Podcasts about storycrafting

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2022 36:21

I'm honored to have my good friend, Jim Woods, on the show today to help us develop our storytelling chops. Jim is a novelist, story coach, and editor. He has worked with many authors over the years, including some whose books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Jim is the host of the Finish Your Book Podcast. He is also the founder of Storycrafting, a coaching service that helps you craft your story. Storytelling is one of my favorite topics, so we had a lot of fun in this interview geeking out over stories. Jim walks us through several questions such as these: What's the simplest way to create a story? What separates a great story from a pretty good story? How can you fix your story? How can you build a solid writing habit? You can find Jim at his Storycrafting site, his personal website, or on Facebook. Make sure to also check out his Write Your Book Podcast. *** Are you looking for a community of enthusiastic, generous writers to help you build better habits and grow your writing business? Check out our Daily Writer Community. Check out our Daily Writing Prompts, which will help you break through creative blocks, brainstorm new ideas, and get back into a state of flow. Writing prompts Writing prompts are a fantastic creative tool for creative writing, journaling, teaching, social media posts, podcasting, and more! Connect with Kent: https://DailyWriterLife.com Facebook: https://facebook.com/kent.sanders Instagram: https://instagram.com/kentsanders LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kent-sanders Twitter: https://twitter.com/kentsanders

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Best Of: Storytelling Coach Jim Woods on How to Craft Better Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2022 36:21

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Biz Bevs & Bites Episode 011 - Finding Your Capital S Story with Paul Furiga

Biz Bevs and Bites

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2021 32:37

Paul Furiga is the President and Chief Storyteller of WordWrite, a Pittsburgh-area firm offering brand strategy (storytelling), public relations, crisis communications, and digital & inbound marketing services to organizations that are looking to better tell their stories. Paul learned storytelling by writing and editing more than 20,000 stories during two decades as a journalist before going into public relations. He's quite literally written the book storytelling, Finding Your Capital S Story, Why Your Story Drives Your Brand. The career path that Paul traveled to PR is a story in itself. He's been a racetrack photographer, theater usher, investigative journalist, wannabe musician, classical radio host, broadcast journalist, White House correspondent and editor. At WordWrite, Paul ponders the question: "Why should someone consider hiring us, working with us, or partnering with us?" The answers to those questions help him chart the next chapter in WordWrite's evolving Capital S Story. Before you had a brand, you had a story – the reason why people want to buy from you, work for you, partner with you, or invest in you. That's why we take a distinctive approach to marketing communications: StoryCrafting®. In this process, we uncover your Capital S Story, the authentic, engaging, and persuasive story that is uniquely yours. Hosted by: Kelli Komondor and Cindy Ellek Produced by: Rob Oliver, Your Motivational Speaker Supported by: K2 Creative & PR and the Cindy Ellek Marketing Group Connect with us! Facebook - BizBevsBites Instagram - BizBevsBitesPodcast Website – BizBevsBites.com

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Storytelling Coach Jim Woods on How to Craft Better Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2020 36:21

I'm honored to have my good friend, Jim Woods, on the show today to help us develop our storytelling chops. Jim is a novelist, story coach, and editor. He has worked with many authors over the years, including some whose books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Jim is the host of the Finish Your Book Podcast. He is also the founder of Storycrafting, a coaching service that helps you craft your story. Storytelling is one of my favorite topics, so we had a lot of fun in this interview geeking out over stories. Jim walks us through several questions such as these: What's the simplest way to create a story? What separates a great story from a pretty good story? How can you fix your story? How can you build a solid writing habit? You can find Jim at his Storycrafting site, his personal website, or on Facebook. Make sure to also check out his Write Your Book Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this episode, we would be grateful if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people discover the show, and the more people listen, the more we can invest into it and improve the show. Sign up for the Daily Writer email: DailyWriterLife.com Follow Kent Sanders: Facebook: https://facebook.com/kent.sanders Instagram: https://instagram.com/kentsanders Twitter: https://twitter.com/kentsanders

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Storytelling Coach Jim Woods on How to Craft Better Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2020 36:21

I'm honored to have my good friend, Jim Woods, on the show today to help us develop our storytelling chops. Jim is a novelist, story coach, and editor. He has worked with many authors over the years, including some whose books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Jim is the host of the Finish Your Book Podcast. He is also the founder of Storycrafting, a coaching service that helps you craft your story. Storytelling is one of my favorite topics, so we had a lot of fun in this interview geeking out over stories. Jim walks us through several questions such as these: What's the simplest way to create a story? What separates a great story from a pretty good story? How can you fix your story? How can you build a solid writing habit? You can find Jim at his Storycrafting site, his personal website, or on Facebook. Make sure to also check out his Write Your Book Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this episode, we would be grateful if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people discover the show, and the more people listen, the more we can invest into it and improve the show. Sign up for the Daily Writer email: DailyWriterLife.com Follow Kent Sanders: Facebook: https://facebook.com/kent.sanders Instagram: https://instagram.com/kentsanders Twitter: https://twitter.com/kentsanders

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Writing A Non-Fiction Book

Reframe It! Mindset Motivation Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2020 5:07

Today's show is all about my approach for my new StoryCrafting book. For more info, contact me jimwoodswrites@gmail.com

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CH.26:Storycrafting in Games: What Happened to RPGS?

Geektales

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2020 15:27

Ever since graphics took the leap from 2d to 3d on the playstation 2 and other gaming consoles, the level of storycrafting in games, especially rpgs, have taken a turn for the worse. What has the last decade managed to showcase in turns of good stories in games? Let's rant. Books. Anime. Gaming. Creativity. Performance.

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Meet Jim Woods - Writer and Author Coach // GUEST INTERVIEW

Play Episode Play 40 sec Highlight Listen Later Jun 26, 2020 36:47

IMPORTANT NOTE: This interview was recorded on May 5. Please keep this context in mind when listening. This week, I bring you the third of four guest interviews I conducted in late April/early May. My friend Jim Woods is a writer, and author coach. He has written three books and loves helping others bring their stories into the world. You can connect with Jim at Jimwoodswrites.com and also at Storycrafting.net, his website about story. MUSIC & SFX: Epidemic Sound & Pond5 The Reframe It! Online Course: 30 Days to Effective Stress Reduction - Use promo code PODCAST for $20 off: https://ReframeItMindsetMotivation.com

#065 - Storycrafting w/ Tim Mathias

My Wax Museum

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 64:53

Tim is one of my favourite people in the podcasting community. He's smart, funny, clever, and WOW! an amazing storyteller! Listen to Tim's Knights and Nerds Podcast: https://www.knightsandnerds.com/ (https://www.knightsandnerds.com/) Tim's books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074CCNZLJ?ref_=dbs_r_series&storeType=ebooks (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074CCNZLJ?ref_=dbs_r_series&storeType=ebooks) Remember, after the show, to take time out of your day to listen to someone else. Just 5 minutes. It’ll change your life. Follow us on mechoradio.com (https://mechoradio.com/) Thanks again for listening! As always, you can support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mywaxmuseum) . And thanks to Tanner (https://www.instagram.com/jspr_productions127/) for the music. Follow me on Twitter (https://www.twitter.com/alexwilliamns) to know what else is happening. Listen to "My Wax Museum" on your favourite app! - Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/7VF5 (https://pca.st/7VF5) - Spotify: spoti.fi/2zNZcWO (http://spoti.fi/2zNZcWO) - Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2OCYbWY (http://apple.co/2OCYbWY) - Google Play: bit.ly/2DA9KgT (http://bit.ly/2DA9KgT) - Stitcher: bit.ly/2T1ucvm (http://bit.ly/2T1ucvm) - Swoot: https://bit.ly/2KCjE45 (https://bit.ly/2KCjE45) - TuneIn: http://bit.ly/2IjuNoc (http://bit.ly/2IjuNoc) Support this podcast

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Ep. 14 – Partying, shopping and saving lives

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2020 39:31

Pittsburghers love a parade and a chance to party. That’s coming in spades (or maybe clovers?) with the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, one of the nation’s largest. We’ll being discussing the city’s Irish heritage and more in this episode. Also look out for:• In an illuminating discussion with an executive in the retail industry, we’ll learn why we shouldn’t have the coffin ready just yet for brick-and-mortar stores – especially not at The Waterfront.• We speak with the minds behind PECA Labs, who are changing the lives of children suffering from congenital heart defects. Now, they’re taking the next step.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

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Ep. 13 – Rescuing food, conducting music and adventures in flushing

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2020 40:21

We’ve got an eclectic episode of the P100 Podcast lined up for you, to be sure:— Mel Cronin, regional expansion manager at 412 Food Rescue, talks about the nonprofit’s mission of preventing perfectly good food from entering the waste stream and the growth into areas beyond the titular area code.— James Gourlay, the Scottish conductor and musical director of the River City Brass band, shares some musical stories in a special edition of our Pittsburgh Polyphony series.— We go down the tubes — you’ll have to listen to understand, and be sure to check out this unique website. This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

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21. Creative Chat with Jim Woods: Discovering the Power of Story

Creative Chats podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2020 48:50

On this episode of Creative Chats, my guest is Jim Woods. Jim is the author of three books, and a freelance writer. He is also the founder of StoryCrafting, which combines productivity with the power of story. We talk about what it means to be a creative person, and how discovering the power of story can impact our work. Show notes: http://storycrafting.net/

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Ep. 12 – What's bringing people to Pittsburgh?

