Outside Erie

It’s hard to imagine that any Erie native had a bigger impact on the world in 2008 than Harry Markopolous.
After all, it was Markopolous — a 1974 Cathedral Prep grad — who blew the lid on the Bernard L. Madoff scheme.
While many others were turning a blind eye to an investment scheme that bilked many […]

Our final “Globie” category is Erie Expatriate of the Year.
So many former Erieites are now living in other parts of the world doing interesting and — in some cases — spectacular things.
This award will recognize a person with Erie lineage who is making an important mark from another address.
As before, I invite you to […]

This week’s top comment is one of my favorites since starting this site.
It comes courtesy of Shane, who was reacting to the comments related to the Koehler project this week.
In the responses to this post alone, I see a tremendous amount of passion for moving Erie forward (although thoughts differ on how to achieve that).
My […]

Erie will be well represented at this weekend’s PodCamp Pittsburgh — an event aimed at helping folks learn more about social media.
Erie native Douglas Derda — the author of the bubbly beer blog Should I Drink That? — is one of the speakers. And he invites his Erie brethren to make the trip down I-79 […]

We talk a lot in this space about Erie’s brain drain — the idea that a lot of the area’s best and brightest young minds leave the area for better opportunities elsewhere.
And one of the goals of this Web site is to help create an environment in Erie that creates more opportunities for those who […]

ABC TV’s morning news-entertainment show Good Morning America will pull into Erie a week from today, Tuesday, Sept. 16 as part of its “Whistle Stop Tour ‘08″ series.
The show will be touring the country by train as part of its election coverage and will be making a stop at The Brewerie at Union Station as […]

Erie is known for exporting locomotives, plastics parts, plumbing fixtures, and magnetic equipment.
It’s also known for exporting people.
In recent memory, Erie has given the world Tom Ridge, Pat Monahan, and Steve Scully — to name a few.
Since part of our mission here is to talk about those who have left town, I’d like […]

New York magazine has a great feature this month by Adam Sternbergh about Buffalo boomerangs — folks who left their Rust Belt hometown for the Big Apple, then came back.
The conclusion — Rust Belt cities offer a frontier that doesn’t exist in the city that never sleeps.
If you read the piece — and swap the […]

It used to be that high school grads would leave their hometowns to experience life in college — then return home once they got their sheepskins.
Others would spend a year or two in New York or Chicago and, after getting the big city out of their systems, return to a city like Erie when they […]

Yours truly will be in Denver this weekend to present at the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement annual conference.
Yeah, I know it’s not the Democratic National Convention.
But it should be interesting to see how the city is preparing itself for the arrival of Obama, Clinton, the superdelegates, and about 15,000 credentialed media.
Also, I’d […]