Friday, January 9, 2009

Steeler Nation: Future Burghers?

Jim Russell, a self-proclaimed (but easily backed-up) Pittsburgh Diaspora Evangelist, is a guy and a blogger that I haven't talked enough about recently. Jim is a prolific blogger, and you may not find something interesting in every post he makes, but there are some REALLY good things in there. While most of us spend a lot of time thinking about how we can attract people physically to the Burgh, attract businesses to the burgh and improve Pittsburgh for the Burghers here (through better laws and such). Essentially, our fundamental question is "How do we get people to move to Pittsburgh?" Jim thinks outside the box, to me asking a more fundamental question, "How do we get people who love Pittsburgh to help Pittsburgh?" He throws out the assumption that to be a "Pittsburgher" you have to live in Pittsburgh. As he puts it, his primary goal is, "Turn[ing] the problem of mobile human capital in to an asset."

Jim had a post a couple days ago that could have served as an answer to my blog post that challenged Burghers to use the Internet to do more for Pittsburgh then just providing information. He left me a challenge to find people who have migrated home to Pittsburgh and "get some success stories on the web." If any of you are one of those people, please let me know and I will be happy to post your story here. If you know anyone who has returned home to the Burgh, tell them to drop me an email: BurgherJon@gmail.com. I know a couple and I will work to get their stories out here, but would love to have some more.

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