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2020 35:49

This episode, we’re talking about people who are coming to Pittsburgh, whether it’s for work or just visiting.We’ll break down a report that suggests the city might be a better fit for tech workers than the mecca of the digital economy, Silicon Valley (gotta love our standard of living). We’re also talking about a recent article that probes the need for a new hotel at the convention center. (Hint: The answer isn’t very simple.)In between, we welcome the Breaking Brews Podcast’s host Jason Cercone for a chat about the business of beer and Pittsburgh’s place in the industry.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan:You are listening to the P100 podcast, the bi-weekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more. Because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story. Logan:Hello, and welcome to a brand new episode of the P100 podcast. You're here with myself, Logan Armstrong, and co-hosts Dan Stefano and Paul Furiga. Guys, how are you doing?Paul:Great, Logan.Dan:Emphasis on the co-host there. You're the host with the mostest there.Logan:I try to be. I do what I can, but-Paul:Yes he does and he does it well.Logan:I get my mostest from the people I'm surrounded with. On today's episode, we're going to be examining tech jobs in Pittsburgh, and there have been a few recent articles for some vying to leave and some vying to stay that you may have seen. So we're going to be talking about that and seeing how Pittsburgh ranks compared with cities and metros around the country in tech jobs.Logan:Then we're going to bring in our good friend Jason Cercone from the Breaking Brews podcast. He takes a drink from breaking, excuse me. He takes a break from drinking beer and talks about the business side of it.Paul:Wait a minute, that wasn't in this segment. There was no beer drinking?Logan:Unfortunately no.Logan:We asked him about it and he said that he'd be happy to rejoin us.Dan:Logan, let's remember we're talking to the CEO of our company within the office, so no. There's no-Paul:Well that's fine. Let's chat.Dan:We don't have a video of this, but if you could see the winking eye. No, there is no-Logan:No beer during this segment.Dan:Drinking during this segment.Paul:Of course not.Logan:Okay, and then finally we're going to wrap up with what's missing from downtown.Paul:Oh.Logan:Indeed, mysterious.Paul:Question.Logan:That's right. You'll have to stick around to see what we're talking about, but we're in for a great episode so we hope you stick around.Dan:I hope it's not my car or anything.Paul:Okay guys, time to do one of our favorite things on the podcast. Talk about Pittsburgh getting another great national ranking.Dan:Another list, right?Paul:We're on another list.Dan:Yeah.Paul:This one's a good one. Although, if you're in the Silicon Valley area, maybe not so good.Dan:Right.Paul:A couple of weeks ago, Wallet Hub, which is an online service provider that looks at financial things, very popular with millennials.Dan:They make many lists.Paul:They make many lists of many different things. Top places to live in the country for tech workers. Pittsburgh, number five. Silicon Valley, not so high, which caused the San Jose Mercury News, which San Jose's a community that's smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, to write sort of a cheeky little article. Pittsburgh is better for tech workers than Silicon Valley? Question mark. Well, yes, if you want to live affordably, apparently it actually is.Dan:That's completely accurate. Yeah. The Bay Area, it's got to be one of the highest costs of living-Paul:It is actually.Dan:In the country.Paul:It has the highest cost of living in the country. And Logan, you were looking inside some of the rankings, and Pittsburgh ranked in the top 15 in a number of categories, right?Logan:Yes. So the three categories were professional opportunities, STEM friendliness, and quality of life. And Pittsburgh ranked 13th, 14th, and 11th in those, respectively. And some of the reasons that places like San Francisco and the Bay Area didn't rank so highly is that they would rank very high in one or two of these categories. So for example, San Francisco ranked third in both professional opportunities and STEM friendliness but then ranked 63rd in quality of life for reasons we were alluding to earlier. So it's good to see that Pittsburgh ranked in these lists as being as an all around. Maybe it's not top five or the best in STEM friendliness or professional opportunities, but it's well-rounded and our quality of life here is, according to this list, far better than some of our counterparts.Paul:And certainly as the community here has continued to transform, and I'm thinking now of Uber, and Apptive, and Apple's got a good presence in the city. Facebook's virtual reality company, Oculus, is wholly sited here in the Pittsburgh region. We're trying to attract more tech workers and we've got these great university programs, CMU and Pitt at the head of the pack, but others as well, where we're building this tech community. And I guess it does still surprise people in the more traditional communities, but it's legit. There's something going on here.Dan:Right. For better or worse, Pittsburgh will always kind of bring that blue collar atmosphere, that blue collar mentality, a bit rough around the edges. I talk about it all the time, but my wife's family, who, they grew up in California, they all lived in California for a while. They came to Pittsburgh here and they said, "Wow, I had no idea it was this green." So there's always going to be a bit of a stigma that the city carries around, but I think these lists show that to that the news is catching on here. And Pittsburgh is basically known now for the meds and eds and now tech. The reputation is definitely growing here and starting to overcome that stigma.Paul:That perception.Dan:Yeah. But there's ... Well, not to be Debbie Downer or play devil's advocate here, there are still the legacies of that history here that carries on, especially in our environment.Paul:Yeah. We still have work to do, that's for sure. I can remember when I first moved back to this region from the Washington DC area. I had a job in the south side and what is now South Side Works was still a working steel mill, and as I would drive across the Birmingham Bridge every morning, the smell of burning coke was my appetizer before breakfast.Logan:Morning coffee.Dan:That'll wake you.Paul:And there's been plenty of coverage, and legitimately so, that we still have environmental problems in the region. And certainly one of the reasons why the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, is disadvantaged on a list like this, is because there's such a huge economic disparity there. It's the most expensive metropolitan area in the country. Ours is not. Part of the reason Pittsburgh's so affordable, the collapse of the steel industry and heavy industry. So there's all this housing stock and we didn't have the kind of inflation maybe that a place on the coast like San Francisco has had, but we have economic disparity too, and that's something that we have to work on too.Dan:Right. I think that's being recognized now. We talked about a couple episodes ago here, that the city is starting to take a hard look at itself, especially in terms of the racial inequalities that exist here.Paul:Yes.Dan:Again, the three of us aren't the best people to speak to this. We don't live the same experiences that a lot of people do in this city, but we can play a role by listening and being active and playing a part in recognizing that. And trying to create opportunities, being part of the solutions here. It's going to take a long time for Pittsburgh to completely shrug off some of the legacies that came from the 20th century here, some of the stuff that might be dragging down the city, but we can do it.Paul:We absolutely can. And if we can, we'll put in the show notes, there have been a couple of interesting public source articles that have dug into some of these issues, and I was reading-Dan:Quite a battle in tech, here.Paul:It was a battle in tech, and there's one written by a fellow named Noah Theriault, I believe that's how his name is pronounced, and he's at CMU. And the conclusion of this article, which you found, Dan, I thought was really interesting. He said "Here many of us who come here for opportunities in the city's universities, hospitals, and tech firms, do so in a state of willful ignorance. We take advantage of the low cost of living, we relish the walkability of the neighborhoods. We gentrify. Many of us smugly believe that we are the city's rebirth, the salvation from rust and blight. Too few of us learn about the historical and ongoing realities that make it most livable." And I think that's something that's really at the heart of what we need to remember. It's great to be on lists like this, but really there is no Nirvana -Dan:Right?Paul:That exists among places to live in this country. We have work to do too.Dan:It's hard to put a number on somebody's personal experiences here. I think that's the crux of what you were talking about there.Paul:Exactly. Exactly.Dan:All right. We're here with Jason Cercone. He's the chief brand officer at Breaking Brews, also the founder there and they're a content network and digital resource platform for people in the beer industry. Not only that, he hosts the Breaking Brews podcast, which takes a pretty unique look at the beer industry. They focus a lot on the business side of things. So Jason, thanks for being here.Jason:Thanks for having me guys.Dan:Awesome. Okay. As we mentioned, what you like to do with Breaking Brews your podcast and kind of spins off of your business. You look at a pretty different side of things in the spirits industry, in the alcohol industry there, that people don't think of all the time and that's actually selling the stuff and getting it out there, right? Yeah.Jason:Yeah. What I discovered was there are a lot of podcasts dedicated to drinking beer and reviewing and having fun and those podcasts are all great, but I wanted to bring something different to the podcast world. And I started looking at the fact that we don't have a ton of podcasts that are dedicated to the business side. Which talks about sales and marketing and distribution, all those different facets that are very important and very critical to the beer world. That was where it really started to ... or where I really started to make it take off. And I talked to a lot of industry professionals that felt the same way. They said when they're cleaning kegs and doing some of the horrible work that goes on in the brew houses that they want to put on a good podcast and listen to something that they can learn from, and that was the resource I wanted to put out there for them.Dan:Right, well the industry's really exploded as far as the craft production or the craft beer segment goes. I think ... I'm just looking at some facts here from the Brewer's Association, retail sale dollars of craft beer in 2018, I think the most recent year of stats was $27.6 billion. You said you've seen that since you started the Breaking Brews podcast yourself, you started about four years ago, or is that just your business?Jason:Breaking Brews itself started back in 2014. This is actually my third iteration of a podcast. I actually did one, like I was saying before, where we just sat around and drank beer, and that got old after a while.Dan:Why aren't we doing that right now?Jason:That's a very good question. I know. I was quizzed on that when I walked in the door, why I didn't bring beer and I'm starting to regret that.Dan:We'll just have our first kegger podcast, here.Logan:Yeah, well that'd make for some good conversation, that's for sure.Dan:That's a great idea.Jason:I'm always happy to come back for a second round if you guys want me to bring some-Dan:Right.Jason:Good drinks.Dan:Great idea. But yeah, as we were talking about the industry is just enormous right now. We're seeing that too in Pittsburgh, right?Jason:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean when I started things in 2014, there was probably maybe a dozen local craft breweries and now you look at the landscape, there's over 50 throughout the region. It's incredible. So many of them are doing great products and getting it out to bars around the area and also creating an awesome taproom experience too.Dan:Why do you think that is?Jason:Pittsburgh loves its beer, man.Dan:Yeah.Jason:But overall I think that ... I mean we haven't ... we hear the talk about the bubble a lot and has craft beer reached its saturation point. And I've always been a firm believer that we haven't even come close because we're not even close to the number that we had, or number of breweries we had before prohibition.Dan:Yeah.Jason:I mean we're creeping up, we're getting close, but the population of all these different cities and states across the country is so much higher. And when I go out to events and I do samplings and I talk to beer drinkers, a lot of folks still really aren't aware of what's going on in the craft beer industry. So there's still a lot of education that we can provide and that was one of the main drivers of Breaking Brews was putting some education out there so people can better understand what's going on in the industry and what's going on with these products.Logan:That's an interesting benchmark that you mentioned there that the number of brewers before the prohibition. Is that a common milestone in the craft beer business? And are there things that were happening back then that are happening now? The same way?Jason:I think it's, it's obviously changed a lot in regards to how beer is made. Brewers have pushed the envelope to the furthest degree possible and then a little bit more. You see a lot of crazy ingredients going into beers that probably pre-prohibition they weren't putting donuts into stouts and Twinkies-Logan:What were they doing?Jason:Breakfast cereal. I know it's like they weren't living their best life at all. However, a lot has changed. It's just the question of people's tastes have changed too and it's what do they want? And that's what these brewers are constantly trying to stay on top of, is what does the beer consumer want to drink today? And that's why I think you see such a variety out there in the market.Dan:Is it fair to say that it's easier to start a brewery round now or at least, somebody can be in their basement and actually trying to kickstart their own beer?Jason:That's probably the biggest misconception is that it's so easy to start a brewery because it's like any other business.Dan:Look, I've seen the Drew Carey show and he had a brewery in his basement. I know how this works .Jason:That's one of the big problems when you see some of these breweries that come out and their beer really isn't that great. They're standing around with their friends in a circle and all their friends are drinking their beer saying, "This is the best beer I've ever had. You need to start a brewery." And that's all well and good, but if they don't have a business sense that goes along with making a good product or even a subpar product, if they don't manage it properly, it's just not going to succeed. So it's just like anything else. I think that the barriers to entry are a little bit less because a lot of people have done it, but the smart thing to do would be go into it knowing that it's a business and you have to do all the things that you would normally do to run a business, or partner with somebody that can handle that end of your business for you.Logan:Partner with someone like Jason, Jason Cercone.Jason:I am for hire. I am here if anybody needs assistance. I'd be happy to help.Dan:Have you ever, you yourself, have you ever actually started ... Well maybe not started your own brewery, but have you ever brewed your own drafts?Jason:I've partnered and done some collaboration beers with a few different breweries across town. I did an event last year where I partnered with Yellow Bridge Brewing out in Delmont. I just went out and brewed with them for the day and I was able to say that I helped and I call that a collaboration. And I've done that with a couple of other breweries too. And that's fun. I mean that's the brewing side of it for me. I've always been more of a beer drinker and I like to obviously talk about it and promote it and market it. Brewing it just wasn't really something I wanted to do full time. It's a hard job. I think that's where a lot of people look at that like a glamorous thing and brewers will tell you, those are long days. It's very industrial and they work their asses off to put together a good product. End of the day, they are dog tired.Dan:Sure.Jason:So yeah, important. If you're going to be a brewer, know you'll be working hard.Dan:Right. We talk about hard work there. We're talking about having a good business sense. What do you see are some of the secrets to say these successful craft brewers and the people that maybe ... even some of these breweries that say are smaller, let's think about Southern Tier years ago, nobody knew who they were. Now they've got their own brewery on the North shore and what are some of the secrets to some of these businesses that have made it?Jason:I think it's understanding how to grow and being very deliberate about it and not trying to just shoot the moon right out of the gate. Obviously you have to establish a loyal fan base and make good product at the same time. But if you try to go too heavy, if you're a small local brewery and you try to make a statewide distribution, your number one priority, chances are you're not going to succeed because you don't have the liquid to supply the markets. So there's a lot of different aspects that you have to look at, but probably the most important is to use a popular phrase of our time, stay in your lane, and understand what it takes to build that brand from the ground up.Jason:Don't try to get too far ahead of yourself before you're ready. And then once the time comes where you've established that brand, then you can start looking at ... popular thing now other than distribution is looking at secondary spaces. We're starting to see some breweries in the Pittsburgh area open up secondary spots so they've proven that their brand is good enough to support it and we wish them the best in carrying that out.Dan:Who would you point to as some really good success stories in the Pittsburgh area then and what they've done successfully?Jason:Oh man, that list is long.Dan:Yep.Jason:Yeah. One of the breweries that I work with, the Spoonwood brewing in Bethel Park.Dan:I was there just this weekend.Jason:Awesome. What'd you think?Dan:I loved it. It was my second time there. I had a great time.Jason:Yeah, they're doing great beer. Great food. It's a great tap room atmosphere. You really can't ask for much more than that. They've been ... they're coming up on five years.Dan:Wow.Jason:And I've been working with them since pretty much the beginning and we've been building that brand and we don't do a ton of distribution, but a lot of the beer that we put out there ultimately was just to build that brand and give people an opportunity to taste it. To where they might say, "Wow, this is in Bethel Park. I'm going to go down there and see what else they have to offer." Another brewery I work with is Four Points Brewing out of Charleroi. They've ... just under two years old at this point, actually just about a year and a half now and they're killing it. They're doing some great beer and then you've got a lot of the names that people hear of all the time, like your Grist Houses and your Dancing Gnomes and Voodoos and Hitchhikers of the world. Again, we could sit here and do a whole podcast where I just rattle off the list because there's a lot of good beer happening.Dan:Well, you're in luck, our next segment, we're going to list breweries for the next 25 minutes. All right.Jason:Yeah. Close off with reading the phone book.Dan:Exactly.Jason:Riveting radio.Logan:Now you've learned a lot of these techniques and methods. You have over 20 years’ experience in marketing and sales. Did that start off in beer, or and if not, how did you navigate into the beer industry from that?Jason:That was ... I mean that was broken compasses for days, man, that was ... No, it did not start in beer. I've been working in the beer industry – counting what I did with starting Breaking Brews – for going on six years now. I sold cell phones right out of college, landed at Enterprise-Rent-a-Car for several years after that. Ran Hair Club for Men here in Pittsburgh for about four years. And with Breaking Brews, when I started it, it was ultimately just to build something that I felt was a good resource that could teach people how to gravitate to these beers in a very approachable way. Because as I learned, a lot of people just weren't aware of what was happening around them. So I was able to parlay my skillset from all my years in the professional world into a business that now I can help the breweries and help the different businesses that I work with do sales and marketing and create a good customer experience. All those good things, all things that are very important to building a good brand.Dan:Bring it back a little bit locally here to ... Pittsburgh I feel like is ... we've got a pretty special relationship to beer here. And it's some pretty big names in terms of, you think of Iron City, Duquesne, there's obviously Rolling Rock used to be around. How do you feel like the city's adopted and adapted to this craft brewing? I don't know if you could call it a Renaissance because it hasn't been around until right now, but this upsurge right now that people are ... they are doing with craft brewing.Jason:Yeah I think with the breweries now, I mean obviously as we spoke about earlier, we've got over 50 across the region now. It says a lot for the fact that people are going to go to a good brewery regardless of where they're at. It's become very neighborhood centric where you look like an old neighborhood pub, that's in some respects, being replaced by the local neighborhood brewery. You're seeing them essentially on every corner, quote unquote. And I think that helps with the fact that these guys are able to grow their brands so well because then it expands beyond their neighborhood as well. But yeah, we have a very rich history here in Pittsburgh with beer going back years and years back to ... I mean, Iron City was the beer.Jason:And I think now you're starting to see more of a shift towards the craft brands and many of them have been here for ... You look at East End, they've been here for 15 plus years now and they really were setting some good trends for what could happen and how people could gravitate towards a craft brand. Same with Penn Brewery. I believe 1986, was when they hit the scene. So a lot of good things have come along that have really helped push it forward. And now Pittsburgh is becoming one of those hot beds and I shouldn't say becoming it already is. And probably our closest rival in the state, just like everything else, is Philadelphia. And I think both of us have a tremendous beer scene that we can be proud of.Dan:Yeah. I think if you ever see a Penguins, Flyers game, it looks like more than a few people have beers.Jason:Well now, you see breweries have gotten in with the rivalries, like Grist House, and I'm forgetting the brewery that they partnered with out of Cleveland, they did a Browns, Steelers rivalry beer.Dan:Oh did they really?Jason:Rivertowne and Sly Fox had partnered up a couple of years ago for the stadium series. And they did a ... Glove Dropper was the name of the beer. And they worked together on that and sold it in both markets and worked out really well.Dan:All right Jason, well thanks so much for being here with us, for everybody at home. If you're listening, make sure to visit. If you're interested at all about starting a brewery and perhaps finding ways to market it and get it out to the world, you can go to breakingbrews.com. Look for Jason Cercone and also look for Breaking Brews podcast. You can find that on all the major platforms including Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google play, Spotify, iHeart, all the big ones where you can find us. And Jason, thanks so much for being here.Jason:Thanks again guys. Appreciate it.Logan:Sure thing.Dan:Great.Logan:Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented story crafting process, visit WordWritePR.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Paul:It's now time to talk about the biggest building that is not in the downtown skyline. We are talking about what is known in the travel trade as a headquarters hotel. In other words, if Pittsburgh were to host a very large convention, a large hotel would be designated as the headquarters hotel. In many cities, this is a large hotel that's attached to the convention center.Dan:Right.Paul:And that typically has somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand rooms.Dan:Right.Paul:Pittsburgh – yinz don't have one of those n’at.Dan:Oh, they do have a hotel connected to the convention center, right?Paul:Yes, yes. We do the Weston and actually Dan, I'm glad you mentioned that.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Because in the original plans for the convention center development, that hotel was supposed to be about twice as big as it is and if it were, it would be the size of a headquarters hotel.Dan:Sure. Well, I think that is, it's interesting that you're bringing this up and I think we rewind a little bit. The reason we're bringing this up is, on February 3rd, in the Post-Gazette, Craig Davis, who used to be the CEO of Visit Pittsburgh.Paul:Yes.Dan:Yeah. Visit Pittsburgh is the local-Paul:It's the Convention and Visitor's Bureau in part supported byPaul:Our tax funds and they promote the city to businesses like conventions.Dan:Right, yeah.Paul:But also to leisure travelers.Dan:Draw people into the city. Yeah, it's important. Yeah. This article, what it did with, again with Craig Davis here, he had a piece of parting advice for Pittsburgh is how Mark Belko, the writer introduced this and he did a really nice job with this piece. Craig wanted to build a convention center hotel.Paul:Right.Dan:And that's what we're talking about here. And there's a lot of back and forth about whether it should be done, whether ... what kind of impact it would bring on the city here. And he had some really good information about it, yourself, but a lot of people, they want to see more here. And that's what we're talking about today.Paul:Right. So in the tourism and convention industry in Pittsburgh, this is the third rail of politics. Nobody really wants to talk about it. And I look at this article in the Post-Gazette, Visit Pittsburgh, great organization. Craig Davis, very effective leader and he's been hired to run a similar organization in Dallas. Smart person. He's in Dallas now, so he can kind of say, what maybe he couldn't say before when he was in Pittsburgh. And for people in his business, his line of work, you need to have a convention center hotel. The thing is, to build that would cost about, Oh, kind of like the same amount of money to build PNC Park or Heinz Field.Dan:Right? Yeah. In this article here, they have an estimate of $350,000 to $400,000 a room to build.Paul:Or in other words-Dan:That's all.Paul:Yeah. $240 million.Dan:Right. That's for a 600-room hotel.Paul:Exactly.Dan:Yeah.Paul:It's a lot of money. And it was not easy to get PNC Park and Heinz Field built. There was actually a referendum on the ballot one year that failed. It was called the Regional Renaissance Initiative. I mean we put renaissance in the name of everything, don't we? And it was after that, that a deal was brokered. A lot of critics said behind closed doors and smoke-filled back rooms that wound up producing Heinz Field and PNC Park. There doesn't seem to be a lot of political appetite for spending that kind of money, again.Dan:Right.Paul:On something like a convention center hotel.Dan:Again here, Mark did a great job with this article here and he put it pretty succinctly here. He said, "In recent years, Davis' pitch has landed with all of the enthusiasm of a root canal."Paul:Yes.Dan:I don't know about you guys, I get too enthusiastic over root canals, but I suppose not many other people do, but the article does bring up a good point. That there's been a recent hotel building boom in the region, in the downtown area, particularly across the river. Some other smaller hotels that have cropped up here and there, the Marriotts and whatnot.Paul:Many. You could throw a rock from where we sit right now, we can hit the Monaco.Dan:Absolutely, yeah.Paul:Throw it across the way, hit the Embassy Suites. We've got the William Penn, which has been here for a long time. The Drury is in the old federal reserve building.Dan:Right and that's just a block away from the convention center. But the kind of full service hotel that, again, this is from the article here that Mr. Davis would see here, that would require huge public subsidies. And that's-Paul:Yes.Dan:I think the sticking point that it comes down to.Paul:That is the third rail part.Dan:Whether we want this here and I think it's one of those things where you balance. You say, "How much are these conventions going to be worth compared to the costs, the investments that you have to make in a city here." And it could take a while until the scales tip one way.Paul:Well, and what's very interesting about this is, there are statistics, there don't seem to be any statistics readily available to say, "Yes, Pittsburgh, you should do this." What we tend to fall back on, are a couple of really great seminal events. First was the Bassmaster Classic several years ago. And still of course people who don't know Pittsburgh want to depict it as a smoky mill town. And we had this freshwater national competition for bass fishing. And it went off really great. And that's led, as Mark Belko's article points out to Visit Pittsburgh getting into seeking sports events. And we've had, I can't believe this, I didn't even realize this number, 22 NCAA championship events have been held in Pittsburgh and we've got more coming.Dan:Yeah. Just recently they had the National Women's Volleyball championship out here.Paul:Yeah.Dan:And I think a big part of that comes down to, they now have a world-class arena to do it in.Paul:Yes.Dan:Where Civic Arena definitely showed its age after a while.Paul:Right.Dan:That plays a different part here. But certainly the downtown hotel building boom assists with that.Paul:Absolutely. Absolutely.Dan:Convention centers is ... that's a little different. And again, I think what, Craig Davis is trying to say here is, having it connected to the convention center, people love that. It's very convenient just to grab an elevator, have a little sky walk over to the convention center. It's not always a feasible immediately though, it's nice to think of these things, but it's hard to find room for it. And whether you're going to supplement what is already there or again, it takes money.Paul:Well, my point about Bassmaster, the other thing that happened of course was the G20 in 2009. Those two events put Pittsburgh, reputation-wise, on a world stage. In the article, Mark Belko talks about Milwaukee, which is a nice enough town and they have a baseball team that has a better record over the last decade of a postseason-Dan:They spend more than the Buccos, but that's a-Paul:They do.Dan:That's a whole other podcast.Paul:However, in terms of the hotel market, not quite the same size as Pittsburgh and they're getting the Democratic convention this year.Dan:Absolutely.Paul:Why does Pittsburgh not have that sort of convention? And if we did, aside from the monetary benefits of the convention itself, what would it do for the city in terms of raising the reputation even more and bringing more convention business to Pittsburgh? It's hard to say. It's also hard to argue that it was really cool to have Bassmaster or certainly the President and world leaders for the G20. That was awesome exposure for Pittsburgh. This is kind of a question of how much is the region willing to spend? And apparently it's going to have to spend something, in order to create that kind of environment.Dan:I think what's important when you look at these national conventions, particularly in the political arena, that is strategic by the parties too.Paul:Oh yes.Dan:Wisconsin's very important in this upcoming election to the Democrats. As is Pennsylvania.Paul:Right.Dan:But they were also in Philadelphia not that long ago, so do they want to spend so much more time in Pennsylvania and look, Wisconsin, the people ... whenever they do the Monday morning quarterbacking of that election, they did not spend all the time there. So it's ... they're showing ... it's a quite a statement that they are spending the time in Milwaukee for this upcoming convention. But it also shows that if Milwaukee can host something like this, then, so can Pittsburgh.Paul:Why not Pittsburgh, yeah.Dan:I think Pittsburgh actually held the very first Republican convention that was back in the 1860s or so. And we had the hotel rooms for that one, I guess. You know.Paul:We did.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Well, country was a little smaller then.Dan:Indeed. Yeah.Paul:Might be a difference, but I think this is a topic we're going to come back to again, so we wanted to put it out there for everybody. Again, props to Mark Belko and his article and the truth speaking, shall we say, of Craig Davis. We'll have to watch the skyline and see where this one goes.Dan:Well, most importantly, just as a final coda to this, and Mark's article did describe this a bit at the end, for the leaders that want to see this kind of change, that want to see a hotel down here, they have to show their work. It has to be ... You have to come to ... with studies from respected institutions, respected people, who are proving that, "Okay, hey, when Milwaukee hosted this type of thing, if they had a hotel here, this is the impact that they would have got."Dan:There are other areas here in Louisville and Columbus that are building hotels. What will those hotels do for their ability to draw conventions? Are they stealing them from Pittsburgh? You have to come up with that information. You have to present it to the leaders, not only in our government, but the community to approve ... like, "Hey, okay, some of tax dollars should go to this."Paul:Absolutely.Dan:And if you can do that, if you can convince enough people, then maybe it happens. But that stuff takes some time too.Paul:Well, and just a final thought on this since Craig Davis left Visit Pittsburgh, they are engaged in a search for a CEO. So I would expect that once a new CEO is named, one of the first things that we should be looking for, is some thinking around this topic.Dan:Absolutely.Logan:And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at p100podcast.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Twitter at Pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news updates and more from the Pittsburgh 100.

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Ep. 11 – There’s magic in the Steel City

