Refresh Pittsburgh is a is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of Internet designers and developers in Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas. I had actually never heard of Refresh Pittsburgh before my friend Kelly mentioned it to me. I’m always down to check out new tech meetups and events in Pittsburgh so I decided to check it out.
The April meetup was held at Left Field Meeting Space, which has to be one of the coolest meeting spaces that I’ve been to in Pittsburgh! It definitely had one of the coolest couches that I’ve ever seen!
Each meetup has a few different speakers talking about various topics. The first speaker was Jay Fanelli who is the co-founder and designer at Full Stop, a Pittsburgh web design and development shop. His talk titled, “Stop Hating Your Clients” was all about choosing the right clients. It was very insightful and made perfect sense I know I’ve taken work sometimes that I have regretted.
The second speaker was Jon Dascola, his talk was titled, “If you are in the shit up to your neck, the only thing you can do is sing”. He talked about taking pride in your work and doing small things that can make your project stand out from others. He had great examples and really made me understand that the littlest things can make a difference.
I really enjoyed that meetup and I will probably be going to another one in the future. It is always great to meet with people in the same space and talk about different issues we encounter.
One of my favorite types of food has to be Vietnamese food, more specifically Pho. Living in Pittsburgh there really is not a large selection of places to get Pho. I’ve already told you about Pho Minh, Vietnam’s Pho and Lulu’s Noodles. Well there is a new Pho place is town called Pho Van!
I actually found out about Pho Van through Groupon, where they were offering a $20 gift certificate for $10. Obviously I had to get it and check this new Pho place out! Pho Van is located 2120 Penn Ave. in the Strip District. The first time I went there I went with fellow ThinkComputers staff member Colin. We have been to many different Pho places together. I decided to order the #24, which is combination beef. They let you pick 3 different types of beef, I decided on rare eye of round, well done brisket and tripe.
I’ve had a lot of Pho from many different places and I was quite impressed with Pho Van! The broth tasted excellent and the meat was perfect. I like that I was able to pick 3 different types of meat as well. The #24 Pho combination was only $9 and you can’t beat that! I’ve been back to Pho Van twice since my first visit and if you like tea I would really suggest getting their Dragon Eye Oolong tea. It has to be some of the best tea I’ve ever had! If you are in the Strip and are looking for some great food definitely check out Pho Van!
By now you have probably have heard all of the hype about Twitter. Everyone uses Twitter these days, it is sort of stupid to not use twitter if you have a company or brand. You cannot just setup a twitter account and post updates and expect to get a ton of followers and people interested in your brand.
There are many ways to get a ton of followers and gain an audience, but the way I’m going to show you will really help you gain a one on one relationship with your followers and help you gain new followers.
My friend Kelly actually showed me this method so I cannot take full credit for it. As I said twitter is very popular, but have you ever used Twitter search? Go ahead and put in any keyword in and see whats comes up. For example with the ThinkComputers account I put in “SSD”. A ton of results showed up, but some of them were people asking what type of solid state drive (SSD) to purchase. I went ahead and responded to them giving them my advice on which SSD’s are the best. By doing this I was able to start a conversation with someone and in-turn they started following ThinkComputers and are genuinely interested in what I have to say.
This method is not going to get you a million followers, it is not meant to do that. It will get you followers who are interested in what you have to say and in my opinion one follower like that is worth more than 50 followers who see one of your updates and are not interested at all.
So when you have some free time use Twitter search and start a conversation with someone! Remember to follow me on Twitter too!
As most of you know I’m from Pittsburgh and I try to support as many things from Pittsburgh as I can. I wrote about Wiz Khalifa a little while ago and surprisingly I’m talking about another rapper from Pittsburgh, who in my opinion is very good, especially for his age. At only 19 he has a huge following not only in the Pittsburgh area, but online as well. I was actually surprised I had never heard of him before because of how good he is and all of the buzz on the internet. The first song I heard of his is actually one of his most popular songs, Donald Trump. Check out that video below…
He was just recently signed to Rostrum Records the same record label that Wiz Khalifa is on. Earlier this month he released The Best Day Ever mixtape for free on the internet and the entire thing is good. It just has the feel good sound and I really like it. You can listen to the entire mixtape below. I can’t wait to see what this kid has in store for the future!
So it is 2011, with all of these new social media sites springing up where can you find me? I honestly have been using the same sites for quite a long time, but if you don’t know where to find me in 2011 here are some links…
Twitter
FaceBook
Flickr
YouTube (mainly ThinkComputers videos)
FriendFeed
Trunk.ly
LinkedIn
Is there a social network you think is missing? Let me know!
Follow Me!
By PDGACO GaballaLoans