I already posted this question but decided to delete it and repost it
here at a higher amount because I need this answered ASAP.

I am self-employed in Pittsburgh, PA and am looking for ways to
network with other self-employed people in my area.  Note that I am
not looking for ways to network with other self-employed people in
general -- only those in Pittsburgh.  I am thinking that there should
be social networking groups with this purpose, but I would welcome
other effective ways of contacting my peers as well.  Bonus points if
you come up with a significant number of real email addresses of other
self-employed people in my area (which I suppose might be possible if
you find an applicable online group with email addresses in people's
profiles).

For the purposes of this question, "Pittsburgh", "Allegheny County",
and "southwestern Pennsylvania" are all equivalent.  Also, I should
clarify what I mean by "self-employed".  For my purposes what I am
looking for is either people who run 1-person businesses (whether
incorporated or not doesn't matter) or owners of businesses employing
just a few people.  Everyone you find needn't meet this definition of
course, but I thought it might be helpful to know who I hope to find.

Thanks, and good luck.

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Request for Question Clarification by easterangel-ga on 10 Jun 2004 16:37 PDT

Hi! I have a suggestion for you.

 
I would like to ask if message boards of entrepreneurs be ok as an
answer. In message boards, after you have signed-up you can
participate in ongoing public discussions and posts messages. If you
want to talk to a particular entrepreneur, you can send a private
message to him or her so that only that person can see your message
just like email. It is higly possible that they will be guarded with
their email information for security purposes but messageboards will
be a great alternative.

Would a list of online messageboards for entrepreneurs in the whole
Pittsburgh, PA or just PA be ok as an answer and not be restricted to
particular cities, counties or other localities? It will be quite
difficult to find specific entrepreneur contacts online with detailed
locations such as "Allegheny County".

Thanks!

---

Clarification of Question by timw1-ga on 10 Jun 2004 19:09 PDT

Hello easterangel, thank you for taking an interest in this topic.

To answer your first question, yes I would say that resources in the
form of message boards could be quite helpful.

As for whether resources should be restricted to only
Pittsburgh/Allegheny County/SW PA or whether all of PA would do: To be
honest I am only interested in others in my immediate area.  I have
tried to make this area as large as possible, which is why I specified
that "Allegheny County" and "SW PA" would be as good as "Pittsburgh". 
I am most interested in talking with my peers about specific health
care issues, which are very regional in nature -- hence the
requirement.

*However* -- resources which are statewide in scope might be good if
there are enough people from my area using it.  If only a few people
(like 5 or fewer) from my area are likely to see something I post,
then I would say that such a resource might best be used as an adjunct
to your answer, rather than being a major component of it.

I hope this helps.  Thanks again for your efforts, they are much appreciated.

This group might be useful to you:

http://www.pghtech.org/Networks/Entrepreneurs/peer.asp

Hi pinkfreud,

Thanks for the link.  Although I'm not sure the mentioned groups would
be the best place to bring up the health care issue I alluded to in my
clarification, they look interesting nonetheless :-)

Tim

You might give Craigs List a try.

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/
http://forums.pittsburgh.craigslist.org/?forumID=89

Thanks czh-ga.  There are tons of threads there but for some reason
only one that originated in the Pittsburgh section.  I guess
Pittsburgh isn't exactly a hotbed of self-employment, ha ha.  However,
every little bit helps and I do appreciate it.  By the way, I like how
craigslist allows you to flip between viewing by city vs. viewing all
at once.  I've never seen a messageboard like that before -- seems
like a pretty good way of going about things.  Anyway, thanks again.