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2020 44:41

Pittsburgh’s most famous magician, Lee Terbosic, visited the P100 Podcast for this episode, sharing stories from the road and close to home, the legacy of Harry Houdini and the success of the downtown theater Liberty Magic. Elsewhere in the episode:— A look at why Super Bowl ads aren’t always worth the multimillion-dollar cost incurred by the brands who can afford it.— We talk about the major investments being made in Oakland and what it means for one of Pittsburgh’s most vibrant neighborhoods.— Our next Pittsburgh Polyphony features a look at the compilation album "Pittsburgh City Limits," from the production trio One800.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan Armstrong: You are listening to The P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Paul Furiga: Welcome back to another edition of The P100 Podcast, the audio companion to The Pittsburgh 100 e-zine. I'm Paul Furiga. I'm the Publisher of The Pittsburgh 100, and the CEO of WordWrite Communications, alongside Dan Stefano, our Editor of The Pittsburgh 100 and brand journalist at WordWrite. Hey, there, Dan.Dan Stefano: That's quite an introduction there, Paul. I normally just rush straight through it.Paul Furiga: I don't think you should, Dan. So Dan, what have we got coming up in this amazing episode?Dan Stefano: I would say it is amazing.Paul Furiga: It's magical, isn't it, Dan?Dan Stefano: Well, it's an exciting week because we are just ahead of Super Bowl Sunday here, so we're going to open up things with a discussion about Super Bowl ads.Paul Furiga: Yes.Dan Stefano: Yeah. We're going to talk about how they might not be worth the money. I know few things are worth $5.6 million, although I wouldn't mind having some in my pocket.Paul Furiga: Sure.Dan Stefano: I probably wouldn't spend it on that, but yeah. After that we're going to have a great conversation. It'll be me and Logan Armstrong who's not here right now, but he'll be joining us for a talk with Lee Terbosic. You could say he's Pittsburgh's most famous magician, and he's got some great stories to talk about, just basically magic in the area, Liberty Magic, new theater. He even gets into a discussion about David Copperfield, the time he got to meet him and really cool stuff.Paul Furiga: Great.Dan Stefano: Following that, we're going to discuss some big developments in Oakland, and Paul, you're really interested in that, right?Paul Furiga: I am indeed. Oakland is home to Pitt, and not only where Logan went to school but one of my daughters, and been following Oakland for the better part of 25 years, first when I was editor of The Business Times, and now here at WordWrite. Still a lot going on over there.Dan Stefano: Well, this WVU grad doesn't really hold that against your daughter or Logan.Paul Furiga: Well, thanks, Dan.Dan Stefano: But Logan, he will also be joining us again with the Pittsburgh Polyphony segment at the end of the show here and we've got another great track for you to listen to, but yeah. I guess we're going to get to it then, right?Paul Furiga: Let's go.Dan Stefano: Okay.Paul Furiga: All right, Dan, big weekend coming up, and I don't mean the list of home projects I have. I am talking about the Super Bowl. You going to watch?Dan Stefano: Despite there not being any Steelers in it I supposed I will because that's just what you do as an American on Super Bowl Sunday. Right?Paul Furiga: It is what you do if you're an American male, now.Dan Stefano: Females too, my wife's watching. We're actually going to host a-Paul Furiga: I agree. I do not want to be a sexist here at all. However, I do want to add that for those people who aren't as much into what's happening on the field, the Super Bowl has become, what we really want to talk about, the Super Bowl of advertising. Right?Dan Stefano: That's very accurate, yeah. This year for a 30 second spot – $5.6 million, which is a pretty good chunk of change.Paul Furiga: It is. The game's on Fox, and we've got the San Francisco 49ers, and the Kansas City Chiefs. As you pointed out, two teams that most Pittsburghers don't care anything about.Dan Stefano: We are actually hosting a Chiefs’ fan at our house for the game. She's a former co-worker of my wife, and she has not too many other Chiefs’ fans to watch the game with, so she's going to come over. I guess we'll have some sort of rooting interest.Paul Furiga: So, like it's a-Dan Stefano: She's not a Patriots or Ravens fan, so we can root for it.Paul Furiga: Well, that's kind of the test. If the Steelers aren't in, and you just don't want to have anybody rooting for the Ravens, or the Patriots. Right?Dan Stefano: Accurate.Paul Furiga: Now, Pittsburgh is in the game.Dan Stefano: That's true. They are in the game.Paul Furiga: Kraft Heinz is going to do one 30-second commercial during the second quarter, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story by Teresa Lindeman, good friend of mine. It's going to promote Heinz ketchup, and a new experimental variation.Dan Stefano: Right, this is what brings sriracha into the fold here, Ketcharacha, or something along those lines.Paul Furiga: HoneyRacha, my friend. Let's get the flavor blend correct there.Dan Stefano: They've got too many blends these days, Paul. It's ridiculous.Paul Furiga: Dan, it's ketchup. The company's done very well for more than 100 some years on this very simple, enjoyable condiment.Dan Stefano: That's right. There's nothing wrong with just plain ketchup.Paul Furiga: Well, they got pickles too, in the beginning.Dan Stefano: I don't want mayo with it. I don't need all these other things.Paul Furiga: Dan, there's a Heinz flavor just for you. I am sure.Dan Stefano: Yeah, it's called ketchup.Paul Furiga: Right, the point here though is, as you know, what about these Super Bowl ads? They cost so much money, and what really is the impact. This is kind of a perennial question in the marketing world, and we're marketing people, so maybe we can offer some insight, right? I must say that I get asked this question all the time this time of year. People want to know whether it's worth the amount of money that these things cost. The favorite answer of any consultant, including in our business, is it depends. Wouldn’t you agree, Dan?Dan Stefano: I'd say that's accurate. The depending is really who you're advertising to, and what type of advertising you're showing here.Dan Stefano: There's a really good study from Stanford. This is about five years ago, but they found that the most effective ads were the ads that could connect their products to the sports viewership, the people who view sports. The idea of watching sports, how many ads are we going to see for beer companies out there today.Paul Furiga: Only one beer company because for more than 20 years, Budweiser has been the only beer to advertise in the Super Bowl.Dan Stefano: Absolutely, yeah.Paul Furiga: Which, the study you're referencing, I thought this was a fascinating conclusion of the study. They looked at, like you said, the brands that are associated with viewing sports, duh, beer, soda, snacks-Dan Stefano: Pop, but yeah.Paul Furiga: Yeah, here in Pittsburgh it's pop, and that, but anyway.Dan Stefano: Just catching you.Paul Furiga: Thank you very much for correcting my failure to use Pittsburgh-ese.Dan Stefano: Before I interrupt you, yeah.Paul Furiga: Budweiser, they looked at Budweiser, and they estimated that the sales of Bud went up $96 million, or almost 16% in the weeks following Super Bowl. Now, they also looked at pop, Coke and Pepsi. Now Coke and Pepsi both advertise in the game during the years that the study covered. Guess what? They cancelled each other out.Dan Stefano: Yeah, that's what the interesting part of the study here says is whenever there's competition in the ads that's whenever, as you said, it cancels each other out, and they don't really see a boost from this, and it becomes less worth it to advertise in the Super Bowl. That's fascinating to me. Why do you think that is?Paul Furiga: What of the other things, there's another study that was done in 2017 by a company called Communicus. Generally speaking people are watching the ads for entertainment value. In my view they're the best short films that you can see at any given time.Dan Stefano: I saw Michael Bay is directing one this year.Paul Furiga: Yeah.Dan Stefano: Yeah, that's pretty wild.Paul Furiga: Well, the Heinz, the Kraft Heinz ad, is being directed by Roman Coppola who I believe is the son of the legendary film director. His daughter, his son, maybe a few other family members are actively involved in doing films, and TV, and stuff like that.Dan Stefano: Godfather Part 4 where we only have 30 seconds of plot left.Paul Furiga: There you go.Dan Stefano: Yeah.Paul Furiga: Yeah, these things draw talent. The study that I'm referencing from 2017 found that 80% of the people watching the Super Bowl, eh, no impact whatsoever from the ads in terms of buying behavior although they found them entertaining. Really, this is kind of the stereotypical thing where we started this segment. The people who care about the football on the field watch for the football, and those who get dragged to the party where people are watching the football they have something to watch too, and that's the advertising.Dan Stefano: True.Dan Stefano: All right, we're joined by a very special guest. He might be Pittsburgh's most famous magician. He's toured all over the country, across the world. He's appeared in some big acts with big names in his profession, big celebrities, and importantly he's never forgotten his Pittsburgh roots, helping to open Liberty Magic downtown in the cultural district. It's been open for about a year now, opened in February, 2019. He is Lee Terbosic. Thanks for coming.Lee Terbosic: Thanks for having me, man.Dan Stefano: We're really happy to have you. As I just mentioned, Lee, Liberty Magic is a relatively new venue, strictly for magic. It's close quarters. About what, maybe 80 seats or so?Lee Terbosic: We have 70 seats, right at that 70-seat mark.Dan Stefano: 70 seats, okay, so really intimate space. If you're seeing some magicians, and they're doing sleight of hand tricks you're right there to see it. It's really cool stuff. They bring in magicians all over the world.Dan Stefano: Can you describe your role in helping get it started, and how it's been doing for a year?Lee Terbosic: Yeah, we've been doing very well. I'm happy to report I did 100, let me see if I got this right. Yeah, I hit 100 shows publicly last year just at Liberty, so I did three runs. I did an eight-week run of my show, In Plain Sleight, which is essentially all my standup comedy magic, illusions, mentalism. It was my touring college show that I took, and reworked, and re-marketed, and flipped, and had fun with, so I brought that to Liberty this year. Then I brought the... We sold out. Every show sold out for that run for eight straight weeks. I was going to come back in the fall with the show as well, this fall. But during that, over the span of this past year, I had a TV series come out on Discovery Channel called Houdini's Last Secrets.Lee Terbosic: When I wrapped on filming that, there was some stuff that I still wanted to work on offstage. As I was working on it I developed this idea of wanting to bring a Houdini show where I would play Harry on stage to life. Now I have this beautiful venue with all this creative freedom to come up with stuff, and so I decided to create a show called The Life and Death of Harry Houdini. We decided to run that performance. I was working on that all last year, all summer writing it, scripting it, scoring it, everything from filming a documentary, all kinds of crazy stuff. But, the idea was to bring it to fruition for two weeks in October, the last two weeks of October because they're always such a big magic month, and it always circulates around because of Harry Houdini's death on October 31st of 1926.Dan Stefano: Oh on Halloween.Lee Terbosic: Halloween, yeah. We originally promoted that show. We put tickets on sale for just the two weeks. The show sold out in one day, all two weeks of the run, so we decided. The trust came back to me, and said, "Hey Lee, there's a pretty big demand for the show." I said, "Okay, well let's do it another two weeks."Lee Terbosic: The thing about that is that in the show I was doing a stunt. I do the upside down straight jacket escape in the show, and so by me agreeing to extend the show two more weeks that's me agreeing to extend me putting my life on the line every single night.Dan Stefano: Right, to remind everybody, back in I think it was 2016 you did this over... Was it over Penn Avenue, or Liberty?Lee Terbosic: No, Houdini 100 took place on November 6th, 2016 at the corner of Liberty and Wood, so just down, right there on the corner.Dan Stefano: You were hung pretty high in the air on that one.Lee Terbosic: I was 100 feet up, upside down in a straight jacket.Dan Stefano: I know Liberty Magic doesn't quite have 100 foot ceilings.Lee Terbosic: We don't have that high of a ceiling, but it's like a 25, 28 foot ceiling height. Then we were able to find this really, really ingenious rig that we installed into the theater. I was able to be about, when my feet were up there I was about a foot from the ceiling with my feet because of the contraption. Then my head was... If you look up in the audience you're three feet away from me. I'm really hanging over top of you doing the straight jacket escape. This is as close as you can get to having it done, and being able to see it, but it didn't start just this year. I've been doing residencies in the city since 2015. That was the time period where I told my agent, and my manager. I was like, "Hey guys, I've been on the road a lot. I want to come home."Lee Terbosic: I came home, and I started doing residencies at Dave & Buster's with a show called Bamboozled. Then I have a residency still to this day, I still have it going. It's called 52 Up Close at Hotel Monaco. That's just for 52 people at a time, and I'm only doing the show 52 times a year now.Dan Stefano: You grew up in one of the southern neighborhoods in the city.Lee Terbosic: I was a city kid actually, so I was born and raised in the City of Pittsburgh, Lincoln Place. Then I went to, when I was in my teenage years I moved to Baldwin. I went to Baldwin High School. Then from Baldwin, I went to Robert Morris University.Dan Stefano: It's nice to see somebody come back, and try to give back to the culture of the city here, and you touched on it. Is there... People don't think of magicians quite as often. Do you feel like the culture still has really an interest in it, the profession?Lee Terbosic: It is more than ever right now. We are in – I call it the magic renaissance period. Every year something's hot, and Hollywood always... You always know it's hot because Hollywood jumps on it, and they explode it. When magic's hot there was a ton of magic movies. It has peaks and valleys, and sometimes standup comedy's the hot thing, but magic has definitely had its due, I guess. That's because of all these amazing shows that are now promoting magic in the right way, like America's Got Talent and these great magic themed shows on television. That's getting the audience's attention out there to see it live, and that's one of the problems. You can't see magic live. You only watch it on your phone, or on television because most people might know about the Magic Castle in Hollywood, but other than that they're like, "Oh, I can see a magician maybe in Las Vegas", but they don't know that we have it right here. It's in New York. It's popping up in every city across the country now.Lee Terbosic: The same way how a comedian tours the country, and goes to comedy clubs, you're starting to see that happen with magic now. Magicians are literally getting the chance to go to the Chicago Magic Lounge, perform there, perform at Liberty Magic in Pittsburgh, hit the Magic Castle in Hollywood. It's like that circuit is starting to come alive.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, and it's nice to have an intimate venue, like Liberty Magic, like you said, where it's more of that up close, sleight of hand kind of things. When you first got into magic was that your passion, those up close, intimate sleight of hand, or did you like doing those bigger stunts, or how did it all start for you?Lee Terbosic: It really, for me, started with sleight of hand. I was drawn to a pack of cards, learning card tricks, and fooling people, my parents, and my sister. Then it slowly kind of morphed because you have to figure out who you are on stage, and that can take time, and especially when you're a young kid because I was just bouncing all over the place. I loved David Copperfield. I loved Lance Burton. I loved Penn & Teller. I loved all these guys, and they all had their own thing. I'm a young kid that's into magic, so I'm absorbing everything. I'm a sponge.Lee Terbosic: Over those few years of coming up, I dabbled in a little bit of everything from making my sister disappear to mind reading stuff, to trying big illusions, and stuff like that. As I grew as an entertainer, and grew as a performer I realized what my strong suits were, and what the stuff I really dug, and so I veered into that type of magic in which, for me, was a pack of cards. I'm obsessed with doing card tricks, but over time I saw avenues like learning escapes, and my infatuation with Harry Houdini, and that comedy magic, and illusions, Amazing Jonathan, all these different personalities that were out there were in one hand or not shaping me as a performer for what to bring to the audience.Logan Armstrong: You mentioned Harry Houdini as a big influence, and you obviously had the huge stunts, Houdini 100 back in 2016. Are there any other upcoming, crazy stunts that we can expect, or anything big for you on the horizon?Lee Terbosic: Yes, I'm always working on something. My infatuation with him began in 2010. Every kid who gets into magic knows who Harry Houdini is, but I read his stuff as a kid, but I wasn't mesmerized by him back then because, like I said, I had so many magicians to look into, and figure out, and try to find out how all this stuff was happening. For me it was when I was in, it was in 2010. I was in New York City with my mentor, and fellow Pittsburgh magician, Paul Gertner, and Paul has had a big influence in my career. When I was helping him produce his show in New York before we left he asked me. He said, "Lee, do you want to see if we can find Harry Houdini?" At that moment I was like, "Wait a minute. We're going to go find Harry Houdini right now? What do you mean? Where's he at?"Dan Stefano: That's quite a trick.Lee Terbosic: That's quite a trick, right, like he's been dead for a long time. But, he goes, "No, he's buried I think in the cemetery right up in Queens." My history, the little history I had of Harry at that moment, I assumed that he had been buried in his hometown, which was Appleton, Wisconsin. I'm thinking, "Why would he be buried in Queens?" That's when Paul was like, "No, New York was a big part of his life, and helped shape him, and duh, daduh, daduh", and so we went and found Harry that day.Lee Terbosic: That was in 2010. We went to his grave, and we stood there. It was kind of cool to be with another magician, and learning with him. When I got back Paul gave me a book. It's called the Taschen Magic Book. It's this giant coffee table book, very pretty. That night when I was going through the pages of that book I stumbled upon the photo of Harry Houdini doing the upside down straight jacket escape in Pittsburgh . And that was the moment that I went, "Wait a minute." It hit home. It came full circle. I was just at his grave in New York. Now I'm standing in my living room in Pittsburgh, and this dude played my city, and did the biggest trick I've ever seen in this city. I'm going, "Well, I have this information now. It's dated." I could figure out where it was in Pittsburgh. I was like, "I have to bring this back to life for this generation." That was when I set out to create Houdini 100. Then since then I've done the show, Houdini's Last Secrets, where I did a whole bunch more of his tricks on television, and then brought it to the stage with The Life and Death of Harry Houdini.Lee Terbosic: We're working on a documentary right now from all the stuff that I was able to shoot over the summer. I shot at the Magic Castle in Hollywood with a guy named John Cox. I filmed at the Houdini Museum in New York City with Roger Dryer. Then I also got a special invitation tour, invite