Jim Russell is a geographer, social theorist, and would-be social entrepeneur who blogs at Burgh Diaspora. In today's podcast we discuss his analysis of ways to organize Pittsburgh's diaspora -- the informal network of ex-Pittsburghers scattered around the world. Why might that matter? Jim's thesis, which I find fascinating, is that the "distance trust" embodied in that kind of network can have important social and economic effects not only for Pittsburgh, but for local and regional populations everywhere in this era of pervasive mobility and telecommunications.
A key point of reference for our conversation is Richard Florida's notion of the geography of the creative class. Florida wrote a book on the subject, and ITConversations has a podcast of his talk at PopTech 2004.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/11/10.html#a1559