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A Night among the Geeks Techies take time from long work days to meet for social and career connections Monday, November 16, 1998 By Diana Nelson Jones, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A sign in the Foundry Ale Works read "Geeks on 2nd floor." By 7 p.m., the place was swarming with some of Pittsburgh's best and brightest young professionals - networkers, literally and figuratively.
Geek Night is a semi-regular social that was instigated by a couple of software engineers who once worked together, Sam Robb, 29, and Christina Schulman, 28. They wanted to bring their circles together and form new ones.
"Quite a few people are here because they want to stay in Pittsburgh," said Robb on this, the third Geek Night at the brewery on Smallman Street in the Strip.
The primary objective is to have fun and be social; many of these people work inordinately long hours. But another motivation is work-related.
"This is how young companies form," said Vanessa Fine, 34, a software developer who works for Storm Systems Downtown.
Pittsburgh remains a nascent technology center that, even with Carnegie Mellon University's reputation, is not a magnet for techies.
Their ties to the city are like filaments, reliant on the same current that has lit up places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Austin and Boston. Their ties to each other reveal how small Pittsburgh's information technology community really is.
"For instance," said Rich Harris, a 29-year-old technical manager at Actium, "Vito Cortese and I worked at Pitt, then I left and went to Lycos, left Lycos to go to Actium and ended up recruiting Vito. Later, Vito got placed as a consultant at Lycos."
There are two or three companies that have employed most of the people at Geek Night, said Cortese, 33.
"There are a lot of start-ups, a lot of fluidity and frequent shuffling of the decks among companies," he said. Most of the people he knows in the field have spent no more than two years at any one job.
"I like to think we're developing our own old boys network while Pittsburgh is still young in the information systems field."
The gathering has grown steadily each time. The first Geek Night in early summer attracted about 30 people. The most recent one had double that number. The next Geek Night is Jan. 14, also at the Strip District brewery on Smallman Street.
Most are in their late 20s and early 30s. "The reason for that," said Gene James, who founded Westmoreland Online several years ago, "is that you can't work 80-hour weeks at 50."
James is 50 and semi-retired. He sold his company last year. At Geek Night, sitting in a booth with several young friends, he predicted that Pittsburgh's technological beacon will gradually shine brighter.
"The growth has been most dramatic in the past five years," he said. "I suspect opportunities for jobs will grow. Twenty years ago, Boston was a high-tech center, primarily with Digital. Lots of spin-offs made a corridor. We're much smaller than Boston, but it's starting to feel like Boston."
James said he has recruited people from throughout the East Coast: "Once you get them here and take them out a few nights, you've got 'em."
Schulman, a Florida native, came to Pittsburgh in 1992 for a compelling job at the University of Pittsburgh. "I liked it enough to stay."
Noting the doubling of interest between Geek Night II and Geek Night III, Schulman said the party "seems to have a decent amount of momentum."
She glanced around the room and said, "I have no idea who half of these people are."
For more information about Geek Night, locate the Web page at: www.pghgeeks.org
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