only, from the people that own Harry Houdini's actual home in New York. It's in Harlem. It's called 278 West 113th Street. He bought the house in 1905, and he lived there up until the day he died in 1926, so he lived there about half his life with his family, and his wife.Lee Terbosic: I was all these things. I was so fascinated with his home, and so that's when I, when I was figuring all these things about his house I decided to make my live show a performance in his living room, so when you come to see The Life and Death of Harry Houdini at Liberty Magic you literally saw me on stage portraying Harry Houdini, but in his home at 278 in Harlem.Dan Stefano: Did you recreate?Lee Terbosic: Yeah, we did because it was all, the whole performance was centered around the bookcase. Now, if you remember in 2016 I recreated the photo of Houdini 100. That was one of the big things. I took the photo from 1916, and I got the exact same image of me doing it in 2016. It's the exact same spot Harry was hanging in the city.Lee Terbosic: When I was doing my research about Harry Houdini's house I found this photo, which is an iconic photo, of Harry standing against a bookcase with all these books. If you Google it, it's one of the first photos that pop up. Well, I found out that photo was taken in his home at 278. That bookcase was very special to Harry Houdini. It housed all of his collection of secrets. It literally was the jewels of magic right there in that photo.Lee Terbosic: Well, when he died all of his magic got broken up all around the world, and that house was obviously sold, but that bookcase in that home remained to this very day. But, in 2016, or 2017 when that house went on sale that bookcase disappeared out of the living room. And if you look at the photo it's a gigantic, beautiful bookcase, and you're going, "How did this disappear out of this photo?" Well, the one person that made it disappear was David Copperfield. He is now the biggest collector of magic in the world.Lee Terbosic: Over the years, over the past 30 years, his collection, he has bought up everything Harry Houdini, and he's taken it all to a secret warehouse in Las Vegas, and that's where his collection lives. In the magic world we refer to it as the Smithsonian of magic because it is unbelievable, but yet it's still a secret. It's the secret where it's at. It's in the secret warehouse, and it's his museum. The only way to see this stuff is by David Copperfield. He's the only one that will allow people in and out to see it.Lee Terbosic: Once I had figured out all these things about Harry's house, and this bookcase, and I was like, "Well, the only thing I got to do is I got to get into this. I got to go see David. I got to get into this museum." That's what I did. I hit up my... Going back, on the Discovery show I did that show with a guy named George Hardeen, and George Hardeen's claim to fame is that he is the great grand-nephew of Harry Houdini, so I'm friends with the family now. I'm in the family, so I know that if I took George Hardeen, a Houdini, and I put him in front of David Copperfield, the biggest Houdini collector out there, and lover of magic, and Harry Houdini, I knew that I would see something special something happen, so that's what I did.Lee Terbosic: I hit up George. I said, "George." He lives in Arizona. I said, "Hey man, do you want to meet me in Las Vegas? I want to take you to something." He was like, "Sure." So, we all-Dan Stefano: That's all you said, "I just want to take you somewhere."Lee Terbosic: He's like, "Oh dude, Vegas, I'm in." He's such a fun guy. George met me in Las Vegas. My friends from England came over, and we all went and saw David Copperfield that night. We got front row tickets. Then I arranged for a meet-and-greet back stage. Then we went back backstage, and I introduced. It was really cool. I got to introduce George Hardeen, a Houdini, to David Copperfield. It was in that moment that David Copperfield was meeting George where I can see David literally becoming a kid. He's like, "Wow." You could see the resemblance, and so that night he took us to see the museum, a private tour by David Copperfield of his museum, and he let us see, and touch all the Houdini stuff, but that bookcase that was in the home. That bookcase is in his collection. What David Copperfield did is he took me to the exact same location on that bookcase, and he posed me, and he took a photo on my phone. He took the photo, and I recreated that photo from the bookcase from Harry Houdini.Dan Stefano: Wow, that's pretty amazing.Logan Armstrong: Wow, that's incredible.Lee Terbosic: It's been a wild ride the last couple years, but obviously still working on more to answer your question. I still have some more stuff I'm working on.Logan Armstrong: Well, once you visited that I'm sure you have a ton of secrets-Lee Terbosic: Oh my God, man.Lee Terbosic: It opened up a can of worms because getting to sit down, and talk to David Copperfield about Harry Houdini, and just his infatuation with him, and the stuff that he was able to uncover. These things are just implanting in me. I'm just going, "Oh boy, where's this going to take me next?"`Dan Stefano: That's amazing the impact. Yeah, the impact he still has on that profession.Lee Terbosic: Absolutely.Dan Stefano: There's a lot of different types of magic. There are these big escapes. There's also the smaller sleight of hand. What do you think is the unifying theme of all of that, and why people are still into magic, and why people are going down to Liberty Magic, and selling out?Lee Terbosic: You know what? That's a great question. I think it's the you have to see it with your own eyes because I think in this day and age people have become so skeptical of stuff. Everything, fake news, and deep state, and now there's videos where it's like Obama talking, but it was obviously made by some other algorithm. It's that type of skepticism that has come full circle where people are just going, "Screw it. I'll go see it live. I got to see it from my own two eyes."Dan Stefano: Lee, can you tell us how people can follow you online, so your social accounts, and any way they can get online to see shows at Liberty Magic too?Lee Terbosic: Absolutely, follow me at leeterbosic, L-E-E-T-E-R-B-O-S-I-C, on Instagram, Facebook. You can visit www.leeterbosic.com, 52upclose.com, and then for everything for Liberty, that's all run through the trust, so it's trustarts.org. Then /libertymagic. So, you can find all the upcoming shows, and other magicians that are coming to play that city, and when I'll be back as well.Dan Stefano: That's great, well, Lee, thank you so much for coming, and everybody just try to get down to Liberty Magic. It's absolutely worth the trip. I've been myself.Lee Terbosic: Come see me.Dan Stefano: Thanks, Lee.Logan Armstrong: Centuries before cell phones and social media human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, and minds, and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Paul Furiga: All right everybody, in this segment we want to talk about economic development. No, don't turn off the podcast just yet because we want to talk about sports, and we want to talk about medicine.Dan Stefano: Sports, now you've got my attention.Paul Furiga: See, there you go, Dan.Dan Stefano: And I've taken medicine before.Paul Furiga: I think you guys both have some perspective. You've taken medicine before?Dan Stefano: Yeah.Paul Furiga: Dan, you're married to a doctor. You have a little bit more insight than that. Give yourself some credit, dude.Paul Furiga: All right, so recently in the news two fairly major announcements related to Oakland, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC. University of Pittsburgh has announced a $250 million campaign to upgrade its sports facilities dubbed by the athlete director, Heather Lyke, as Victory Heights, very cool thing. We're going to dig into that a little bit.Paul Furiga: The other thing we want to do is just offer a little perspective here. Most people don't know this, but where the universities are in Oakland, and where most of the region's major medical centers are is like the fourth largest employment center in the entire state of Pennsylvania. People from outside the region, they look at Pittsburgh, and they're like, "Oh steel, blah, blah, blah, blah." Some people are into the, "Oh, it's eds and meds", but they really don't understand, I don't think, what's happening in Oakland. It's now become a place where you've got these great universities, but you've also got a lot of economic activity.Paul Furiga: For instance, Victory Heights gets announced, and the same day UPMC Enterprises, which is the venture capital arm of UPMC, who knew a hospital system had that, announces one billion dollars in life sciences investments over the next four, five years.Dan Stefano: That's enormous.Paul Furiga: It's incredible, right? Now, the thing about that is we don't see that as much as what we're probably going to see with Victory Heights. If you're listening to this podcast, and you don't even like sports I got to tell you. It's really bad up there, and Dan is a former sports journalist, and-Dan Stefano: Currently, yes.Paul Furiga: ... Logan is a Pitt grad. I'm sure you guys have some perspective on that. Dan, what do you think?Dan Stefano: Yeah, that area where Victory Heights is going to be, and I guess that's the upper campus. Logan, you're the grad. You know exactly, a little bit better than I do, but I don't want to say it's a depressed area, or anything, and they've definitely improved some aspects I believe in terms of their soccer stadiums, and their baseball, softball, but you've got the Fitzgerald Field House up there, which is decades old now. I think it pre-dates, maybe it goes beyond the '50s. I don't have the exact age on it, but I don't think there's any air conditioning there. I know teams are kind of, whenever they try to practice there, it's really crowded. I think what we saw on some of the reporting on this that the wrestling team – half of their team can practice at one time because they're worried about what if they get the entire team out there, the other weight classes, they're going to bump into each other.Dan Stefano: This is needed to replace certain facilities, replace the Fitzgerald Field House with a 3,500 seat arena, where the wrestling team, the volleyball team, the other teams can compete, new arena there, a performance center, an indoor track. This will bring Pitt up to the level that other ACC schools are, and just other universities that are of the same level in terms of these public universities that have giant athlete departments.Dan Stefano: These types of investments are needed from time to time at universities. A lot of people think, "Well, okay, it's just athletics", and you think volleyball, and wrestling, and gymnastics, and all of that. They aren't the revenue producing sports, but it helps enrich the university. I think a lot of this is going to be done with donor money. There's going to be some financing that's going to be involved in it. As any of these projects go it's probably going to go over budget a little bit. You hope not, but it probably will. You have to have this happen from time to time, and Heather Lyke, who's the AD there, kudos to her for actually bringing something like this to fruition. It's been talked about, maybe not in this exact structure for a while, for Pitt Athletics here. The Victory Heights label, I don't know how long that label has been on it, but she made this happen pretty quick in what has been a relatively short tenure right now with Pitt.Dan Stefano: Logan, I know you've probably got be excited to see something like this happen as a recent Pitt grad.Logan Armstrong: There's mixed emotion about it. There's a lot of things, and there's a lot of pros and cons in having a campus in a city environment, and one of the things that's going to happen is this new 3,500 seat arena that they're building on the lawn next to the Pete, that takes up a big area of green space that you don't really have much anywhere else on Pitt's campus.Logan Armstrong: But, like you said, it's definitely needed that there's going to be some facility updates, and renovations because, yeah. The Fitzgerald Field House is old, and there's definitely some renovations that could be of great benefit to other sports teams even if they're not the most revenue generating, but they're also planning on replacing the student recreation center, the gym, and the Pete, and outsourcing that somewhere else. But, I'm hoping that the Fitzgerald Field House becomes a student, not a student athlete, but a student recreational athletic center where they're going to be able to replace some of the facilities that aren't needed to be quite up to standard for say the basketball team, or the football team, but for other gyms, and recreationally athletic facilities that are coming.Logan Armstrong: Definitely excited for the investment in the athletic teams. I just hope that it's done with care.Paul Furiga: With students in mind.Logan Armstrong: Yes, exactly.Paul Furiga: That's the perspective you have. Just a couple of statistics to give people some perspective. This billion dollar UPMC Enterprises investment and life sciences companies that's going to occur. It's going to be largely invisible compared to Victory Heights, and what you were just talking about, Logan. Here's where Pitt ranks nationally. It is number five in the country for academic research grants, primarily from the National Institutes of Health. We all love Pitt sports except for those of us, Dan, who went to WVU, or some other school. No Pitt team ranks there, and that's a big part of what Victory Heights is about.Dan Stefano: Women's volleyball team was very good this year though.Paul Furiga: The women's volleyball team is fantastic. As you pointed out, the wrestling team is great. Heather Lyke, she's dynamic. I met her. I've seen her speak. She makes a great case for why this kind of investment is really relevant to the overall health of a university because you used this term, Dan, non-revenue producing sports, and however you feel about college athletics, a lot of the negative attention towards college athletics goes towards those revenue-producing sports, basketball, men's football. These non-revenue producing sports at Pitt, the Fitz. It's 68 years old. There's no air conditioning, and that's where just about every team does its training, and practicing except for basketball, and for football.Paul Furiga: To put some things in perspective, Craig Meyer from the Post Gazette did a really excellent story last August. In 2017 Pitt spent nearly $81 million on athletics. That's a heck of a lot of money, right?Dan Stefano: Right.Paul Furiga: Ranked ninth of the 15 ACC schools, and while they increased spending 36% over a five-year span dating back to 2012, the third sharpest increase of any ACC school, they only ranked ninth. They are just way, way, way behind.Paul Furiga: There is an award that is given every year in collegiate athletics. It's called The Learfield IMG Director's Cup, and basically the top 150 largest division one universities in the country can compete for this cup. Pitt usually ranks around 135 or something.Dan Stefano: Right, I think this kind of collates the success of all the athlete programs together.Paul Furiga: Yes, everything. It's how they recruit, how the students perform academically, how they rank, the win/loss record. I'm sure that's everybody's thinking about, "Oh, it's just win/loss record." It's a lot more than that. It's a point system, and it also is tied to how each sport performs in the NCAA championships. Again, just for perspective Pitt ranked behind Vermont, Middle Tennessee State, Montana State, Illinois State, and New Hampshire. If you're a Pitt fan, a fan of anything Pitt, that's probably not the competition set that you want to have yourself ranked-Dan Stefano: That's not to knock those universities, but Pitt being a-Logan Armstrong: Middle Tennessee State was the one that knocked off Michigan State in the first round of that March Madness a few years ago, remember.Dan Stefano: That is true.Logan Armstrong: Never forget.Dan Stefano: We're not impugning these teams that are in the say 1AA ranks, but Pitt, if it's going to call itself a top tier school, and it's going to rank as one of the higher public universities in the U.S., as it typically does, probably your athletics should be up there too at a certain level. But, as you mentioned, in terms of development in Oakland we're not stopping at athletics here in the city. There's quite a bit going on, and the university's pretty deeply enmeshed in that.Paul Furiga: That's really the point that I think merits the segment on the podcast today is we're going to see stuff happen with Victory Heights. It's long overdue. Hail to Pitt for those of you who are Pitt grads, or care about Pitt.Logan Armstrong: Yes.Dan Stefano: Some people, Health Pitt maybe.Paul Furiga: I paid to put a daughter through Pitt, so HTP. For everybody else, remember this is part, like you said Dan, of a bigger picture where the universities, in this case Pitt, and affiliated institutions like UPMC, continue to be huge economic drivers.Dan Stefano: Yeah, sure. Then we can clean up South Oakland next where Logan used to live.Logan Armstrong: It has its charms.Paul Furiga: Sure it does. I do like the Mad Mex.Logan Armstrong: The OG Mad Mex.Paul Furiga: Right.Logan Armstrong: Okay, for this episode's Pittsburgh Polyphony where taking a step back from just looking at a single artists, and we're actually going to look at local production group that all went to California University of Pennsylvania together called One800. They've been doing some crazy work. They used to work solely with a Pittsburgh artist, My Favorite Color, who I believe I'm mentioned on here before, but they've just recently put out an album with a slew of Pittsburgh artists that range from hip-hop, to R&B, to pop, and they're doing some really cool things.Dan Stefano: Is the album called Toll Free?Logan Armstrong: The album is not called Toll Free, but I think we need to get in touch with them for the next tape they do.Dan Stefano: There's many marketing opportunities here to be had, Logan come onLogan Armstrong: Yeah, so the album is actually called Pittsburgh City Limits, which fairs well with the talent roster that they have on it, but it has artists from Clara Kent, to Mars Jackson, Pick Patek, Young Guy Burkett, some of these names that I've mentioned before, but, as I've said, they're all out of California University of Pennsylvania. Cody Maimone, Jeremy Rosinger, and Don Pomposelli, they're the three that have been working hard, and they've been doing some really cools things. A lot of times artists will tell you that the Pittsburgh music scene is supportive, and other times it's not so much, so it's nice to see these guys coming together, and really spreading some light onto Pittsburgh artists.Logan Armstrong: It's the first thing, the first type of project I've seen like this coming out of the city.Dan Stefano: Yeah, it sounds really great. As you said, people want to be supportive of each other in this community because it's hard to make it out from a city of this size, and really anywhere in the music industry, even if you're somewhere in Los Angeles, or something where there's a million people trying to make it the same way, or New York City, so it's something kind of special too that it comes from a small town, like California where I suppose, did these people meet in a university down there?Logan Armstrong: Yeah, they met at university. They all went to Cal U together. I'm not sure if that's where they met My Favorite Color, but yeah. These three guys have been at it for a few years. And so how this album came about is they dubbed it the Pittsburgh Sessions. They would get these artists in there, in their home studio, and just vibe with no real preconceived notions of what kind of stuff they wanted to make. They just bring the artists in, and go with the flow with whatever happened. It came out with a really great project. There's some real nice songs on there.Dan Stefano: What are we going to hear from Pittsburgh City Limits today then?Logan Armstrong: We got a great one for you. It features the Pittsburgh artist Walkney, who I think I failed to mention earlier, but Walkney. The song's called Bad Reputation, so it's a nice upbeat tune, maybe a little reprieve from this horrible Pittsburgh weather we got here, so we hope you enjoy it.Dan Stefano: You got a great reputation by my books there, Logan.

