The Blurgh

I’ve finished my first few days at Community Recycling and Renewables (CRR), and so far I haven’t done much other than the usual get acquainted with things and random go-for duties. I have been learning a lot about the company, though, and since I’m a huge history dork I think it’s all very fascinating.

CRR is a small company, but you’d never guess it by the amount of work they do. It’s also a hybrid of sorts–it straddles the home improvement, community development, and renewable energy industries. It was started about 15 years ago by Bill Hollinger and Joanna Marcinovic, both of whom were recent grads of Pitt majoring in business. They got the idea when they were working in the labs of some prominent professors who were doing research on producing solar cells more efficiently. During their time there, the professors made a breakthrough, and shortly thereafter a few of them started out on their own manufacturing cells. It made big news in Pittsburgh, and it also got Bill and Joanna thinking.

At the time, renewable energy technology was getting more and more popular, but the application of it was focused primarily on large commercial and residential buildings. Since the cost of solar cells had come down a lot after the breakthrough, Bill and Joanna decided the time was ripe to make a transition into the home market. Both of them were also very handy and had a personal interest in home improvement, so their plan was to package home remodeling and renewable energy together. They got some help from the Office of Entrepreneurial Development at Pitt, and then took the plunge.

In the beginning, business was pretty slow. They did a few renovation projects for wealthy individuals which got a lot of press, but failed to generate a lot of business. Besides the lack of business, they also just felt like they weren’t making the impact that they wanted to make. They got into this to make money, but also to do some good for the environment.

They decided to take a chance and go speak at a meeting of one of the many community organizations in the city. It just so happened that the organization was debating ways that they could decrease their carbon footprint–they were sick of waiting for the government to take action. By the end of the meeting, they developed a plan for a neighborhood-wide renovation project that would incorporate recycling programs, education, and home renovations. They also found they were able to leverage some grant funds for the project, which brought the cost to the individual homeowners to a very manageable level. Thus, CRR was born.

Since then they’ve been involved with numerous projects in Pittsburgh neighborhood and surrounding communities. There are three main branches to their business: community outreach, vendor outreach and project implementation. I’m hoping to get a taste of each before the internship is over!

A couple months ago, I wrote about the organization that my mom is involved with called Breaking Down the Digital Divide (B3D).  A few friends of hers founded it, and my mom getting a job with them was the main push that brought my family, who were originally from Western PA but living in DC at the time, back to Pittsburgh.

I was asking my mom a little more about the founding of the organization a few nights ago, and she told me an interesting story.  Before B3D started, one of the to-be founders was a prominent blogger in the then new but quickly growing Pittsburgh blog scene.  She blogged mostly about technology issues, but as time went on, her blogging became more and more focused on political and community issues.  She got a couple other Pittsburgh bloggers together, and they discussed ways they could start doing something about what they perceived was a problem common to all of them.

That problem, as I mentioned in that earlier post, was the digital divide in Pittsburgh.  At the time, Pittsburgh wasn’t in the best of shape.  The population was in decline, the public schools weren’t doing well, and the city was very segregated and socio-economically divided.  The combination of these issues meant that a lot of disadvantaged kids were getting left behind just as the digital age was really ramping up.

All of the bloggers felt that teaching these kids about technology, and particularly blogging, would be a great way to help prepare these children to better compete in the job market as they got older, give them a way to express themselves, and provide a tool for them to tell their stories in a way that was productive for them and society.  It would also help make Pittsburgh’s already growing blog scene even more dynamic and influential.  This was the definition of win-win.

But, as my mom put it, a lot of people have great ideas, but making those ideas reality is much more difficult.  Initially, the bloggers thought just that–it was a great idea, but how are we going to do it?  They started thinking about all the problems they’d encounter, and generally began to discourage themselves.  In the end, though, they decided to put a few feelers out and give it a shot.

The part of the story that really amazed me, though, was what happened next.  Once they decided to step away from the keyboard and do something about their convictions, people got excited.  One blogger knew some technology people at Pitt, and they quickly pledged to donate computers.  Another blogger knew some people in community organizations, and they pledged space to setup computer labs.  Before anyone knew it, they had equipment, space, instructors, buy-in from the community, and most importantly, a huge group of excited and motivated people.  Soon after, B3D was officially born.

These are the kinds of stories that make me think…what does it take to make things happen?  There are a million different factors, but one that seems universally constant is having enough guts to push past the doubt and various mental barriers we put up and just start making it happen.  I hope that after I get my career started, whatever that may be, that I have the guts to do just that.

As I mentioned in our “About Us” page, my mom works in the software development arena here in the city. Before my family moved back to Pittsburgh, she was a technology consultant in the DC area, and the organization she worked for focused especially on helping non-profits in education. The main push for my family moving back was a job offer from an organization in Pittsburgh that some of her friends had started. It’s called Breaking Down the Digital Divide (B3D), and it’s mission is just that. For a long time, Pittsburgh was a very divided city, the schools were struggling, and as usually happens in those situations, the children who needed the most help were the ones getting left behind. B3D recognized that it was vitally important for the most disadvantaged children to learn the skills needed in the digital world, and the founders were sick of waiting for other people to do something about it.

The foundation was originally built on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, which by the end of the first decade of the century was having major success bringing technology to children in other countries. Through a number of grants and seed money, B3D was able to purchase a large number of XO’s, hire a handful of instructors, and secure agreements with community organizations in Pittsburgh’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The model of the program was to build apprenticeship programs housed in neighborhood community centers to train the kids over a number of years in all the fundamentals of computing, and then to continue by offering specialized programs in computer repair, software development, or web development. Upon completion, the students would be trained and certified, and could either enter the workforce or go onto advanced studies in universities.

After the success of the program during the first few years, Pittsburgh Public Schools became closely involved, and the local universities started offering scholarships to graduates. The program also grew to include several buildings used solely for training, and just recently a complex of 4 buildings was built right in the heart of the Centre Avenue Technology Corridor in the Hill District. My mom is now in charge of the software development apprenticeship track, and she says it’s the best job she’s ever had.

The impact of the program, although small at first, has been tremendous. As the first students graduated from the program, many of them stayed in the area to go on to college or to start their own small businesses. Year after year, more and more kids have followed the same path, and these kids have really become the core of the growing tech community in Pittsburgh. And, as often happens, creative and talented people tend to congregate in the same place, which has helped the Hill District become Pittsburgh’s Silicon Valley. I’ve even heard some people recently refer to it as “Silicon Hill,” which I think is funny because silicon isn’t used in computers anymore! I guess old habits never die…