W. Donald “Don” Orkoskey is a gifted photographer and designer based in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. He’s a passionate volunteer and member of Neighbors in the Strip, his neighborhood’s non-profit community development and economic improvement organization.
He has worked as an editorial and lifestyle photographer, a web and graphic designer, and information analyst for over a decade.
With a passion for people and an eye for attention-grabbing composition he has forged a style that reflects his enthusiastic view of the world around him. His ambition pushes him to create community minded people-centric websites. His websites are not boilerplate one-size-fits-all designs but are custom crafted to meet the needs of the site’s audience.
His community centered vision is what drew him to online social networking and helped him build a very large, active, and diverse social network. Don is an early adapter to such social media websites as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and a myriad of others, (many since their inception). Don is also an experienced blogger who has founded and maintained several blogs for more than 5 years.
He is a strong believer in the Internet’s ability to create strong and vibrant offline communities and in the web’s ability to increase social capital. Much of this developed from the hours he spent in chat-rooms and on message board while in high-school in the mid 1990s.
Don lives in the Cork Factory with his wife Dr. Teresa M. Orkoskey PharmD and their hairless dog Iggy. When not photographing, designing, or twittering he can be found volunteering with non-profits, teaching people how to rollerblade, riding his motor-scooter, shopping locally, or encouraging others to do so.