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Ep. 10 – Pittsburghers aren’t rude... even if some are Jagoffs

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2020 40:33

There was some Pittsburgh podcast synergy in the newest episode of the P100 Podcast, as we welcomed John Chamberlin and Rachael Rennebeck of the YaJagoff! Podcast. In a lively discussion, we talked about why Pittsburghers aren’t really rude, the many meanings of the term jagoff, and a special they group they support.In our other segments:We discuss the pain of seeing storefronts close — and why it’s not such a bad thing.Executive coach Dick Singer joins us to talk about leadership in 2020.We thank our winners of The Pittsburgh 100’s gift issue contest.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

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Ep. 9 - Looking Back Before We Look Ahead

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2020 41:06

For the first P100 Podcast of 2020 (or the last of 2019, depending on when you listen), we’re taking a broad look at Pittsburgh over the past 20 years – then glimpsing at the future.We’ll talk about the ups and downs, the positive trends and the disappointments that need to be fixed to make Pittsburgh more livable for us all. Then we dive into a discussion on how the region might look very different by 2029.And don’t miss our latest Pittsburgh Polyphony with Steve Soboslai of Punchline, the great punk band from Belle Vernon performing an anniversary show this week.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Full Transcript Logan: You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hey everybody, welcome back to the P100 podcast. I'm Dan Stefano, I'm here with Paul Furiga.Paul: Hey, hey.Dan: And Logan Armstrong.Logan: How you doing, Dan?Dan: Okay. Depending to whenever you're listening to this, it could either be the last day of the 2010s, or it could be really early in the 2020s here. It's an interesting time, we're splitting decades finally.Logan: Or it could be 2027 when you're listening to this, we don't know.Paul: Could be, we have a really good archiving service, don't we?Dan: Could be an alien listening to this as a history and saying like, "What was wrong with them?" No, it is an interesting time and Paul, before we get started here, you brought up a fun fact about changing decades.Paul: Yes, I am sure that many of our listeners will doubt this until I explain it, but I can speak with authority as the oldest host on this podcast because I've lived in parts of eight decades, but I'm only 61 years old.Dan: That's really impressive though, eight decades.Paul: Eight decades. But see, I was born-Dan: Two days into the new one, but-Paul: That's right. I was born in 1958, and I got the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, the aughts, the teens, and now I'm into the twenties.Dan: Pretty amazing. And myself I've lived in five. Well again, you know we're recording this I think before the 2020s begin, but I think I got a good chance of making it there. And Logan Armstrong, you as our youngest host, you still have lived in quite a few decades, so you're pretty long-Logan: Yep. Repping four decades. Snuck into the 90s there for a few years. Yeah, I'm only 22 now, so it's kind of weird to think about.Dan: That's impressive, a Clinton baby over there. All right, yeah it's fun to look at the calendar and think about these things. But the one thing we are going to do on today's episode is take a look back at where Pittsburgh has been, how it has changed within the 2010s and even the aughts that we talked about, and then we're going to talk about going forward here. What the 2020s might hold for Pittsburgh. Through it all there are ups and downs, and the city obviously has been on probably more ups than downs since we've gotten to 2000s. But there have been some really, some sad moments and there are a lot of important cultural things that I think are holding us back from being a more perfect Pittsburgh right now.Dan: So we're going to get into all of that and then we're going to wrap it up, we're going to make a little bit of a hard right turn there, but we have a really exciting Pittsburgh polyphony segment. Logan, do you want to talk about that?Logan: Yeah, sure. We're going to be sitting down with Steve Soboslai of Punchline, a band that's from around the Pittsburgh region out of Belle Vernon specifically, that's done some great things over the 20 plus years that they've been around, traveled the world. So it was great to sit down with Steve and kind of talk about what's coming up for them.Dan: Yeah, that might be a band that's like four decade too.Paul: There you go.Dan: Yeah, they've been around for quite a while. Okay. We're going to stop having fun with the calendar, but we're going to get to it, and thanks for being with us today.Dan: All right guys, to start today's episode we are going to talk about the Pittsburgh of the past. Pittsburgh of the recent past here. Mostly it's a look back at the 2010s and we can include the aughts in there as well because it's been a really interesting 20 years for Pittsburgh. I think if you go back to the year 2000, for myself, I was 13 years old and it just seemed like this crazy future thing-Paul: I wasn't 13.Dan: You were not 13?Paul: No, I was not.Dan: Okay, 15, 16? Okay. Pushing that?Paul: No, I was not.Dan: Logan, I think you were about three.Logan: I was about three years old, yeah.Dan: All right. So for myself, whenever that was coming around, it seemed like this crazy future time. And there were a lot of cool things that were on the horizon at that time, we knew that the North Shore was going to be redeveloped. It was basically just a gravel lot and back then it was only called the North Side, but some new baseball and football stadiums were going up. And now 20 years later, there are a ton of restaurants, there are office buildings, and was kind of the start I think of taking back our rivers in Pittsburgh, and changing it around there. And Paul, I know you were around for that as well, right?Paul: I was actually at the groundbreaking for PNC Park.Dan: Were you really?Paul: Yes. And it was my job to be the personal handler for Vince Lascheid, who was for decades, the organist for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who most people don't know lives on, digitally only. God bless Mr. Lascheid, he left us several years ago. The Pirates however recorded, I think pretty much everything he ever played. And somebody pushes a button somewhere in PNC Park when they want Vince Lascheid and out comes some organ music.Dan: Right. Well, you know, it's not just baseball and football stadiums that helped turn around this city here. Really it was the medical and the tech boom. And those hospitals are still around.Paul: And also energy.Dan: Energy as well, that's right. That's correct. Yeah, that's one thing we'd be remiss to say, in the 2010s it was really the shale industry as it exploded here in this region. You know, we're sitting on top of some valuable resources, especially in the rural parts, that's valuable land out there.Paul: We got gas, Dan. And we have the okay kind.Dan: Right, the okay kind.Paul: At least in terms of economic activity.Dan: Yeah. It's better, let's put it that way. It's better, it might not be perfect, probably another 30 years from now we're going to be seeing a different type of energy. But for right now, it's I guess let the good times roll on that. But as we mentioned as well, the tech industry was a big part of what helped turned around the city in terms of how I think the rest of the country views it. And just in terms of the type of people that are attracted to it right now, it's a younger place. Logan, I think you'd agree with that. Slightly younger.Logan: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And we've been able to kind of make Pittsburgh a healthcare hub, a cluster where we kind of finally have a face to a name as a sector or an industry. We have a lot of major healthcare players here. But as you noted, have a lot of tech companies coming in, especially to the Strip District. I mean, we have Uber here.Dan: We have Apple.Logan: Yeah, Apple.Paul: We have the Facebook Oculus unit, the VR unit is based here.Logan: Oh, I see. I didn't even know that. We have ARGO-Paul: Stick with me Logan, you'll learn something.Logan: Yeah, so we have a lot of tech companies coming in and-Paul: Let's not forget, Duolingo.Logan: Yeah, no, can't forget Duolingo.Paul: Recently acknowledged as the first unicorn in Pittsburgh.Dan: That's correct, and that's fantastic for them. That's so exciting to see. I've used their app before and it's a very fun way to try to learn a language. And it's useful, and so we're thrilled to see that for a company from here that really got its start here as well.Paul: I'm waiting for the Yinzer language translation.Dan: Exactly.Paul: They have many languages on there and they roll out new languages quite frequently.Dan: "Oh, it's slippy outside," you know?Paul: That's right.Dan: Try to pronounce that. What does that mean? But yeah, again, I suppose whenever I said earlier that we are a younger place, it might seem that way, but we really haven't made the population gains just yet. We've got a census coming up that'll probably explain a little more in detail of where we're at. But you know, I think there's a foundation that's being built here that they can use going forward. And basically it's going to be, as always in Pittsburgh, how these public/private partnerships work together to help foster new people coming to the city and just keeping those brains that come out of universities like Pitt and CMU, keeping them in town to build companies like Duolingo.Paul: Yeah. And Duolingo for instance, has had a very well recognized campaign in San Francisco, a billboard campaign essentially saying if you lived in Pittsburgh you could afford this kind of a house, and you could do this and you could do that, in order to recruit talent. And that's been somewhat successful over the years. But if you think about Pittsburgh for a moment, kind of like a forest, get that picture in your mind, what you're saying Dan, is a lot of the older trees obviously they're dying. And as they come down in the forest, the forest is still smaller.Paul: The population though, makes sense, it's the young trees. And so what we're seeing now is while the population of the city of Pittsburgh continues to shrink sadly, the population overall is younger. And one of the reasons is people who grew up in the region, but also people who have moved to the region just like you said, for the hipster vibe. We probably don't have enough man buns and pickle shops. But hey, we got charcuterie and we got all kinds of great restaurants and the club scene is okay. Right, Logan? I mean it's not New York, okay.Logan: No, it's not New York, it's not LA, but you can have fun on weekends.Dan: It's a cool place to be.Paul: Yeah. So there's potential there, right, Dan?Dan: Absolutely.Paul: But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done if this is going to be sustainable and if we're going to grow.Dan: That's right. And while it's exciting to see neighborhoods like Lawrenceville and the Strip District grow and become certainly different places from the way they were even at the beginning of the 2010s, or going back to the year 2000 itself. We'd be remiss to say, to leave out that this has also had an adverse effect on a lot of our population here. The housing in some of these neighborhoods is just untenable anymore. If you build these beautiful looking new apartment complexes, they are affordable only to a certain segment, and these are the challenges that are going to be facing Pittsburgh going forward here.Dan: And just recently even, we had a really interesting and a really sobering development within the city government here where the city council voted to declare racism a public health crisis in Pittsburgh. And that sounds a little shocking, it sounds to some people like it might be extreme, but the stats here are, they came from a-Paul: They're hard to argue with.Dan: Exactly. Came from a report from Pitt earlier this year and again it's, they're hard to argue with. This is from a Post-Gazette article here, really helpful to kind of pull this out. I believe it's from the December 5th issue here, "African Americans compared to whites are living shorter lives, more due to conditions like heart disease rather than violence. They're suffering higher rates of infant mortality and extreme low birth weight. They're five times as likely to grow up in poverty."Paul: You know, I came to Pittsburgh in '94, returned back here after living elsewhere, and I have to say that a lot of the statistics in that most recent report sadly build on earlier reports, some done by the same department at Pitt. And in some ways some things have gotten worse, and people from Pittsburgh are proud generally speaking of their hometown. As you pointed out though, Dan, we've got enormous pockets of, I would say embarrassing lack of economic attainment, that aligns with race and ethnicity. And that is just not the kind of place that I think any of us would want this region to be.Paul: And it relates to some of the other things we talked about a few minutes ago, such as building a workforce of the future. If you're going to leave a significant percentage of the population that already lives in the region behind in terms of educational and economic attainment, how are you going to build the best region you can build for the future?Dan: That's correct. And I think maybe the line that really describes this the best, this comes from Councilman Ricky Burgess, who is also a reverend within the city here. He was one of the authors of the bill that declared racism a public health crisis, and he said, "America's most livable city is also the least livable city for African Americans," and that's a hard thing to hear. And look, we three are three white men. We frankly we were born with a lot of privilege here. And I think an important... bills like this are important to try to set up structures that will help lift up all Pittsburghers, that will try to create an equal playing ground here for whenever people are born and whatnot.Dan: And an important thing for people who are like ourselves here who, we've got certain just built in advantages. You got to listen, and have to understand some of these issues that are affecting segments of our society. And so whenever you see a great new apartment building going up in the Strip or another great new tech startup that's doing great but maybe only employees 40 to 50 people, need to understand that we're not... And need to try to make efforts to not leave behind everyone. People who are in poverty, people who are in these neighborhoods that are being a little left behind.Paul: This is probably the most important issue the region needs to grapple with in the views of many leaders in the region. And really today in the podcast episode as we talk about Pittsburgh of the future, I believe personally this will be the most important measure of whether the next decade is successful, whether or not we've been able to address this problem.Dan: That's correct. And we're going to be jumping into our next segment here pretty soon about Pittsburgh in the 2020s, but let's make sure that we don't forget these points as we discuss the exciting things that are coming. And hopefully again, measures like this that were just passed by city council, that they can help assist all Pittsburghers and again, make us a more perfect city going forward.Dan: All right, Paul, Logan, we're going to talk about Pittsburgh in the 2020s now here. Again, an exciting time because Pittsburgh has come a long way in the past 20 years here, and this next decade, by the time we reach 2029 this place could look very different right now. And a lot of the stuff has already been kickstarted here, and within the next couple of years we're going to see this city is just going to look very, very different. And that's with a lot of big developments coming to the city, right?Paul: Yeah. You know, we sat down and we did a preliminary list and we have half a dozen major regional developments that are coming up. Starting with the airport, which is a multibillion dollar renovation. When people enter the airport, it's going to be something they see immediately, because a lot of what's there now is coming down, going to be replaced with something very different.Paul: You got the cracker plant, which if you travel the Southern beltway from the turnpike from the West down towards the airport, you are going to cross the river and you're going to see the cracker plant. It explodes on you in terms of its stature on the landscape, and you see this $5 billion infrastructure, and we really don't know how that's going to change things. Personally, in the last segment we talked about my eight decades of perspective, so I can remember when, to give the listeners a sense of how things have changed around here, because I think far too often we think things haven't changed in Pittsburgh. In an earlier job I was working around the closing of what was the cracker plant at the time, the Nabisco Bakery, which is now Bakery Square, and is the center and hub of most of the tech investment in Pittsburgh.Dan: Which is where I used to live.Paul: And people were gnashing their teeth at the time, understandably so. People in the Nabisco plant lost their jobs, but it was hard for people to see what that could possibly become. And now Google's there and a lot of other companies, it's been an amazing transformation. So we really don't know with this other cracker plant, which is not really baking cookies.Dan: For natural gas, correct?Paul: It's cracking the natural gas stream to create the basic ingredients to create plastics and a wide variety of other chemicals. We really don't know what's going to happen. I do think it's kind of interesting though, kind of the dichotomy, if the region's experience with what happened in Bakery Square is a good predictor that could be a really, really major difference.Dan: Right. Well, I mean the cracker plant as you mentioned, I mean that's a significantly different industry. And this is adjacent to manufacturing, these are going to be more blue collar jobs, which is something that's been missing in American society here for quite a while since the 2000s here, and especially in our region since the collapse of the steel industry in the 80s. A lot of these big plants that require maybe skilled workers, people that aren't going to be sitting around coding all day, but they are very worthwhile jobs. They're jobs that are hopefully going to pay well.Dan: This is going to be a massive plant. If anybody has not been up there, the size of this thing is just gigantic. So you have to assume that some people in our region are going to benefit from this. So that's an exciting thing to see, whether you agree with the environmental consequences or not, but this is going to be something hopefully positive for the region. As is the airport, as you just mentioned. People don't quite realize what it will be like to have a first-class landside terminal out here, and the improvements won't just be on that terminal, it will also be throughout the rest of the airport.Dan: And hopefully we bring in more direct routes, and that has a great economic boost on the region here. More companies will be interested if they can get out here quicker from where their headquarters are, or perhaps they'll set a headquarters here knowing that they can get to other parts of the country easier. And that's going to be another, it's an expensive project but I think a lot of it is being paid for by say the airlines, and other non-public sources, and it's going to be useful for whenever it comes around, and it's going to be a huge part of Pittsburgh's future.Paul: An important aspect of the major projects that are going to start to come online in the next year or so is how many are actually within the city limits. And when we talked about six or so major projects, we've talked about two, four are actually within the city.Dan: That's right, yeah. Some huge stuff coming up here. One that was in the news story just recently is the big redevelopment that is happening at the Civic Arena, the former Civic Arena site I should say. But First National Bank is going to build an office tower out there, about 24 stories, so it might peek over the top and we might get another little part of our skyline here in Pittsburgh. But that's an exciting thing to see, it's good to know that big Pittsburgh company is going to be staying here, and a building like that will help anchor what they hope to be another great development, another great place for entertainment, retail, even residential areas, here in the city. And so that's exciting to see that that's starting up.Dan: Some other big developments that we should see over 2020, the Hazelwood site that has been talked about for a long time. You know, we figure by 2029 there has going to be something there. It will no longer be a rusted frame of what was once a steel mill. The Strip District, they are well on the way to building up what was the produce terminal, and that development is only going to go straight down to the river. It's beyond just that, so hopefully within a couple of years, less than that, we're going to have a really exciting place in the Strip District to go. It's already a fun neighborhood, so I hope it retains some of that great personality that it has. I know Logan, you feel the same way.Logan: Yeah, definitely. Specifically on the strip that's a great area to go. It has such a rich and varied history, and now culturally, retail and just kind of going there on the weekends. But yeah, as you said, there's a lot of great developments coming there. And you know, it's nice to see these apartments maybe bringing in a more polished clientele to some areas of Pittsburgh. And as we talked about, we kind of have to strike a balance with that. But definitely it'll be interesting to see, and I definitely want to see it keep that personality that you mentioned.Dan: The other development that I wanted to bring up that is within the city limits here, and could be the most visually arresting of them all, would be in the Chateau neighborhood on the North Side just up from the casino a little bit, we've got a developer who wants to build a beach, a lagoon, and a Ferris Wheel on the North Shore. Which would be kind of nuts, but it would actually be pretty cool if it gets done, I'm still a little dubious about it, but-Paul: In PR, we call it unique, not nuts.Dan: I like nuts. I think we can be the agency of nutso. We can kind of go crazy.Paul: No, you know, there's reasons to do what they're doing. And certainly, one of the things we've talked about in today's episode is the perceptions of Pittsburgh over time. And you certainly wouldn't think about there being a beach in Pittsburgh. And the jury's still out. Let's see how it gets built and take a look at the lagoon. Certainly though, a Ferris wheel. Ferris wheels have a lot of history in Pittsburgh.Dan: That's right. The first Ferris wheel, I don't know if it was ... but George Ferris was from Pittsburgh.Paul: Yes, he was from Pittsburgh. So technically invented here, so there is some unity of theme and thought there. With the Civic Arena site and also with the Chateau development, what we're really seeing, akin to what I mentioned earlier about the Nabisco cracker plant, is the fulfillment of a long term promise. The Civic Arena site belongs in terms of development to the Penguins, and it's been a long time coming to get that site redeveloped. A big part of the goal for the community is to reconnect the Hill District back to Downtown. So there's a lot of hope for that and I think that's really a very exciting development to see take shape as we begin the 2020s.Dan: One more development that has been in the news lately that would be ... this would take us almost into like a Star Trek type of future here, except that we-Paul: It will take us into another time zone, Dan.Dan: Yeah, you're right. It would take us into the Midwest.Paul: Chicago.Dan: The proposed Hyperloop transportation system. This is basically high-speed rail on steroids. It would be a somewhat like a train, but it goes inside of a tube type of situation. That's a low pressure tube. Take you up to 500 miles an hour, which as you put, would get you to Youngstown very quickly. But this would actually take-Paul: Yes, you would sneeze and you'd be in Youngstown.Dan: Right, yeah. This would take you between Chicago to Cleveland to Pittsburgh in less than an hour, actually. Pittsburgh to Chicago in less than an hour is impressive.Paul: And it would only cost $47 billion.Dan: Right, yeah. Which is a little bit of scratch, but with inflation I think everybody will be making a little more by 2029. But obviously this is something that's a long way away. You know, it would have to get government approval. Basically what we have had lately are just feasibility studies. But at a certain point, infrastructure will have to change in this country here. And high-speed rail is something that's been thought about in other parts of the country, obviously California has had its ups and downs with it for sure. But it's something, if anybody's had a chance to go overseas, I've been on some high speed rail in Italy, I'll be taking a trip to Japan later this year with my wife and we're going to be, we've already get some tickets to take some of the high-speed rail between some of our destinations. And it's a really, it is an efficient way to get around, and it's a lower cost alternative to air travel.Paul: It can be.Dan: It can be.Paul: And there's also environmental benefits potentially.Dan: Sure.Paul: I was talking to somebody the other day, a friend, and my wife and I, we have a daughter who lives in Chicago and my wife was lamenting that if there are ever grandchildren, that it would be difficult to be there for the grandchildren.Dan: Right, you've got a daughter in Chicago, right?Paul: Somebody was talking about the Hyperloop and said, "What's the big problem? Grandma can jump on the train in the morning and be there in time to take care of the kids."Dan: Right. Well I think-Paul: That sounds weird, but that might be possible.Dan: That would be pretty cool, yeah. Just take a day trip over to Chicago, come home, be snug in your bed later in the day. I think the earliest they would begin building sections of this would be in the late 2020s here. And I believe even Chicago to Cleveland would be the first stage of putting this together. It's fun to think of, this Jetsons-like future. Obviously not flying cars, but the idea of a Hyperloop is definitely something you'd think of in mostly science fiction, but eventually these things will come to pass. And it would be really neat if Pittsburgh were at the forefront of something like this, and it would only again, provide a big boost to the city.Paul: Yeah. And just again, as I said earlier in the episode, as the person with eight decades in perspective here, let's just remember when the Nabisco cracker plant closed down, it was extremely difficult for us to see what the future was going to be like. And now Bakery Square is a technology industry magnet. So these things that we've talked about in today's episode, we can't predict the future, but if we look at the past and how things have changed, we can be pretty darn hopeful.Dan: Right. So I guess the only prediction is we don't know what's going to happen by the time 2029 rolls around, but we're excited for that.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you, through our patented Storycrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan: Hey everybody, we're here with Steve Soboslai, lead singer and guitarist of Punchline out of Belle Vernon, a band that's done some crazy things over the past 20 years that they've been playing. Steve, thanks for being here.Steve: Thanks for having me, Logan.Logan: Yeah, happy to have you. We also have my colleague Robin, who's been a longtime fan of Punchline, here to give her insights as a fan.Robin: Yeah, I'm pretty excited. My favorite band Punchline, I met them back in 2006 when they had opened up for Taking Back Sunday. So I've been a huge supporter of the band for since 2006.Steve: Thank you for your support, your constant support.Robin: Yeah.Logan: So as I said, you guys have been around for quite some time. Could you just give us a brief background of how you guys initially formed and what the story's been since then?Steve: Right. So, we have been around a long time, 20 plus years and that's because this is virtually the first band that we started. We had two other bands that we started and kind of fizzled out, but Punchline was the first band that we ever played more than one show with. And I feel like a lot of bands as they got more serious would have changed their name, but we just kind of always stuck with our name. And we've put out, I think our next full length album will be our 10th record, aside from there's a bunch of EPs and singles and all that kind of stuff too.Steve: But our story is that we formed in high school, and then we got more serious when we went to college and developed a fan base in Pittsburgh, which we've been super thankful to have. Thank you, Pittsburgh, if you're listening. And after the following in Pittsburgh developed, then we moved on to playing outside of Pittsburgh, which kind of grew into getting a booking agent, getting a record deal. Started touring the U.S., we made a couple of trips to Japan, we've been to Japan four times, and we've toured the UK twice.Steve: So I lived in Nashville for about five years, and when I moved back, that was about two and a half years ago, and at that point we said, "You know what? Let's kind of revamp this Punchline thing and do it like we haven't done it in years," and we put out a record called Lion that was self-produced. And in the last two years we've done more touring than we have in the last probably eight years.Logan: Wow, that's great.Steve: Went out and we toured with the Gin Blossoms, we toured with Less Than Jake, we toured with The Spill Canvas. And it was really great to get back out there and see what can we do in the year 2019 and in the year 2020, to really make an impact like we never have before.Logan: Yeah, that's great. And so how was that experience coming back after that break and touring LION? Did you see that it was a lot of your fans that kind of grew up with your music coming back? Or did you see an influx of younger fans in the crowd too?Steve: So what I'll say about that is this: the band Gin Blossoms that we toured with, I'm sure that people listening have heard of them. They have five mega hit songs including Hey, Jealousy, Follow You Down and Found Out About You, which is a song that we covered on an EP that we put out last year called Songs From '94, which covers of all songs from 1994. I remember maybe a decade ago we became friends with the Gin Blossoms through an old manager that we had. I remember talking with the singer and he was telling us how they took a really long break from playing music, maybe they took 10 years off. They had these two huge albums, and then they took all this time off.Steve: And when they stepped back into the touring circuit and into making new music, you would think, well yeah I mean they can just step back in and they'll be at the top of the charts and people will be coming to their shows because everyone loves those hit songs, and it's not really the case. They really had to like rebuild things for themselves. And I saw it over the course of the last 10 years. When they came back to it, they were playing like Rib fests and playing these more like you know, county fairs. And then a couple years later they were doing more prominent festivals. And I think it was last summer, we played a show with them. I looked at Robin, she confirmed it was last summer.Robin: It was last summer, yep.Steve: And last summer they had 3000 people there at Stage AE. And I talked with the singer after and he said, "Steve, we could have not have done this 10 years ago," and it's been just stepping back into the ring and kind of building back up. And over the last couple of years, that's been really inspiring for me. We're a much smaller band, but kind of in the same way stepping back into it. You can pick up kind of where you feel like you might have left off, and start building back up. So we've been doing just that and I think it's been a very fruitful for us. And that is the answer to that question.Logan: I'm sure it's cool kind of stepping back into that circuit. Like you said, working your way up, getting through those bigger venues, more prominent venues. And I'm sure, Robin, I'm sure you're dying to hear some new music from Punchline.Robin: Oh yeah. I listen to them almost every day, so yeah. What can we expect in the new year? I saw that you had traveled this summer, I think you went to a campsite or a cabin, right? To record new music?Steve: Yeah. We rented an Airbnb in Amish country in central PA, Woodward, PA, and we had a long weekend of just being creative and coming up with new songs. Kind of just jamming, as they say, which it's hard to find the time to do that. Just getting together and being creative is such a beautiful thing, as opposed to like, "Okay, we're together now. We have to do this thing. We have to go play this show," but just having time to be like, "Let's see what we can come up with." So that was a great trip, and since then we went to Chicago and we recorded three new songs that we're going to be releasing in the new year.Robin: Are we going to hear them in the January show?Steve: We talked about playing one of them. One of the songs, the first one that's done, it's kind of a sequel to Friend From The Future from our last album, and I'm really excited about that. I'm not going to call it a full on sequel because I don't think song sequels necessarily exist, and that makes it sound like ... it's just, it's inspired by that song, kind of picked up where that one left off and kept going with it. It's pretty neat. I don't know if we're going to play it in the new year, but I think that it's going to come out shortly into 2020.Robin: I have so many memories from, I've been to almost, I can't say all of them, but I've been to almost every single Punchline show since I've met you guys in 2006. And one of my favorite memories is when you played one of your anniversary shows and you played 37 songs and it was incredible. So I'm really excited for this anniversary CD, especially I mentioned before that one of my favorite lyrics is on this record. So I'm excited about the show.Steve: Nice. Well we've been putting in a lot of work to refamiliarize ourselves with, she's talking about this album Delightfully Pleased that came out in 2010, so 2020 is the 10 year anniversary of that. And on January 3rd we're going to do a show at the Rex where we play the whole album front to back plus a couple of other songs. So we've been kind of getting back into Delightfully Pleased mode, getting familiar with the songs and we've been practicing a lot and we're really excited. I feel like we're going to do the album justice, and not just go up there and play the songs. We're trying to be really thoughtful about how to do it. I think you'll like it.Robin: I'll love it.Logan: Okay, Steve. Well we can obviously tell that Robin is very excited about the January show as she should be. It should be a great time at the Rex Theater, again on January 3rd. And we know that you have a song you want to play us out with today. Can you tell us a little bit about that?Steve: Yeah, so the song is called Darkest Dark, and I think it was last year we released a music video for it that was shot in Pittsburgh.Robin: At Kennywood.Steve: Yeah, it was shot at Kennywood and all over the city. It's our tribute to Pittsburgh. We had this director capture Pittsburgh in a really beautiful way, so I would urge you to also check out the music video, the song is called Darkest Dark.Logan: That sounds great. Once again, Steve, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate you coming in.Robin: Thank you, Steve.

