The Neighbor of Year awards will presented at the Northside Leadership Conference Dinner on June 11, 2015. If you’re interested in attending (and it’s fun!) tickets will be available soon from the Northside Leadership Conference, so save the date.
Last membership meeting we, the nominating committee, nominated Nick Smerker as this year’s neighbor of the year. It’s never an easy decision since so many people do such great work on the neighborhood’s behalf.
Here’s the bio that will be published in program for the NSLC Annual Dinner:
Nick moved to Allegheny West several years ago and noticed right away that alleghenywest.org needed to be overhauled and cheerfully volunteered. He spent months meeting with our neighbors to find out how they were hoping to use our community website. Once we had a basic structure set up, he patiently worked with many different stakeholders on creating useful content. The result is a beautiful, modern website that still manages to highlight the historic nature of the neighborhood. We’re even more grateful that he’s continued the hard work of maintaining the site, even adding new features as we continue to find new ways of using it.
When he is not fixing the internet presence for the AWCC, Nick works for Education Technology Services at Penn State University as a traveling multimedia consultant. His role with Media Commons takes him to spaces located at Commonwealth campuses throughout western Pennsylvania and he engages him with faculty and students as they produce digital media.
When not traveling for the University, Nick spends his time working on a many freelance projects, including various roles at Signum University, an online liberal arts initiative he helped found in the summer of 2011. You can check out some examples of his recent work at: alleghenywest.org, theparadorinn.com or kentuckknob.com.