Technical.ly is kicking off a yearlong reporting project in Pittsburgh

Every region’s job mix is changing.

Most everywhere in the U.S., service sector jobs are up, and manufacturing jobs mostly decline. Knowledge-sector roles largely grow too, but less evenly across the country. Though software is common across all corners of the economy, who and where that software is made remains a major point of interest.

For more than a decade, Technical.ly has reported on the communities of people and organizations who do that work, and the impact of fast-growth companies on a place. We report daily in several communities, and continue to do pop-up reporting projects in many others. In 2018, we did a six-month reporting series on the state of the civic technology community in Pittsburgh, called Open Data PGH, with the support of Heinz Endowments.

Though that series was quite focused on a narrow sliver of a subcommunity inside a regional city, we were as captivated as anyone by Pittsburgh. The city has an outsized reputation, and has rightly been lauded for efforts to transition from an industrial echo to knowledge economy hotbed. In just the year between 2016 and 2017, tech employment grew 13.8%. We wanted an opportunity to take a wider look at what has worked, and what work still needs to be done for Pittsburgh to grow as an economic engine.

We’re excited to announce that Technical.ly is getting the chance to look more closely. This month we’re launching a yearlong effort, in partnership with the Pittsburgh Innovation District, to chronicle the economic change taking place in Pittsburgh.

Initially, we’ll do this in two ways:

• We’re launching a Pittsburgh edition of our popular newsletter This Week in Jobs, a voice-rich roundup of local tech job openings.
• We’ll start with monthly deep-dive reporting into Pittsburgh’s economic transformation.

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This is part of how Technical.ly gets to know communities: We build relationships. We tell stories. Increasingly we’re finding those stories of economic change are best seen through the lens of growth companies, job opportunities and the relationship between them. This project in Pittsburgh will be an opportunity for us to help tell the story of one of the most interesting economic stories in the country, and for Techncial.ly to better understand how we can do this for others. Follow along.

We will be working with local Pittsburgh reporters, so if that’s you, email Technical.ly Assistant Editor Stephen Babcock, at stephen@technical.ly. If you’re a Pittsburgher with a view on your region’s economic change, email Stephen. If you’re interested in supporting this work, or interested in our approach to telling regional stories, email me, at chris@technical.ly.

No region’s job mix has ever stayed the same, and it never will. We plan for Technical.ly to help more of you follow that change for your own home, and tell others about it.