Ep 8 – Small Talk and Big Ideas

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2019 27:00

When we go on about pizza and the weather, you might think it’s going to be a quiet episode of the P100 Podcast, but our guests this week have anything but small talk to offer.• Nick Bogacz, founder of the award-winning Caliente Pizza & Draft House, has put Pittsburgh pizza on the global map, and he shares his story with us.• Tom Baker, an Allegheny councilman whose work with nonprofits in the region is an inspiration, talks about setting goals.• We examine whether the winter weather forecast’s a foregone conclusion.• We’ve got a preview of The Pittsburgh 100’s exciting gift issue. This episode is sponsored by WordWritePR:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Transcript: Logan: You're listening to the P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100. Bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hey everybody welcome back to the P100 Podcast. I am your host, Dan Stefano. I'm here with Paul Furiga.Paul: Hey there, Dan.Dan: And Logan Armstrong.Logan: Let’s get it started Dan.Dan: Let’s get it started. Okay, well we got a fun episode for everybody today. For starters, we're going to talk a little bit about a special gift giveaway…Paul: Yes.Dan: ... that we're going to be providing through…Paul: Stay tuned for the special four letter word I have for you.Dan: ...through the P100 Podcast, and The Pittsburgh 100. Something special we're doing for the holidays here and we're really excited about. Following up after that we're going to be talking with Nick Bogacz of Caliente Pizza & Draft House, who is far more than just a pizza business owner, but they are definitely successful at that. So we'll be interested to learn more about the pizza business.Paul: Yes. He wrote the book on that.Dan: Absolutely, he did actually.Logan: Literally.Dan: Yeah, quite literally. Following that we're going to be talking with Tom Baker, who's an Allegheny County Councilman, but he does a lot more in the community.Paul: So much more.Dan: And we're going to be talking about goal setting, which is popular this time of year. A lot of people are thinking of new year's resolutions, but he goes a lot deeper into it. He's really got a lot of great insight into leadership.Paul: Leadership, yeah.Dan: And after that we're just going to chat about the weather.Paul: I mean, because why not? We always chat about the weather.Logan: We are in Pittsburgh.Paul: We're in Pittsburgh.Dan: Yeah and we're going to talk about the weather and that, but. We go a little bit deeper into that, and then somehow it devolves into a conversation about baseball. But yeah, everybody…Paul: Stay with us, it makes sense.Dan: Yeah. As Logan would say, buckle in, let's get it started, and thanks for being with us.Paul: All right, listen up podcast fans. I have a four letter word for you.Dan: Be careful.Paul: It starts with F, but it ends with E. The word is, free.Dan: Okay.Logan: Now you're speaking my language.Paul: There you go.Dan: My language is the other four letter word, but we'll, yeah.Paul: We're not going to have that. That's been edited out, Dan. So Pittsburgh 100 fans, P100 Podcast fans, we are giving away, thanks to our very generous sponsors, a wide array of fantastic gifts. All you have to do, we're all about 100 here, tell us in 100 words or so ... we got Dan here, Dan's a great editor, he'll make sure every one of our Pittsburgh 100 stories is exactly 100 words, we're not going to hold you to that. But what we want to know from you is, why is Pittsburgh such a great place and why should people want to come visit Pittsburgh? We'll explain this in our next issue. You send an email with your 100 or so words of why you love Pittsburgh to editor@thepittsburgh100.com. Correct, Dan?Dan: That's correct.Paul: We've got some great prizes. Dan, tell us about those prizes.Dan: Yeah, it's a great list here. Lots of, pretty varied, I'd say. Runs the gamut from gift cards and some actual real tangible gifts. But really popular, well-known institutions around the area like Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, passes to Kennywood, gift certificates to restaurants, like Caliente Pizza, which we'll talk about them a little bit more in this episode.Paul: That's right. More in this episode.Dan: Restaurants at the Waterfront, tickets to Arcade Comedy, tickets to River City Brass, which that's a little bit of a shameless plug because our man Paul here has something to do with that, right?Paul: I'm on the board and I am actually a recovering tuba player.Dan: Wait, okay. Not recovering. Come on. Yeah.Paul: Well, I get it out every now and then but it..Dan: Retired.Paul: ... it does scare the cat and the dog at home, so.Dan: One of these days I'm going to hear you on the tuba. It's going to be great.Paul: Yes. We'll put that on the podcast.Dan: But also our top gift will be a stay at a Pittsburgh hotel and that's from our friends at VisitPittsburgh.Paul: Unbelievable that folks, if nothing else, enjoy the opportunity for a great meal and a stay in this wonderful place we call home.Logan: Yeah, and we'll have all the details and more, as Paul said, in our upcoming issue of The Pittsburgh 100. Tell you how to enter, some of the prizes we’re giving away, and what you need to do to find yourself with a few extra gifts this holiday season.Dan: Right yeah. The contest will be running through December 19th. After that our panel of judges will take a look and that will..Paul: Our esteemed panel of judges.Dan: Esteemed, right. I don't think I've ever been called esteemed before, but.Paul: You could be called many things.Dan: And again, you will send your award entry, your little story or 100 word story to editor@thepittsburgh100.com. So again, we'll tell you more about it in our next issue on December 12th, but we're excited about it. Start thinking folks, start writing.Logan: Hi everybody. We're back with a special guest on this segment of the podcast. You may know him from winning Best Pizza in America this year at The World Pizza championships in Parma, Italy, Nick Bogacz, owner of Caliente Pizza & Draft House here in Pittsburgh. How you doing Nick?Nick: Great. Thanks for having me today.Logan: Yeah, sure thing. Thanks for being here. So for those unfamiliar with Caliente, you have five locations in the greater Pittsburgh region.Nick: Yup.Logan: How long ago did that start and can you give us a brief background of how that got started and what you're doing now with Caliente?Nick: Sure. So September 2012, I took the plunge and opened up my own business. I always wanted to have my own pizzeria. I worked in the business for about 16 years before then and we opened up in Bloomfield. Over the last almost, I guess seven years, we've opened up five locations.Logan: So five locations over the past seven years. That's a pretty spectacular growth rate. What are some of the things that you did that you thought were unique to Caliente's building a brand that you utilized to grow that fast?Nick: I think a lot of it was we weren't locked into anything in particular. We pivoted a lot while we were branding, and marketing, and opening up Caliente. A lot of times I think entrepreneurs have a set way of how they want to do things and they think, "This is how it has to be done." But then once you're in the grind of it every day, there are certain things you're like, "Hey, wait a second, I want to be this pizzeria and get known for my pizza." But the reality is we're a bar and craft beer is such a big, big presence here in western Pennsylvania, especially at that time seven years ago, that we latched on to craft beer and became one of the top destinations for craft beer in Pittsburgh. So we let that kind of be our brand for probably the first three or four years. Then when we started winning competitions, we got to be known for our pizza, so our brand kind of switched to being really known for the pizza. Now in the last year or so, we've been trying to really blend those both together to get known for both.Logan: Mh-hmm, right. Yeah, well, you're still doing a lot of great things with craft beer. Just a recently released collaboration with Hoppin' Frog Brewery, out of Ohio, came out just a few weeks ago. Is that correct?Nick: Yeah, that's correct. That was probably our 11th collaboration we've done over the last seven years. We're really working behind the scenes to have our own brewery as well. That's on the horizon for 2020. So I think there's a lot of different things that we're trying to do with the beer still, we never forget that that's what helped build the brand in the beginning. I think we're just happy that the pizza's been doing so well too. From the very beginning, people would come in, they'd get the craft beer, and then they'd eat the pizza, say, "Boy, I thought it was going to be bar food, but this pizza's fantastic." Now it's not just Pittsburgh's secret, we're internationally known as well.Dan: Yeah talking about international, you guys obviously went out and done a lot of great stuff at The World Pizza Championships. What has been happening lately then in terms of the international travels of the Caliente crew there?Nick: Sure. So we just got back about four days ago from London and there was an international competition over there. It was a great learning experience. A lot of times we go to these different competitions you're using ovens that you never used before, judges that don't speak English. You would think in London they'd have English speaking judges but they were Italian judges. So you know a great learning experience over there. We traveled with The World Pizza team, which is about 35 representatives from across the country. So guys that have been in the business a long time or guys who have a lot of different kind of locations. They may have slice shops or they may have shops in the stadiums across the country, you pick up different people's expertise when you're traveling with that team. I just think we've really done a good job of representing Pittsburgh, especially when we were back in Parma, in Italy, back in April. I thought we did a great job over there, come back with Best Pizza in America. So I think it's just been, the international part, it's been a lot of travel this year. Before this, I had never left the country, so three times in one year. I'm definitely getting the frequent flyer miles in.Dan: Fantastic.Logan: Yeah, you're not doing bad. You've had a lot of success outside of the World Pizza Championships as well. But back to growing Caliente. I know you talk a lot about building a team and kind of some unique things that you've done as the leader and owner of Caliente that you believe have really propelled your business and brand further than others. Whether it's with how you treat your employees or how you're running operations, and you're talking about a lot of these things in your new podcast, The Business Equation.Nick: Yes. I wrote a book called The Pizza Equation. It's on Amazon, it released in February. After I released it, I had a very successful book tour out in Las Vegas signing books and I've got another signing coming up here in about two weeks in Chicago. So that went really well and I said, "You know what, if I'm selling the pizza book in my industry, what if I took my small business tips and started to share them with the world?" That's why I wanted to go ahead and start The Business Equation Podcast.Nick: Each week is a different tip or tactic. It's a 15 to 25 minute podcast that's just me talking about, "Hey, this is how we handle staffing and our issue," or, "This is how we handle staffing in our store, in our company." They're not quite pizza specific. We talk a lot about different topics. Another one that we talked about was cashflow. I think it's important for a small business. A lot of times you don't understand how cashflow works. It's just a big term or maybe there's a college book that you read about it. But in the real world there's a lot of different tactics you can use for cashflow. I get into that real in depth. I think what The Business Equation Podcast has done is, it's that real world I'm out there living it. It's not what you learn in college, it's not what's in a book. It's a lot of, "Hey, this is what I tried and it worked."Dan: That sounds like some pretty awesome stuff there on The Business Equation Podcast then. So we definitely recommend anybody who's a budding business owner listening here today to subscribe to that and listen. We'd also recommend that they get out to the Caliente shops, especially for this time of year because it's the holidays and you guys have some fun stuff going on, right?Nick: Yeah. This is our second annual food drive. Last year, I don't know quite how many pounds of food we collected, but we had a full suburban full of canned goods. So from now till Christmas we have where you can bring in three canned goods, give them to any Caliente employee and they'll give you a free cheesy bread for your next order, and it all goes to the Pittsburgh public food bank.Logan: That's excellent. Speaking of contributing things to the community, you also have been generous enough to contribute a $50 gift card to any of your Caliente locations for our gift issue this year. We're giving away gifts, thanks to our generous friends and sponsors.Dan: Yeah. As we talked about in the opening segment here, basically all people have to do is send an email to editor@thepittsburgh100.com telling us about why Pittsburgh, why you love it so much or why it's home for the holidays in 100 words or less. You can get that Caliente gift card that will be one of the gifts that you could possibly get out of that. Nick, we appreciate you playing a part in our gift giving issue here.Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do it.Logan: Yeah. So Nick, to finish up your work, can everybody find Caliente on socials and where can they learn more about The Business Equation Podcast?Nick: Sure. So The Business Equation Podcast is on all forms, Spotify, Apple, Google Play. Then nickbogaczofficial on Instagram, and then pizzadrafthouse.com, and then calienteandpizzadrafthouse on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And then like I said, The Pizza Equation is available on Amazon.Logan: Great. And Nick Bogacz here, owner of Caliente Pizza and Draft House. Nick, we appreciate you being here with us.Nick: Thanks for having me.Dan: Thanks man.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds, and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented storycrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Dan: Hey everybody out next guest is Tom Baker. He's an Allegheny County Councilman for District 1, which covers a lot of the western and northern suburbs. But Tom, you're involved in a whole lot more. Lots of nonprofits in the region working with young leaders in the area, and in particular, one of the reasons we want to talk with you today is you're the founder and chief program officer of Get Involved!. That's a nonprofit that educates and empowers young leaders. Tom, thanks for joining us.Tom: Yeah, thanks Dan, thanks Paul. Thanks for having me here. I'm glad to be here with you.Paul: It's great to have you here. Dan, a lesson to be learned, elected officials are people too. They have interests outside of the county council room, right?Tom: We do. Many interests, absolutely. That is true.Dan: This is all new to me. Wow, it's remarkable. I thought they just had letters next to their name and they sat around on boards on all the time. Okay that's…Paul: No.Dan: No, Tom, yeah we do appreciate you being here. Can you tell us a little bit more about Get Involved!?Tom: Sure. So Get Involved!, actually it started as a book in 2008. “Get Involved! Making the Most of Your 20s and 30s” came out and it was a really fun experience. Got the tour of the state, got the tour of the country a little bit talking on college campuses. Your colleague here, Robin Rectenwald, actually worked with us in the early days on getting the word out about Get Involved!. In the end we found that really the mission of the book was a much better fit as a nonprofit organization. We gave it a 501(c)(3) back in 2011.Tom: We've been running the Pittsburgh Service Summit now for 10 years. We just had that event in September, September 12. It was great. We've had a few hundred people at the event every year. It's all about bringing people together. Our hope as Get Involved! is for people to say that they aren't bored in Pittsburgh, but they're on a board of directors in Pittsburgh. That can be a board of directors of a nonprofit that they care about, a young professional board, whatever it is, we want people to get off of their couches and into the community helping other people.Dan: Right. You touched on it, there's a lot of regular events that you guys hold. There's one upcoming really soon, and that's the annual Goal Setting Event that you do. Everybody thinks about this time of year - new year's resolutions. But on January 6th you got a pretty cool one, can you tell us a little bit more about?Tom: Yeah. I will say a few years back I did it for two years on January 1st itself. That was a little aggressive. People were like, "I like your momentum with the goal setting, but let's have it maybe not on New Year's day."Dan: There you go.Tom: So we're doing it on January 6.Paul: They might have been out the night before.Tom: They might’ve been.Dan: The goal setting is get over this hangover. Yeah.Paul: That's right.Tom: So January 6th. A little bit they'll gotten back to work at that point. So the goal really is for people to come that night, and when they come every year, to think about their careers, to think about their civic lives. We talked a little bit about fitness as well and things that they might be doing outside of work and outside of their civic lives. We'll talk about family and making sure that they have good friendships too. We'll have different tables set up again this year with different pockets of their lives and they'll set goals at each little table to figure out what they want to do in 2020. So that night they will leave with hopefully a good sheet of goals in these different parts of their lives and also at least a few dozen accountability partners, people that can keep them accountable to these goals. It's fine to say you want to do things or achieve things, but unless you actually share it with somebody that cares about you it doesn't matter. So we're making sure that they share it with other people in that room that night and that we then become accountability partners for each other through the rest of 2020 together.Paul: Wow. So how has that worked in the past few years that you've been doing this? What sort of results are you seeing?Tom: We see a lot more people getting onto either young professional boards or boards of directors. Being in my professional and civic life with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, we've seen a lot of people step up to become Bigs through the Get Involved! community, which we're very appreciative of. My Littles are now getting pretty old. They're 28, 21, 17, and 14. I don't want to get married again, I've been married happily for 15 years, but if I did, all four of them would be in the wedding. They're all four of the best friends of my life. So it's been an incredible experience through Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Actually my 28 year old Little, that got matched with when he was 10, he is the godfather to our toddler, Lila June. Preston is still one of my best friends. This year he flew back from San Francisco to be the MC of my 40th birthday roast actually, which is really fun. So the friendships that have been…Paul: He had a lot of ammunition there, didn't he Tom?Tom: He did. He has like 18 years’ worth of things to share about me. But it's been wonderful. So if it is serving in an organization like Big Brothers, Big Sisters or some of the other ones that we've been involved with over the years, certainly the goal really is to find their passion. We always say within Get Involved!, if you hit the lottery and you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life to do good, to help other people, something that inspires you, motivates you, just find a way to volunteer and help others.Tom: So I'll just say at the last Power Hour that we had ... so this Goal Setting Party is also known as Power Hour number 72. I will say each Power Hour has fun connotations, but it really is a leadership series, it is a leadership panel, where we bring in different guest speakers. So the goal of each Power Hour really is for people to learn from a couple of different community leaders, get to know each other, and then work together in some fashion. So we've had good success over the years with people getting jobs through the Get Involved! Network, with getting put onto boards, getting appointed to different leadership roles. It's been really wonderful.Paul: Do you think Tom, the timing of the book and the growth of the organization, there's, let’s just say, well it's open to, to everyone, you are really targeting a particular demographic, which is say people of your age group, millennials. Do you see any trends with regard to leadership that are generational?Tom: It's interesting. Starting, we talked about county council, it will be a much younger council come January. I've been the youngest one for the last six years, but there will be one person exactly my age and then two younger. So we are seeing more young people running for office. Even where my wife and I live, all of our elected officials, the two state reps and the Senator where we live, are all younger than me, younger than 40. So we do see more people running for office. But just in general to the school district where we live, when I was on I was the youngest by I think 20 or 30 years. Now there's five people that are all within the same age range in their '30s and even '20s. So you do see more young people running for office.Tom: But in nonprofit boards, I mean nonprofit boards want young people to get involved. That's the fast track leadership program that we do within Get Involved!. That Robin Rectenwald, your colleague and your staff member, Paul, she was actually one of the first graduates of that program years ago. The program, it's always been geared towards just making sure that young people know that nonprofits, community organizations want them. They desperately want them to get involved in their work. I think sometimes a 25-year-old thinks, "I could never be on a nonprofit board. I can't write a $5,000 check or a $1,000 check." But there's so many skill sets, and strategies, and things you can bring to the table that nonprofits desperately want and need for their organizations.Dan: That's fantastic. For a lack of a better way to say this, how does one get involved in Get Involved!?Tom: How do you get involved in Get Involved!? Yes. So we have an active Facebook page. Our website is just getinvolvedinc.org. We do have the event coming up on January 6th. In the course of any given year we'll have another cohort of fast track community leaders next year. In 2020 we'll have four to six Power Hours as well. So by the end of 2020 we'll be up to almost 80 Power Hours that we've done as an organization. Then next year we'll have our 11th annual Pittsburgh Service Summit. So that's a great way to come together and really get to know people here in the community. I will say, anyone that would want to collaborate on events, we love working with other community organizations. We're happy to collaborate and partner with other community groups to do good and to get each other involved in the city.Dan: Right.Paul: That's great. And once again, that website is getinvolvedinc.org.Tom: .org. You got it, yup, yup.Paul: Okay, great.Dan: Right, yeah. Tom, thanks so much for being here, we really appreciate it. Hey everybody, get involved.Tom: Get involved in Get Involved!, yeah.Dan: All right everybody for the last segment today we're going to chat about the weather.Paul: Wither the weather Dan.Dan: Wither the weather. Wow, you've such a way with words.Paul: I'm telling you man. I've withered outside in the weather.Dan: Right, yeah. This is the subject that everybody talks about. You know, you're alone in an elevator with somebody, you got nothing to talk about, you chat about the weather. "Oh, it's a nice day," whatever, but.Paul: That's right.Dan: No, right now we're finally starting to see snowflakes. It's getting cold enough, particularly in the Pittsburgh Metro region we're seeing them. If you're out west or up north you probably…Paul: Out east. East Highlands.Dan: All right, Westmoreland County should not be called Westmoreland County because I always want to call it west.Paul: That's true.Dan: That drives me nuts, but yeah. okay. If you say you're out in Westmoreland, or up north where it's just colder, or you got more hills, you've probably seen a lot more snow so far this year, but.Paul: A little.Dan: I finally had to actually wipe some snow off my windshield over in Mount Lebanon about a week ago and that was something, but. So I got a little curious about the weather. I said, "Okay, what kind of a snowy year are we going to have?" Apparently the Farmer's Almanac, that font of wisdom, said that it's going to be a frigid freezing snowy winter. So I got a little deeper into it and I took a look at the long range weather forecast. So you could check into January, 2020, which obviously isn't that long from now. But they're predicting rain to snow from January 11th to the 14th, it's going to be cold, more snow the week after that, more snow toward the end of January. I've always found this pretty amazing that they can predict this stuff and they claim that it's pretty accurate, it's like 80% accuracy, until I took a deeper dive here. I checked out a little more into, yes. It turns out a study from the University of Illinois, the great meteorologists over there, they say that the Farmer's Almanac's only, say, 50% accurate. The secret formula that these Farmer's Almanacs, which there's a couple of competing ones. I guess there's the Farmer's Almanac…Logan: …competitive landscape, I didn't know that.Dan: ... In the old Farmer's Almanac, the old one, yes.Paul: The old Farmer's alm?Dan: Right, yeah.Paul: Is it an old farmer or an old almanac?Dan: I don't. What was it, plural farmers, apostrophe…Logan: Or both.Dan: Farmers apostrophe or is it just one farmer apostrophe S. I guess we have to learn about that. But I always just find this stuff kind of fun and neat to talk about. Regardless, we've got some snow coming up this winter.Paul: Yeah, but apparently there's fake news even in the weather, huh Dan?Dan: Accurate, accurate, yeah.Logan: So it sounds like the Farmer's Almanac is a 50% and they're just flipping a coin and going, "Eh, eh snow."Dan: They call it 80% after that, it's great.Paul: This reminds me of The Wall Street Journal article several years ago where they get all these esteemed prognosticators together about how the stock market will do.Dan: Okay.Paul: And then they gave a monkey darts to throw at a board and the monkey did better in picking stocks apparently than some of the prognosticators. It's the whole field of weather. In Pittsburgh we have some great weather forecasters, personalities, right?Dan: Absolutely, yeah.Paul: But think of this, what other business could you be in and be wrong 50% of the time and people love you?Dan: You've seen my pitching…Logan: Marketing.Paul: Marketing, not at our firm Logan.Dan: You've seen me pitching to clients, they're pitching to clients stories and stuff. Sometimes you're batting below 500 on that one, but.Paul: Speaking of batting, I mean if we want to be honest about this and maybe something like the Farmer's Almanac is more entertainment than anything else. But when you talk about a very difficult line of work, think about somebody like Ted Williams, the long deceased, but best hitter ever in the history of baseball.Logan: Sure.Paul: I mean the guy had a .400 average. What that means is out of every 10 times he went to the plate, he made an out six times.Paul: So to put things in perspective.Dan: I'd maybe put Pete Rose on that pedestal, but he's not in the Hall of Fame so I guess you can't say anything about it.Paul: I was actually there the night that he broke Ty Cobb's record. But that's another story.Dan: Really? That's impressive. But somehow we got into baseball from a weather conversation here.Paul: What we're talking about is, what the difference is, I mean, I can watch Ted Williams while, I can't watch him, but I can watch a hitter and they're either going to make an out or they're going to get a hit. But what I want to know whether I need to go outside in that and I need to know what to wear, I want a little bit more predictability. Don't I?Dan: Sure. Yeah, well, I would say try to stick with the experts then and maybe you only pay attention, say, a few days in advance because even a seven-day forecast can change pretty quickly.Paul: Yeah, I'm with that.Logan: And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 Podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at p100podcast.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter @pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news, updates, and more from The Pittsburgh 100.

The Easiest Writing Tip Ever To Help You Write Your Book

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2019 2:22

Today's podcast features the easiest writing tip ever. It's really logical and simple and will help you out as you write your book. Want more writing support? I'm ready to help. I specialize in getting writers unstuck. Storycrafting.net/finish

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148: Floober and Cognitive Outsourcing with Jacob Stoebel

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2019 58:43

00:43 - Jacob’s Superpower: Being Obsessive Re: Specificity; Allergic to Ambiguity on Teams 02:09 - Talking About Neurodiversity in Workspaces * Self-diagnosis * “Masking” * Jacob’s Background and Intro to Software Development 13:49 - Driving Desire to Learn About Things 22:04 - Automating Boring Work * Personal Automation * Cognitive Outsourcing 34:41 - “Floober Feature” 36:07 - Passing On Strategies and Data Organization CodeStream (https://www.codestream.com/) 47:37 - Storycrafting and Succession Planning Reflections: Jessica: Consult a human when you don’t know, but often from the context of what directory you’re in and what branch you’re on the computer CAN figure it out. Chanté: Sociotechnical systems and thinking about personal automation. Jacob: What can I do to better organize to be a positive legacy? Arty: What are the ingredients to light your spark and your fire about software? This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

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Ep. 2 - Pittsburgh's Future, 100 Things, Aliens

