, really – go to
relax after work or on weekends, although Schulman said some employees at
TransArc, Downtown, in the past have treated the Sharp Edge in Friendship as a
local watering hole because “they are really picky about their beer.”
Pittsburgh
people, especially, tend to treat certain neighborhoods solely as destination
spots, said Marco Cardamone, co-owner of Club Cafe in the South Side. Cardamone,
also co-owner of Merging Media Inc., an internet content business focused on
music, said he believes there are things bar and club owners can do to attract a
new-economy clientele.
Club
Cafe has hosted events for the Pittsburgh Technology Council and other tech
groups. And Cardamone said he has
been collaborating with some tech types from Carnegie Mellon University on ways
to “program” Club Cafe.
 In
addition to wiring the space for Merging Media’s streaming audio and video
music performances, Cardamone said club waitresses might soon be wearing video
cameras for bar Web casts, letting people check out the scene from remote
portals.
When
all is said and done, Cardamone said he’s not sure technology alone can
attract techies. Like anyone else, they enjoy places with a “cool vibe,” he
said.
Or
at least good beer and lots of networking opportunities, it seems. The hottest
tech hangouts to date are geared toward organized industry events, such as the
monthly, FreeMarkets - sponsored CoolTech happy hour at Froggy’s Downtown, or
Geek Night at the Foundry.
Schulman
said a friend recommended the Foundry when she and four other tech workers
decided to organize a cocktail party so they could all visit with mutual
friends. That was the fall of 1998, and about 30 people showed up.
They
came back, she said, because of the good beer, free parking and upstairs balcony
space at the brew pub, but also because more and more tech workers showed
interest, sending electronic RSVPs in early to the group Web site,
www.pghgeeks.org. At the last Geek Night event in early June, Schulman said
between 400 and 500 people stopped by over the course of the Thursday evening.
They have long outgrown the upstairs balcony, and the Foundry issues plastic
cups because it can’t was glasses fast enough.
Foundry
co-owner Paul Williams said he had no reservations about opening the whole space
up for Geek Night, because they have hosted large parties for other groups.
“They’re
well behaved, he said. What makes it easy, he said, are Geek Night corporate
sponsors who pay a flat rate for buffet-style food so people don’t have to
order off of the menu.”
“They’re
a good group,” said Williams, who now sees a lot of the same Geek Night faces
at other times in the Foundry.
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