The Monthly Beat - October '24 Edition

A recap of the most interesting Pittsburgh tech news from the past few weeks and upcoming local tech events.

Good morning!

I’ve been on the road a lot recently and juggling a few too many things, so apologies for the lateness on this one! Or maybe I’m just lazy. You decide!

Hope you all are having a fantastic fall season thus far. We’re starting to get some pretty fantastic foliage here around the Pittsburgh area, so if you're an out-of-town subscriber, I’d strongly recommend a trip into town just to ride the incline and check out the leaves!

Alright, let’s get into it.

What Happened

The Big Story

After 7 years, local coding community group Code & Supply has decided to close their Workspace and Community Center. Colin Dean announced the closure, stating that “interest in coworking is not returning commensurate with rising costs.” This comes at a time when newer coworking options like Field Day and chain coworking locations like CoHatch are starting to capture more of the local market. Colin goes on to affirm that Code & Supply will continue to operate as normal otherwise, and is looking for spaces to host meetups and other events in lieu of their dedicated location. The post includes several options to donate to the organization and end with a shot in the dark: “If you want to ‘save the Workspace’ and have access to a budget of tens of thousands of dollars per year, talk to us at sponsorship@codeandsupply.co. Our problems may be solvable with money.”

I have many fond memories of C&S from when I first moved to Pittsburgh to pursue an M.S. in Computer Science at Pitt. I was quite unprepared for the difficulty of the program and needed to get better at coding fast, so I started attending C&S events and joined their Slack. This proved immensely helpful, and later I found my first role as an Infrastructure Engineer at Niche on the C&S job board! Their Slack remains an extremely useful resource for me today, so I’d definitely recommend joining and supporting the organization if you are interested and have the means to do so.

The Headlines

• The AI and Robotics Venture Fair was held at CMU, where 18 local companies pitched their products to a group of 40 investors in hopes of funding. A highlight of the event was X-Hab 3D’s presentation on their robotic printer technology, which can 3D print concrete buildings.

• My former colleague from Niche, John-George Sample, was featured for creating pgh.coffee, a site that allows you to view all the local coffee shops in Allegheny County. So cool to see, and be sure to check out the site for your next coffee run!

• Speaking of Niche before releasing its rankings of best schools and districts for 2025, the company quietly held their second round of layoffs this year. As far as I can tell, this has not been reported anywhere else—I only noticed because several of my former coworkers announced their departures all at once on LinkedIn. Most of the employees laid off were non-tech people on the product side of the business. Company leadership is trying to make development more efficient while scaling up the Direct Admissions product, which admits students to colleges automatically based on the content of their Niche profile.

• Local healthtech startup Korion Health, which is developing a heart and lung screening tool you can use at home, won the $1 million Hult prize, which awards young people who solve problems with social entrepreneurship.

• The annual Pittsburgh TechFest was held in Homestead, albeit with less attendance than last year, according to my sources who attended. Several folks in my network remarked that the event is somewhat poorly advertised, so hopefully it gets better next year.

• For all you folks out near the East End, the proposed Bakery Square expansion won an approval from the Pittsburgh City Planning Commission. It now goes to the City Council for consideration.

• Now for some quick hits. CMU was awarded $6 million to establish an AI research center with NIST to develop standards and tools to keep AI safe.

• Aurora announced it’s expanding its autonomous trucking routes to Phoenix.

• Gecko Robotics will be inspecting a U.S. aircraft carrier for maintenance this fall using its fleet of AI-powered robots.

• Duolingo dropped a couple of cool new features, including “video calls” with an AI to practice your language skills, as well as an adventure game mode.

• Bloomfield Robotics was acquired by Kubota, the implications of which are as yet unclear.

• And lastly, for some good reads, Technical.ly published two great pieces on the hardware side of things these past few weeks. The first is a profile of Lead-In Record Co.’s Maximillian Obasiolu, who started his vinyl manufacturing business in Pittsburgh because of the city’s local robotics scene. The second describes the implications of Microsoft using power from the Three Mile Island nuclear facility for its AI projects.

For the Days Ahead

• October 12th, the Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group is hosting Pittsburgh SQL Saturday, “a day of learning, networking, and prizes” in Homestead.

• October 14th, CMU is hosting an AI summit at Bakery Square with some big names in attendance. It’s sold out, but if someone has an extra ticket, send me a DM on LinkedIn!

• Tech Week Pittsburgh is next week, October 14-17th, and they actually have events on the website now! The website is still pretty terrible to navigate, though, so here’s a direct link to the events page so you don’t have to deal with the nonsense at the previous link.

• October 25th, Large Scale Systems is hosting a Haunted Hardware fundraiser to help support the Large Scale Systems Museum’s further restoration efforts. If you’re into vintage computer hardware, you won’t want to miss this. Get tickets here!

• If you’re a manager looking for some great team exercises, be sure to check out local agile coach Nick Yingling’s Agile Decision Games.

• Local startup Wack is looking for design partners who want to improve their DevOps processes with their new product, MultiTool. I participated in a product interview for this and man, I am so excited to see what they’re cooking up!

• As always, I’m looking for guest writers and podcast interviews! Do you have a local Pittsburgh tech topic you’d like to wax poetic about? Hit me up! Spoiler alert: It’s not a paid gig, but I would be more than willing to host or repost your piece if you want to publish it somewhere else as well.

And that’s it for now. Now to go get an egg coffee. I just got into egg coffees.

—Austin