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2019 27:00

For this episode of the P100 Podcast, we have a full house! Joining our regular hosts Logan, Dan and Paul are The Incline Director and author, Rossilynne Culgan who has just published the book 100 Things to do in Pittsburgh Before You Die. WordWriter Hollie Geitner stops by to review a new list of top hated business jargon buzzwords. Let's see how many you use regularly. Stick around to the end, as Dan and Logan discuss . . . aliens.----more----This episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Enjoy the full transcript from this episode below:Logan Armstrong: You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing Pittsburgh news, culture and more, because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan Stefano: Hello everyone. It's Dan Stefano, back with another episode of the P100 podcast. I'm alongside my co-hosts here, Logan Armstrong and Paul. Good to see you guys yet again.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, good to be here.Paul Furiga: Thanks, Dan. Really looking forward to this episode. Let's get to it guys.Dan Stefano: Yeah, we got a lot of interesting topics here for you today. We're going to talk a little bit about why it's great to see Pittsburgh on some of these "best of" lists, but some of the reasons behind why you know they —Logan Armstrong: Might not continue forever.Dan Stefano: Exactly. We're also going to talk with Rossilynne Culgan, she's director of The Incline and the author of the second edition of 100 Things To Do In Pittsburgh Before You Die. Lovely title. We're also going to be talking with Hollie Geitner of WordWrite. We're going to discuss business jargon that we hate. And there's some of that stuff that we hate, we actually use so that'll be fun. And then we're going to end it with a conversation about aliens and I'll just leave it right there.Paul Furiga: All right, so one of the other things you want to talk about in today's episode is what a great place Pittsburgh is: Check out all the rankings, and what the future looks like. A couple of years ago, the Allegheny conference did a report on the population trends in the Pittsburgh region. It's a report called Inflection Point. It's on the Allegheny Conference website if you want to check out all the details. Very interesting.Paul Furiga: So here's Pittsburgh today, Dan and Logan. It's a place that's really great for millennials and Gen Z. It's like little Brooklyn, lots of guys with man buns, and curated pickle shops, and really hot restaurants, and that's all really great and cool. Oh, we got autonomous cars driving around on the streets and we love it, right? This is all really, really good stuff. What's interesting to me is how did that happen? And a part of the way that happened is because of the collapse of the steel industry. Essentially an entire generation of people left Pittsburgh.Paul Furiga: You know, I always love it when the national sportscasters say, Oh, those Steelers fans, they travel really well.Dan Stefano: They're not traveling. They just live there.Paul Furiga: Exactly. Dan, they're not traveling. Those Steeler fans are in Houston because in the 1980s, their entire family lost their jobs and they moved to Houston.Dan Stefano: Right.Paul Furiga: So, you know, that is what it is. How it matters, in terms of what's happening today, is that that generation is gone. My generation, the baby boomers, they're retiring and Logan's generation, your generation, there just ain't enough of you to fill all the retiring jobs in the region. The Allegheny conference report said something like 80,000 people are going to retire in the next five years, and there are not enough people to fill those jobs, and because all those people left and became great Steeler fans elsewhere, there's not a big enough talent pool to fill the jobs that we have today.Dan Stefano: Right. And I think where you'd think about getting some of that talent pool from the universities and colleges, which we have a ton of in this city. In this same survey, it said 50% of our 40,000 annual college graduates will leave the region, citing an inability to find a job as their number one reason. And I think that's maybe the crux of the problem here is how do you keep people in this city? You know a lot of these great amenities that you talk about are geared for people who are in college or just recent graduates. How do you keep them in place after that? And I think that's the really the big problem right here and we need to discover industries that are going to keep people.Paul Furiga: Exactly.Dan Stefano: You know right now it's a lot of, kind of niche industries or you know, just places that don't, quite ... types of industries that don't quite have the skills that people might be developing in high schools here or there just aren't enough of those positions available for them.Paul Furiga: Right. It is great that there are autonomous car companies here. How many of them could there be?Dan Stefano: Right.Paul Furiga: And you're not going to learn in high school, at least not today, how to program the software on an autonomous vehicle. That takes some additional training. Now, Logan, I thought it'd be interesting to get your perspective on this. I mean, you're a recent grad, you're in the demographic. You went to Pitt. You went to school with people from outside the region. What Dan shared about people getting a great education here at CMU, Pitt, some of our other schools, and then leaving. What have you seen?Logan Armstrong: What that survey said kind of hits the nail on the head. The inability to find jobs here. I think a lot of the majors that kids are picking aren't necessarily optimal for Pittsburgh, but I also think it's a more generalized problem now that I just think too many kids are forced into choosing college or university as a career path and that it's just overpopulated in general. I mean, I think we've gotten too far away from trade schools and things like that and actually crafts and trades that — you're not going to be able to find all these degree-level jobs in a city as small as Pittsburgh.And it's not small, but it's by no means like a Dallas or an Austin or New York or San Francisco or things like that. And so I think the problem is that it's a combination of things, that there is just truly an inability to find a job, and I also think that with so many options there are today, that kids kind of get overwhelmed as to what they're going to do. I mean, there's so many job paths and job options that you can take, and so many avenues online and everything that you can try to find a job, that it's much more accessible to a kid in Pittsburgh that wants to move to San Francisco, or wants to move to Brooklyn where they can look online, and get a job remotely, which that was impossible really 30 years ago.Paul Furiga: That's really an interesting perspective. And what you shared about maybe college isn't the right path for everybody is a national issue. In this report that I referenced and in a lot of the reporting, this is a big issue. The jobs that are wanting are not necessarily the jobs that require a college degree and you know, our audience, the people who are listening, we've got a lot of business leaders listening and one of the things that this study found is that as business leaders, and I'll include myself in this, frequently we might be pushing people in a particular direction that doesn't actually meet, you know, what's needed. There are certain professions that don't require a four-year degree that are, you know, pretty well-paying jobs, right? And those are always wanting, you know? It's a skills mismatch.Dan Stefano: Right. That's an interesting phrase to use there because on a national level we talk about a skills gap and the lack of people getting into, say, these technical biz industries. A big part of it is how culturally we think about education post-high school. The paradigm is shifting with the amount of student loan debt people are getting as Logan, you put it, it's overpopulated. I think, you know, within the next decade here, we're going to have to see a shift. That's going to be what changes the workforce around the country. Not only Pittsburgh but you know, especially here, this type of, you know, a change in education is probably what's going to drive it if we're going to continue to stay on these "best of" lists.Paul Furiga: I think that's, that's absolutely crucial. You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to discuss it on the podcast today is you know, we'd like to know what you, the listeners, think about these issues. You know, we want to hear from you on social and we want you to comment on the show.And I mean this is an issue that all of us can play a part in. You know, recently WordWrite moved to a new office. We got a new sophisticated office phone system, and it takes a long time for the owner of the growing small business that installed our phones to get to our office. And the reason for that is he cannot find a reliable 20-year-old, or 21-year-old employee who's not interested in college education but has technical aptitude, and is willing to work with him to learn the skills to help him maintain high tech phone systems and grow his business.And so, as a business leader myself, the way I would look at this is I would ask folks who are listening to do a little reflective thought and think about this and you know, we'd like to know what you folks think about this. I mean, I think we all want Pittsburgh to be at the top of these lists. Oh, maybe even we could win a sports championship again, once in a while. That might be nice.Dan Stefano: We are better.Paul Furiga: We are better, I know. Expectations, but you know, this is kind of like beyond the 100. Some of the issues behind the news that are driving what's happening.Dan Stefano: Okay. We're here with Rossilynne Culgan, the director of The Incline and the author of the second edition of 100 Things to do in Pittsburgh Before You Die, which is just a great title for a bucket list, I think so. It's perfect. Rossilynne, thanks for being here.Rossilynne Culgan: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.Dan Stefano: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, before we get going here, we could talk a little bit about The Incline itself. You know, it's really a unique news outlet in the city, and especially with a lot of different types of outlets beginning. So can you tell us a little bit about The Incline?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes. So the first thing is we are theincline.com, not the incline on Mount Washington, which is a common misconception that Pittsburghers tend to have. But we are a local news website. We deliver a morning newsletter every day and it is a roundup of everything you need to know in Pittsburgh for your day. So it's everything from the heavy serious news, to a little bit more lighthearted news. But we really like to think of it as the Pittsburghers' guide to their day and we do original reporting as well as share the reporting of other outlets.Dan Stefano: And what does your job involve as a director here? Do you find yourself wearing a lot of hats or ... ?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes, definitely many hats. I do write as much as I can as well as editing articles and then sort of charting the vision for what The Incline's voice and tone will be, the kinds of stories that we'll be telling. So definitely a lot of hats.Dan Stefano: That sounds great. I know you spent some of your career working in traditional news at a newspaper. How do you find this different and what do you enjoy about it?Rossilynne Culgan: Oh, good question. I did work in traditional newspapers for a while and I think I spent a lot of time sort of being the newspaper of record for a lot of communities. And The Incline is a very small staff, but we had the luxury of not being a newspaper of record. So essentially that means we don't have to tell every single story, you know? We can't and we don't make that a part of our mission either. So we really get to pick and choose, and our goal is to find the stories that are in the gaps, and it might be a that someone else has told, but we're going to approach it from a new angle or highlight a new voice. And that's really our goal.Dan Stefano: Well, you know, we talked about you wearing a lot of hats and another hat that you can put on now is the author of a book.Rossilynne Culgan: That's right.Dan Stefano: And that's pretty impressive. One day I'd like to be the author of a book, but I just have to figure out a subject to write about. Now, this is actually the second edition of this book. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in writing this?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes. So the first edition was not mine. It was actually by a different author. And the publisher likes to keep these books really fresh and up to date. And Pittsburgh is changing so rapidly that there were many, many additions and deletions actually. So this is completely my take. The publisher was looking for an author and found me. I like to say it's a combination of good search engine optimization and a lot of luck, and it all worked out from there.Dan Stefano: All right. Well, Logan, we are all about 100, so I think, you know, it's exciting to see that there are 100 things in this book, but you know yourself.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, no, I love to see the hundred theme. Obviously we're all about the-Rossilynne Culgan: That's right.Logan Armstrong: Pittsburgh 100 and so you said there were some deletions and it's kind of your take to keep it at 100 exactly. I'm sure there are some things you probably had to delete out of there.Rossilynne Culgan: Yeah. Really with the deletions, it was mostly things that had closed, believe it or not, or things that had changed, but there were things that it pained me to leave out. So I started the process by asking friends and family and anyone on the internet for recommendations and then tried to pare down the list. And it was not easy at all.Logan Armstrong: Is there any particular experience that you remember? The first time you visited someplace and you were like, wow, I can't, I believe I haven't been here before?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes, so many experiences like that actually. I thought I knew a lot about Pittsburgh and I found out that I was wrong. But one, in particular, I'll talk about, is the Photo Antiquities Museum, which is on the North Side, and I used to work on the North Side. I walked past this place every single day and never ventured inside, but it is so worth it.It's a museum with photos of Pittsburgh from sort of its industrial heyday as well as photos from across Europe. There are photos of the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely fascinating and old cameras, which was so cool to see. I mean thinking that we all have a camera in our pocket, you know, with our phones all the time. To see these old gigantic cameras is so cool. Highly recommend.Logan Armstrong: That's awesome. Back when cameras were a real feat of technology and kind of taken for granted now just walking around with that in our pockets. That's great.Dan Stefano: No one's seen my mom try to use a phone these days, so it's still a feat of technology.Rossilynne Culgan: It is, it is true. Dean Stefano: Switching gears a little, but what does the future of The Incline look like then? You know, as we go forward here, you know, everything has to stay fresh, including the 100 things we have to do about Pittsburgh, but for yourself, you know, looking as the director of The Incline, what do you see as the future there?We're a startup. We're a scrappy young startup. So for us, I hope that the future is growth. I hope that we're able to tell more stories because there are many stories that I know are not being told at this point. I have a Google doc going of 18 pages of story ideas. That's not a joke. So there are a lot of stories that I want us to be able to tell. So I think the future for us is, is growing.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much, Rosalyn. Once again, we're with Rossilynne Culgan and the director at The Incline and recent author. Where can we follow in subscribe to The Incline and where can we find your book?Rossilynne Culgan: The Incline is at theincline.com, and then the book is at 100thingspittsburgh.com.Logan Armstrong: Great. Well, thanks so much again. Glad to have you here, Roz.Rossilynne Culgan: Thank you.Dan Stefano: Thank you.Logan Armstrong: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires, as we shared the stories as shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capitalist story: the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Dan Stefano: Right for our next segment here, we brought in Hollie Geitner. She's one of our vice presidents here at WordWrite, and we're talking about business jargon in particular. It's an article. It's a recent survey from GetResponse online. The title of the survey is The Business Jargon And Buzzwords You Love To Hate.And this one I think hits close to home for what we do here at WordWrite as a public relations agency, but sometimes I've seen some of these buzzwords that I love to hate here. But Hollie, for yourself, you know, you were the one who brought this up in our work Slack channel. And what stood out to you for this survey here?Hollie Geitner: Well, I think, you know, when you see these surveys and you're like, "Oh right, cool, I'm going to read this. You know, like I love these lists." You're like laughing when you start reading it and you're like, "Oh, Oh wait, Oh I use that one and that one. What? Why is this one on here?" And you know, so we got a little bit of a laugh, but then I think we were all like, "Hmm, all right. Maybe we need to rethink how we communicate here." So it certainly generated a lot of back and forth discussion amongst our team, which was kind of fun.Dan Stefano: It made me pretty self-conscious for like the next week and then I got right back to using some of these things in my email. So I'd like to go through some of these topics here, some of these survey questions, and just see what we use.And maybe you at home too, you can find you maybe some of these, you see and you realize, “Oh God, I use some of that too.” But first and foremost, the one that really stood out to me is because I send a lot of emails every day and this is the most passive-aggressive email lines. And there are about two phrases here that finished with about a quarter of the responses each. One was "as per my last email" and the other was "just a friendly reminder." I use both of these. I tell people I am friendly all the time online, and I didn't realize how passive-aggressive I'm being.Logan. Do you?Logan Armstrong: Yeah, I'm a big user of "as per my last email," and then it looks like the next one was, "please let me know if I misunderstood." I've probably at least used that once. Some of these, as Hollie said, I was finding it harder to believe that these were passive-aggressive. I had to kind of think about it for a second.Dan Stefano: Well I think the fun thing about, "please let me know if I've misunderstood," is generally you have misunderstood. You're just trying to tell the other person on the other line you sent me a complicated email, how do I understand this? And so maybe you're trying to help their feelings, but I guess you know, people can read between the lines pretty easily too, would you agree with that Hollie?Hollie Geitner: Oh yeah. I think, you know, in these instances usually you're sending these because somebody hasn't responded to you or you know, done what they said they would and the certain time frame. And I think those kinds of follow-ups are sort of that like that poke. “Hey, you know, pay attention to me. You didn't do what you said you were going to do,” and you know, I generally think that instead of using those, today we need to really break through the clutter, so say what you mean.Dan Stefano: I think that takes us into another really interesting question that people asked here. And this is the worst jargon to describe an ideal candidate. So this is discussing, say if you write a job description, what a company is looking for. And some of these I really agree with for some of the worst jargon. Number one on the list of the worst jargon was the word badass. Number two was rockstar, and number three was ninja. I'm none of those things. All right. You know, maybe I'm creative? I try to pretend that I am and that's also on the list. But Hollie, have you ever used any of these words in a job description?Hollie Geitner: No, we have never used those. But it is interesting I think with a lot of the startups that you're seeing here in Pittsburgh, sometimes you'll see those job descriptions and they will use those. And these might be the companies that have the cereal bar in the break room, you know? But it's difficult when you think of a ninja. I have a picture in my mind and I'm thinking someone, you know, like ziplining through the office or something.Dan Stefano: If we had a ninja in the office I would notice, you know? That'd be a strange thing to ask for.Logan Armstrong: Or would you if he's a good ninja?Dan Stefano: All right that's a fair point. Hollie Geitner: That's true.Secretly we've had a ninja at WordWrite for the last 10 years and nobody knows. Last thing we can talk about here is there is a giant list of least favorite business jargon terms and there's a list of 30 here. So I'll just read off the first five.Number one, synergy. Number two, teamwork. Number three, touch base. Number four, raising the bar. Number five, think outside the box. I use the phrase "touch base" every day of my life, because I like to touch base with people and I think-Logan Armstrong: I use all five of those.Dan Stefano: You use all five? I've never heard you say the word synergy before.Logan Armstrong: I definitely have used the word synergy. Yeah.Dan Stefano: We have bad synergy then, because I don't notice that.Logan Armstrong: I still can't believe that teamwork is the top five least favorite. I mean, it's teamwork.Dan Stefano: Right? I mean, I think, I guess part of these come down to is you just hear them all the time, so maybe people get exhausted by it. Hollie, whenever you see some of these names, some of these things on the list, what do you see? And I mean-Hollie Geitner: You know, teamwork and synergy. Those don't bother me as much. Touch base. The other one I hear often is let's talk offline. I don't know if that's on there, but that's another one I hear a lot.Dan Stefano: I don't see it. And I don't think I've ever used that, because I think I'm always online. As a former newsman, I used, "let's talk off the record" quite a bit. You know, I think that's kind of fun in a cheap little, a nice short cut there.All right, Logan, and I don't want to hear it, because I want to talk about this.Logan Armstrong: Okay.Dan Stefano: We're going to talk about aliens.Logan Armstrong: Okay. I can get into aliens.Dan Stefano: All right. Well, I'm a little disappointed because originally this was going to come just shortly before that there was going to be an event where people were going to actually not attack area 51, but they were going to basically kind of storm the Gates and say, "Hey, we want to know what's in there."Logan Armstrong: They want some answers.Dan Stefano: Yeah, hey, the truth is out there. That's what I know. Somewhere out there.Logan Armstrong: Yeah.Dan Stefano: And apparently it's somewhere in the Nevada desert, but now they've actually decided to change that event to two festivals that are going to be out in Nevada, so maybe we won't learn what's actually inside area 51, but you know, someday hopefully.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. I mean, I had seen that for sure. I think there was something like a million people that had signed up for the Facebook event, which I can't even imagine that site. But I mean, Hey, you know, you make it make a friendly event out of something that really started off as just a little meme that gained a lot of traction and went viral. I mean, you know, it's cool to see these things in the internet age, but you know, maybe, hopefully, they can crack an ice-cold beer in the Nevada desert now.Dan Stefano: I'm sure. Yeah.Well, okay. To be honest, though, I'm not actually ... I don't know if I totally believe in aliens. I think it'd be kind of neat if they existed. But what it did get me thinking about was what kind of sightings and what was going on in the Pittsburgh area, and I think one of the more famous sightings in the Pittsburgh area came in Kecksburg, which is a small community. It's unincorporated. I think it's part of Mount Pleasant and Westmoreland County. This was way back in 1965, when it seemed like a lot of people were seeing UFOs and you know, just kind of checking the stars, but a big fireball went across the sky, I think it was seen from, you know, a lot of the areas in the Great Lakes states down toward us. And it crashed and a lot of people said, you know, they may have seen a different hieroglyphics on this object. They saw different —Logan Armstrong: From the sky? They must have had some pretty killer sight.Dan Stefano: Ok after it crashed. Okay. That's the important part here. But you know, it was supposedly a large metallic object. There were a lot of different things that occurred with this Kecksburg incident, which since became known as Pennsylvania's Roswell. And it's just one of those, you know, legendary things. You know, one of those things that, you know, that probably built like a legend over the years. Ufologists and everything were very interested in it. I think the government line came that it may have been a satellite. There's a lot of-Logan Armstrong: Sure.Dan Stefano: Different theories. It's something we're never going to know. Sure. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. You know, what happened was an alien probably popped out there and you know, he became a Yinzer and nobody knows any different now.Logan Armstrong: Right.Dan Stefano: You know, he's acclimated to society. I've seen some people on my block that looked like aliens, so possible. We don't know. They could be out there. But you know, it also got me thinking too, you know, like what else has happened in Pennsylvania and it took me to the National UFO Reporting Center, which if you're looking for it online, you can find it at www.nuforc.org, and actually it lists a bunch of different sightings. People can just go, you know, but whatever they saw in the sky, a bunch of different UFO sightings. They're unverified of course, but there's been almost 4,000 in Pennsylvania, which is pretty cool.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. I mean you, you know, you always hear about them every once in a while and, and as you said, you know, it's kind of questionable to the validity of all of them. But there have been some pretty crazy sightings, you know? Not just in PA and Pittsburgh, but you know, some that, I could think there are aliens out there somewhere.Dan Stefano: I sometimes, I think people just forget what airplanes look like, especially that they have blinking lights. They have solid lights. I don't know, just reading a few of these here. This was just on August 12th of this year, happened down in Waynesboro. It was a duration of 45 seconds. This is the exact summary. It says large bright light that became stationary, then moved at a very high rate of speed, in parentheses here, many times faster than a plane.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, I mean, Hey, you know, you can never rule it out. That sounds like a UFO. Maybe, maybe a meteor or something like that. But yeah, I think out of, I mean I was looking at these too. Dan Stefano: Is this yours Logan? Were you ... ? You posted this didn't you?Logan Armstrong: Yeah. Where was I on the night of August 12th, 2019.Dan Stefano: You saw this alien. Where you abducted?Logan Armstrong: You know, I can neither confirm nor deny my alien abduction experiences.And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to P100podcast.Com, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter at pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news, updates, and more, from the Pittsburgh 100.

