
How a fiddler and an astrophysicist brought predictive analytics to Cincinnati - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/how-a-fiddler-and-an-astrophysicist-brought-predictive-analytics-to-cincinnati-c5583468f4cc
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rdtsc
It's good to see an article about Cincinnati. I lived there for many years.

My joke about it is that it's exceptional in how average it is. Downtown full
of office buildings. Gets emptied at night. Surrounded by a ring of
delapidated buildings and crime ridden areas (which recently have been
gentrifying slowly). And then followed by suburbs.

Here is a view off of Central Parkway going West from the city. I always liked
that drive for some reason.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1212616,-84.5286896,3a,89.6y...](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1212616,-84.5286896,3a,89.6y,342.52h,96.03t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSOG6wNATvhjAFmokJiHqgA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)

Those buildings were abanondned for years, they looked kind of interesting and
bit spooky to me, especially at night. Around the same area, there was a
similar old factory, it was repurposed for a while for art installations.

The city was struggling when I left. I couldn't not find any decent tech jobs
there. The few offers I got were pretty laughable, even for that area.

> Next steps: Cincinnati — like many other cities — needs increased funding
> for more data analytics people.

It somehow needs to provide an environment for more job growth. Easier said
that done, of course. There was no shortage of "tech hub" attempts in other
cities...

~~~
bufordsharkley
Currently living in Redwood City, grew up in Cincinnati. It's a fantastic city
in all numbers of ways, except the technology scene is so poor. Library book
sales will have essentially no books worth reading on CS or technology, and no
jobs. (A high school friend does meat-and-potatoes web dev work, and I've
heard of nobody else even in the field.)

But the city, outside of this, is in a great period right now-- abandoned
buildings in Over-the-Rhine are getting turned into innovative, cool spaces.
Public transit is coming to downtown. The river area is getting developed into
something really pleasant. And there's so much space for cheap housing in
every direction.

My girlfriend (from Sunnvyale) said it's the first city outside the Bay Area
she found so liveable. But no reasonable jobs to be had...