Ep. 1 - A taste of Labor Day, RibFest, Steelers, and Pick Patek

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2019 29:24

This is our inaugural episode of the P100 Podcast, featuring hosts Paul Furiga, Dan Stefano and Logan Armstrong of WordWrite Communications. Here's a bit about how the show will work.As with The Pittsburgh 100, the P100 Podcast will be coming to you 25 times a year, the same week the newsletter hits inboxes. What can you expect? Every episode will have a quartet of roughly five-minute segments featuring not just the three guys in the room, but great guests, insightful segments looking at the region’s news, history and culture, and a deeper dive into stories from the newsletter. This episode covers the events and history around Labor Day weekend, including Pittsburgh’s ties to the holiday, another fantastic food festival to look forward to and, of course, the start of football season. We wrap it up with a discussion of the region’s surprisingly long musical history, including a look at a local who might have a big future on the scene: Pick Patek, a hip-hop artist with a big following over Spotify. He was also featured in a recent Pittsburgh Polyphony article.----more----Enjoy listening to this episode of the P100 Podcast, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.Special thanks to the folks at the Pittsburgh Technology Council for the use of their studio.And this episode’s sponsor WordWrite Communications:At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story, the reason someone would want to buy from you, work with you, invest in you or partner with you. Through our patented Storycrafting process, we’ll help you discover your own Capital S Story. Visit us at WordWritepr.com to learn more.Full episode transcript here:Logan Armstrong:You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Paul Furiga:Welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of the P100 podcast, the audio version of the Pittsburgh 100. My name is Paul Furiga. I'm Publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 and President and Chief Storyteller of WordWrite. I'd like to introduce my colleague, Dan Stefano. Dan.Dan Stefano:Thanks for the introduction, Paul. My name's Dan Stefano. I am the Editor of the Pittsburgh 100 and the Brand Journalist at WordWrite. Spent some time in the media before this, before I got to WordWrite and happy to be here right now.Paul Furiga:Glad you're here, Dan. We also have a third member of the crew here today, the three Musketeers, and that is Logan Armstrong. Logan.Logan Armstrong:Hi guys. My name is Logan Armstrong. I'm a Staff Writer for the Pittsburgh 100 and also an Account Coordinator for WordWrite. A recent graduate from Pitt, so hoping to bring a 21st-century millennial, Gen Z perspective for everybody.Dan Stefano:Yes. Logan is at the low end of the millennial spectrum. You know you're pushing, I think gen Z there.Paul Furiga:I think he actually is Gen Z.Logan Armstrong:I'm '97 so ...Paul Furiga:Now, if that's the case, I'm pushing Gen A. I don't know what I'm pushing as a baby boomer. Whatever it is, I'm the opposite of.Dan Stefano:I think Henry Ford called it the Model T generation or something.Paul Furiga:Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that.Dan Stefano:You're firmly a Boomer.Paul Furiga:Well, as you can see folks, we don't like each other. We don't get along well. We don't have fun together. Actually we do. We're glad you've joined us for this first episode of the P100 podcast. Let me just tell you a little bit about how this podcast is going to work. As with the Pittsburgh 100, the P100 podcast will be coming to you 25 times a year. We'll be coming out during the same week that the Pittsburgh 100 comes out. What can you expect from the podcast? Every episode, four segments of scintillating content, not just the three guys in the room right now, but great guests, insight segments like Beyond the 100. I'll look at music and culture in the region, history. Four segments, about five minutes each, each episode, and we're going to mix it up for you. Every episode you can expect some variety in what we're talking about. And with that as an introduction, Dan, what are we talking about this time, brother?Dan Stefano:This week's scintillation ... This first episode is coming at a time that's ... It's the unofficial end of summer heading into the LaborDay weekend. So we'll be talking a little bit about Labor Day and it's history in Pittsburgh, the history of labor in Pittsburgh and obviously it's a former manufacturing center. Few cities in the country, I think, have a relationship with it quite like we do here. We'll also be discussing Pittsburgh's rule as a foodie city. There's a big food event coming to Pittsburgh this weekend that we're excited about. And just this past month we had more. We had Pittsburgh restaurant week, so we'll dig in a little more there. Also, this weekend Pitt football's going to get started and the week after that Steelers football is going to get started, so we're going to be talking a little about football and its role in the city, the impact that it has culturally and economically, and we'll wrap it up a little bit. We'll learn a little more about our friend here, Logan Armstrong, who is a musician, but we'll be digging deeper into a recent article that we had in the Pittsburgh 100, the Pittsburgh Polyphony series, which looks at local music artists and yeah. We're excited to introduce you to a musician and some of his own original works too.Paul Furiga:It's a great episode, folks. We're glad you're along with us. Where the first episode, let's kick it off.Paul Furiga:All right. Once again, I'm Paul Furiga, the publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 president and chief storyteller of WordWrite. This is the inaugural podcast of the P100 podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100. Today this episode is recorded at the Huntington Bank podcast studio of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. We want to say thanks to the PTC in Huntington. We are members of the Technology Council, what a great facility. We're honored to be here today to talk about, because we're coming up on that weekend, Labor Day. Dan, you got some thoughts? You want to kick it off?Dan Stefano:Oh, lots of thoughts actually. But you know, I this is always one of my favorite weekends of the year because one it's-Paul Furiga:Picnics.Dan Stefano:Yeah. Picnics. Fantastic. Yeah, well it's a three day weekend. It's always wonderful. The weather is still great. You know, it's kind of the end of summer, a little bit. The unofficial end of summer. It stays warm, but it's just marking that progression into fall. But it's also important to think about whenever you get these three day weekends, think about why we're celebrating them and for labor day, you're celebrating the American worker and that matters a lot in this city. People have a history of ... People still reflect that blue-collar aesthetic, that blue-collar attitude that Pittsburgh has and-Paul Furiga:Steely McBeam.Dan Stefano:Steely McBeam. Yes. Yeah. I think he ... I don't know if he is a card-carrying member of United Steelworkers, but he should be. I think Labor Day is a good time to recognize that America's labor history at times was very violent and there's some of the stuff that we take for granted as far as a five day work week and eight-hour workday, -sick time off, holidays off. That didn't come easy. Especially for people that worked in manufacturing industries and didn't even have blue collars. They were wearing brown colors and maybe no collars at all at some of these positions.Dan Stefano:One moment that was kind of seminal in American history, especially as far as the labor movement goes, was in 1892 they call it the Battle of Homestead, where striking workers at Andrew Carnegie's Steel Mill in Homestead. They actually barricaded themselves inside of the steel mill for about six days. And it was incredible. By the end of it, Pinkertons who were basically private detectives-Paul Furiga:Right, from the company Pinkerton.Dan Stefano:Exactly. The company's name was Pinkerton. These detectives, they got violent and seven workers were killed, three Pinkertons were killed whenever tempers flared up. And that made a big impact around the country. At the time, not only was it happening at Homestead, Chicago had violent disputes between their workers-Paul Furiga:Detroit.Dan Stefano:And Detroit. It happened everywhere, you know?Paul Furiga:Pullman Strike in Chicago. You're talking about Dan. Yeah?Dan Stefano:Absolutely. Yes. And-Logan Armstrong:Yeah, it's interesting to see that people were this passionate about labor rights and working rights and unions, that they were willing to give their life for it. And I think that's just something ... I know from my perspective and my generation, that's not something we have really ever had to see firsthand. And to have that kind of perspective on it is just something that I think is forgotten a lot these days.Dan Stefano:Well, none of us who are sitting at this table were around in the late 1800s but-Paul Furiga:Let me check my driver's license, Dan.Dan Stefano:That's true, Paul. Yeah. You should really check that out. Ironically I have more gray hair than Paul does. That's the funny thing. I've got three decades less on him, but-Logan Armstrong:Paul has a gray head of hair, that's for sure.Paul Furiga:Well, thank you. To bad this is audio and you can't see that.Dan Stefano:Right?Paul Furiga:Yeah. I do think, Dan though that as people enjoy their picnics and whatnot this weekend, it is worth remembering the reason for the weekend and-Dan Stefano:Yeah, you know, those moments of history are all around us. Especially whenever you go to Homestead to do some shopping at the waterfront. Right now you can go and you can see those old smokestacks from the old Homesteads steel mill that was there and you think 130 years ago there was a battle there where people lost their lives. And it's an important thing to, to remember, Labor Day is not only about organized labor, but it's also about everybody that just goes out and works hard every single day of their life. You know, everybody's earned that day off. And so it's important to just kind of remember that. Kickback, relax, have yourself a beer or a nice cold Coke and maybe cook up some food and enjoy yourself on Labor Day, everybody.Dan Stefano:Well, another great thing about the Labor Day weekend here at this time of year is typically Pitt's first football game of the season. And right around Pitt's first football game of the season, we always have the Heinz Field Rib Fest and Kickoff Festival. And I love Rib Fest. It maybe is one of my favorite food festivals of the year. You know, Picklesburgh is great, but you don't get too many great ribs and you don't get some of the best rib makers.Paul Furiga:There's not enough meat in a pickle.Logan Armstrong:Yeah. You can't really dig into a pickle, but you can dig into some ribs.Paul Furiga:Precisely. A pickle is great as a garnish with my ribs. That's fantastic. So I love that. But yeah, one thing that I think you can say is, one Rib Fest is just a lot of fun because it brings a little bit at the south up here and it's just a lot of people getting together and it's a fun time of year.Paul Furiga:But it also just explains again that Pittsburgh is such a great city for food. And I think it always has been. I grew up on pierogi and haluski growing up in a Hungarian and Croatian type family, but we've really in recent years seen some extremely interesting restaurants open, some really classy places that get ranked among the best in the country. And even last year, a publication out of San Francisco named us foodie city of the year or best city in the US for foodies. And so that's special. And it just got me thinking, you guys, what do you like about Pittsburgh's food here? I think everybody loves talking about it. We just had Pittsburgh restaurant week a couple of weeks ago where everybody got to try new places. So do you have any favorites? And just your thoughts on the city and food. Logan.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, I love it. I think it's great. I'm a huge fan of food as these two know, but I think what's something good about Pittsburgh is that, for example, just a great example on the Southside, you have Mallorca, which is one of the best Spanish restaurants in town. And then you walk four blocks and you run into Dish, one of the greatest Italian restaurants in town. And so I think with Pittsburgh being such a melting pot of people that came here, you have the Germans and the Italians. This fusion of food, you can go anywhere in the city and find great restaurants. So there are some cities where there's like a cultural district where you're going to find the best restaurants in that particular area of the city. But I think with Pittsburgh is that you can walk to any neighborhood and go to any neighborhood and find a spot that is just excellent food.Dan Stefano:That's a great point. You know, I just moved to Mount Lebanon with my wife Lisa, and I didn't realize quite the amount of restaurants that they have out that way, and it's a ... I grew up in the Northside and we were living in the East end for a while and lots of good restaurants out that way, but you move South and all of a sudden there are great places like Pizziola, Bistro 19 just over in uptown. Lots of awesome restaurants. Just anywhere you go in the city. Paul, what do you think?Paul Furiga:Yeah, I'm thinking about, my family is originally from Pittsburgh, but I actually grew up in Cleveland and I'm sure we can do an entire segment on Cleveland jokes. We'll save that for another day. But when I came back to Pittsburgh in '94, the basic thing was what do you'ins want for dinner? Italian, Italian or Italian? And you know, things have really changed. It's quite different today compared to the way it was 25 years ago. Part of that is the generational change with the population of the city and Pittsburgh becoming more attractive to millennials, young people. Part of that is the changing complexion of the economy and the kinds of people who've been attracted to the city in the last two decades. And you know, I think people like Justin Severino and the several restaurants that he's put together in succession. We now legitimately have people in the restaurant industry here in town who can be followed and you can say, you know, "Kevin Sousa or Severino, when are they going to open their next restaurant and what's it going to be?"Paul Furiga:It didn't use to be that way. When I first got to Pittsburgh, there was everybody's favorite pizza joint or Italian or my heritage Polish, or there was the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, which really in terms of Polish, it hasn't been replaced. It was much more of a meat and potatoes in an ethnic sort of town. You know, one other thing, we talked earlier today about labor and there used to be this thing called the Pittsburgh steak, and the old story was that guys in the mills, they wanted something special in the lunch bucket. They'd take a steak and throw it on some very hot piece of machinery and create this seared steak and I can remember when I first got to town, people were like, "Well, you have to have a Pittsburgh steak." People don't talk about that now. We're talking about farm to table. We're talking about organic, we're talking about locally sourced, we're talking about fusion. It really is quite a foodie town and it's a lot of fun. It really is.Dan Stefano:You know, Paul, you could come up with that right now. You could come up with just a hot pipe, get a bunch of millennials to come in and tell them, I'm going to cook your steak on this pipe and they would love it.Logan Armstrong:I would love it.Paul Furiga:You think so?Dan Stefano:I think we're onto something.Logan Armstrong:I think that'd be great. Logan's very susceptible to this type of marketing, I think.Paul Furiga:What's old is new again.Logan Armstrong:Anything with food, you don't have to sell me too hard on.Logan Armstrong:Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories have shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capitalist story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit WordWritepr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Dan Stefano:All right. The other great thing about this time of year, we mentioned it already a couple of times, but it's close to football season and I love football season. I could sit, basically from Saturday morning to watch college games to Sunday night and just enjoy myself and watch football the entire time and have my wife leave me because I get yelled at quite a bit for doing those types of habits. But you know, she understands and she lets me do it at least for a few hours each day. And it's just such a great time because football means a lot in this city as we all know. Whenever we think of football and Pittsburgh, I think a lot of people jump to the high school games, you know, Thursday nights, Friday nights, sometimes-Paul Furiga:Friday Night Lights.Dan Stefano:Friday night lights as they called them.Dan Stefano:So I went to a city school, so they also played on Thursday nights. Everybody had to cram into South stadium. But it really ... For the impact that it does make here, it's hugely beneficial financially. I mean, you think about what has happened to the North Shore since they built the brand new stadiums, including Heinz Field. When I was a kid, it was just three rivers and basically a pile of gravel. It was great to go down there because everybody could stand down there and watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. But after that, there wasn't too much to do. And so now, with what this franchise has meant to the city, and the advancements that we've taken in terms of rebuilding certain areas. You can really see the impact that football season has. And whenever it's a Steeler Sunday, it's just such a great time to be around and be downtown and be out in the North Shore.Paul Furiga:Yeah. You know, as we mentioned earlier today, we're recording from the Huntington Bank Podcast Studio here at the Pittsburgh Technology Council and it's on what is now known as the North Shore. Dan, when you were a kid it was probably still known as North Side.Dan Stefano:You know what, it took me a long time to adopt North Shore and there are probably still plenty of people that will not call it that. But it's always, I mean it's Northside. Yeah. And I think where we're at right now, you could call that Central North Side.Paul Furiga:You know, my perspective on this, and I wrote about this in the 100 a week or so ago as growing up as a Cleveland Browns fan. I can't really speak to the winning culture and a few other things there I guess. But what I can speak to, and I think that's why it's important to talk about this too, is that football is intrinsic to the culture of Pittsburgh. And you know, you think about a family like the Rooneys, they're not this celebrity ownership kind of a team. They are Pittsburgh blue-collar, you know? And I think about football, I can't separate the whole, the Rooney families from the Northside too. The team is from the Northside. How the grandfather in the family, Art Rooney, wound up with the team. Supposedly, in a card game or gambling.Dan Stefano:I think it was a good day at the track.Paul Furiga:A good day at the track. That's part of-Dan Stefano:That's the legend.Paul Furiga:That's the legend. It's also part of what people think about when they think about the character and nature of Pittsburgh. I don't know Logan, I mean, what's your perspective on that?Logan Armstrong:Yeah, I would have to agree. I mean I think Pittsburgh is one of the strongest cities where when someone first moves here if someone's visiting, going to a Steelers game is one of the ultimate activities that you can do. That it's really ingrained you in the culture. I mean, you go to a Steelers game and you're there, you're going to figure out what Pittsburgh culture is about. You know you're going to see the terrible towels waving and you're going to see the people that are really die-hard for the city in general and for the sports and a fun fact, actually, I don't know if you guys know this, but we actually cut Johnny Unitas in training camp. He didn't even make it out of training camp, which is just crazy to me. It's kind of odd and interesting the way you see things go.Paul Furiga:It is crazy.Dan Stefano:They skipped over Dan Marino too. They skipped over drafting him.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, the South Oakland boy.Paul Furiga:Yeah. For those of you who are listening who aren't deep football fans, it is kind of impossible to avoid the whole football season thing. I remember shortly after I moved to town, I saw this bumper sticker for the first time and it's certainly, I've seen it many, many times since, "Pittsburgh, drinking town with a football problem," and you know, that's kind of a little joke, but that is also kind of as Logan said, the way the town turns. At a previous employment where I was running a department, I had an adjustment problem because if the Steelers had a particularly tough Sunday night game, the attendance at work and the department the next morning, let's say it fluctuated and I said something to somebody about it and I said, "What the hell's going on? So-and-so and so and so and so and so aren't here." And they gave me this like dumbstruck look like, "What the hell's wrong with you? The Steelers had a tough game last night they're probably nursing a hangover or whatever."Dan Stefano:Well, Paul just a word of warning here then for you, the Steelers open their season against the super bowl champion, Patriots. So you might not see me the next morning. I don't know.Dan Stefano:Okay guys, for our final segment here, we're going to discuss Pittsburgh in the music industry and in particular take a deeper dive and do a column that we had recently in our Pittsburgh Polyphony series, which looks at local artists and one of those included Pick Patek who is a Philadelphia native who lives here in Pittsburgh now, attends Pitt and is actually making a name for himself in the music industry, but we're going to reel it back a little bit and talk about the city's history and music as well, especially in that, people don't quite think of Pittsburgh as a city for ... As part of the music industry here. People might think of New York City, they might think of the West Coast, they might think of Nashville, but Pittsburgh has had its role as well. And Paul, also a musician here. If you want to speak to that a little bit, maybe talk about your own history of music.Paul Furiga:Well, thanks, Dan. Yeah, one of the things that I think is great about Pittsburgh is the music scene. I think in American culture we tend to think of music centers as being those places where there are recording studios and while over time there have been some recording studios in Pittsburgh. It's really LA or Nashville or New York or places like that that have the studios. What's great about Pittsburgh music to me is that so many great artists spent a large section of their career here or they're from here. In recent years Stephen Foster has been more a subject of controversy in Pittsburgh because of some of his early lyrics. But over the years if you want to go back and get really far back into Pittsburgh music history, we can claim Stephen Foster and his talent. You know, doo-wop was another big genre here and in the 60s with The Del-Vikings and Lou Christie and Bobby Vinton and The Vogues and the Lettermen and we had DJ Porky, Chadwick and lots of other folks that help make music-Dan Stefano:Do you sing a lot to doo-wop there, Paul?Paul Furiga:I sing no doo-wop. However, I have a very good friend who is in a doo-wop band.Dan Stefano:Fascinating. We've got to have them on one day.Paul Furiga:We'll get them on some time. Yeah. And we'll get my friend David Goldman on. You know, jazz, the Hill District. In the history of African American culture in the United States, one of the top cultural centers was the Hill District right here in Pittsburgh. You have the Crawford grill. You had artists like our Earl "Fatha" Hines, Roy Eldridge, Kenny Clark, Ray Brown, Art Blakely. I mean I could just go on and on and rattle off names. And I think for a time people began to think that Pittsburgh wasn't really a music city. But truly it is. And one of the reasons why we're including the polyphony series in the Pittsburgh 100 and in the podcast is because there's great music out there today. People and tunes and genres are very much worth listening to. And you know, sadly current Pittsburgh music, the scene was traumatized a bit with Mac Miller and his passing. And certainly there are other artists out there today on the national stage that we know about, but one of the things we want to do is give some prompts and some exposure to musicians maybe that folks haven't heard about yet. And that's why it's so great to have you here Logan.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, and those are all great points that there's been a history of Pittsburgh in different genres throughout time. And I think similar to how we talked about the food earlier, is that Pittsburgh is kind of a melting pot of genres. I would say that the main genre of music right now in Pittsburgh is probably somewhere in the field of punk rock and kind of indie rock and that kind of a genre. But to counter that, the last Pittsburgh Polyphony column we had was an indie band, indie-folk band String Machine, and this Pittsburgh Polyphony is Pick Patek, as Dan mentioned earlier. A rapper/singer, I guess you'd say. Yeah, actually it was a funny story. I just happened to see him in the library one day while I was attending at Pitt and he was making some beats and I went up to him and kind of just hit it off.Logan Armstrong:And then you see and look on Spotify that he's making music from his bedroom and he's got over a million streams on Spotify and he's got 20,000 plus people listening to him every month. And it's just crazy. It's a time now we're in the internet age and the accessibility of recording software and of these resources that allow you to make music so ... I don't want to say simply because it is an art, but so accessibly. Like I said, he's making music from his bedroom and he's able to turn this, I guess you could call it a small business at this point. Kind of turn that into something that he wants to do as a career. And that is something that's accessible as a career for him. And any other time in history, I don't think that would be possible.Logan Armstrong:As Paul said, it kind of centered around being in recording studios in your city and having access to those. And even more than that, 20 years ago, if you didn't have a major label backing or if you didn't have major backing in the entertainment industry, it was next to impossible to actually get your name out there in the music industry. And with the internet now being as it is, where you can put your music on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, wherever you want for free or very little charge, just the landscape of the industry has changed. And so in today's age, it's very interesting to me that you can balance that and still be successful as a modern musician.Dan Stefano:That's great. Logan, we're going to hear a little from Pick Patek at the end of this podcast, right? If listeners stay beyond the outro.Logan Armstrong:Yeah. So we're going to send you out with Blue October by Pick Patek. A soulful ballad that I had the opportunity and privilege to perform with him on Pitt's very own tonight show when I was still a student there at Pitt tonight. So yeah, stick around and I hope you enjoy.Logan Armstrong:And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcasts. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at P100podcast.com wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Twitter at Pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news updates and more from the Pittsburgh100.

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Being Brave Is Required

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2019 2:59

What if we think wrong about bravery? What if bravery isn't as glamorous as we think it is? In today's episode, I share what bravery really looks like. Need some support? Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening. Feel free to contact me jimwoodswrites@gmail.com

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Storytelling! Is it being replaced??

Public Relations Review

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2019 25:30

Currently, storytelling is the popular trend to get positive exposure. Michael Shmarak has a different idea: STORYCRAFTING. Is this a better way? You be the judge. Then, can public relations and management consulting work in harmony. This, too, has strong possibilities for success. Listen...Learn...Share! Podcast video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV71euL8Y-c&t=14s --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/peter-c-woolfolk/message

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The Number One Problem Most Writers Face

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2019 5:48

In this week's episode, I talk about the number one challenge that most writers face. I offer some practical strategies on how you can put words on the page. I also mentioned the free email coaching program I created called 5-Day Write First Writing Challenge visit Storycrafting.net/5day/ If you'd like some help with your book, you can visit Storycrafting.net/finish/ Thanks so much for listening, and happy writing!

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How Do You Blog While You Write A Book?

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2019 5:28

In this week's episode I give some practical tips for how you can continue to blog while you write your book. There are several different approaches, and it is important to find whatever plays to your strengths and fits where you are right now. Thanks so much for listening! If you'd like any help with your book, a StoryCrafting call can help. Just go here for more info. www.storycrafting.net/finish

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Getting Unstuck So You Can Finish Your Book

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2019 5:18

We all get stuck from time to time. But what can you do when you're stuck writing your book? In today's episode, I give a few practical ways to help you get unstuck and finish. I mention The Story Fixer Sheet, a tool I've developed that will help you finish your book as well as why it can be helpful to "talk out loud" about your book. Get your free copy of The Story Fixer Sheet here: www.storycrafting.net/storyfixersheet Thanks so much for listening! If you'd like any help with your book, a StoryCrafting call can help. Just go here for more info. www.storycrafting.net/finish

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Sean McCabe on writing habits, perfectionism and finishing

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2019 25:13

This week's episode features Sean McCabe, the author of Overlap. We spoke about building your writing habit, the focus triangle, building momentum, and finishing. I had a great time talking to Sean. As Sean mentioned on the show, he wrote his book in a month. You can access his online journal documenting his book's progress by clicking here. For more info on Sean, you can visit his website seanwes.com If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Frank McKinley On How To Finish Your Book

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2019 20:23

Today's episode features Frank McKinley, the author of over six books. We spoke about writing habits, how Frank writes, the importance of deadlines and much more. For more info on Frank, go to frankmckinleyauthor.com If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Kent Sanders On How He Keeps Writing

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2018 28:39

Today's episode features Kent Sanders, the author of The Artist's Suitcase. Kent shares his own writing story as well as things he has learned that help him put more words on the page. This interview has tons of practical insights in it that you can put to work today to become a better writer as well as helping you finish your book. For more info on Kent, go to kentsanders.net If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Mike Vardy On Habit Building

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2018 30:18

Today's episode features Mike Vardy, the author of The Productivityist Playbook and the founder of TimeCrafting. Mike shares how he leverages various applications to help him write as well as how he uses journaling as a way to increase his writing output and strengthen his writing habit. If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Jeff Goins On How He Writes and Keeps Momentum

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2018 29:37

Today's episode features Jeff Goins, author of Real Artists Don't Starve and four other books. He shares some helpful encouraging insights about how he writes and also what he's learned writing five books. For more info about Jeff, visit Goinswriter.com If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Momentum: Jim Woods on Self Awareness, Progress and Getting Unstuck – BTTDL251

Beyond the To-Do List

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2018 54:37

Jim Woods is a freelance writer, author, developmental editor and business jumpstarter in northeast Ohio. His writing focuses on helping you get unstuck so you can achieve your dreams and live better stories. In this episode Jim. and Erik talk about getting unstuck, self awareness, how to know if you are stuck or just feel stuck and how to stop being blind about your blind spots. Mentioned in this episode: Storyworth – Save $20! Storycrafting Book Giveaway! Productivity Pub Crawl Please connect with me Subscribe, rate, and review in iTunes Follow @ErikJFisher Check out more Noodle.mx Network showsThe Audacity to Podcast: "How-to" podcast about podcastingBeyond the To-Do List: Personal and professional productivityThe Productive Woman: Productivity for busy womenONCE: Once Upon a Time podcastWelcome to Level Seven: Agents of SHIELD and Marvel’s cinematic universe podcastAre You Just Watching?: Movie reviews with Christian critical thinkingthe Ramen Noodle: Family-friendly clean comedy

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First-Time Author Erica Maier On What It Takes To Finish

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2018 25:57

Today's episode of The Finish Your Book Podcast features Erica Maier, the author of Reframe It!. Erica shares helpful, practical insights on how to finish, her writing process and why being honest with yourself was important in finishing her book. For more info on Erica, you can go to www.ericarmaier.com If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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6: Making the Leap from Accountant to Full-Time Writer with Guest Jim Woods

Voicing Your Brand

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2018 50:41

Jim Woods is an author, editor, writing coach, and storyteller... but he wasn't always living into his calling. He was an accountant, and counting the days till he would be able to quit his job. In this episode of the Voicing Your Brand Podcast, we learn how Jim realized he was a writer and that he could make a living doing what he loves. His story of pushing past his fear and unlocking his authentic voice will inspire and uplift you. Do you think you might be a writer? Jim invites you to connect with him and have a talk - for less than the cost of a coffee ($3.99), you can book a Storycrafting call here. For more information about Jim Woods, go to his website: Jim Woods Writes Other resources mentioned in this episode: Jim's books on Amazon: Ready Aim Fire! and Focus Booster The quote, "Do the art that's in your heart" courtesy of Jump Into the Arts Personality Tests: Take the Enneagram Test here Myers Briggs Personality Test info here Take the Myers Briggs test here Thank you so much for joining us today! Connect with me on social media, I'm @tamiromani on every single platform - I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode and what part of Jim's story resonated most with you. If you would like some support in learning how to best use your voice to tell your story, we have something really special coming soon. Join the Vocal Makeover waitlist here: tamiromani.com/makeover As always, I am committed to helping with your success, Tami

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Michael LaRonn On How He Has Written 40 Books

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2018 31:29

Today's episode of The Finish Your Book Podcast features author Michael LaRonn. He shares valuable insight as to how he's written 40 books in just a few years while having a full-time job. It's an inspiring, honest look at what it takes to build a writing career as well as finishing your book(s). If you'd like some help with finishing your book, I'd love to help you move forward. Check out Storycrafting.net/finish Thanks for listening!

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Jon Acuff On Keeping Momentum