Best of Philly nods to our community from Philadelphia magazine

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine has its annual and ever-popular Best of Philly awards, edited this year by Michael Callahan. It will come as no surprise that lot’s of familiar faces pop up, including a number from our creative communities of technology and innovation.

Below, we breeze through the names you just might stumble upon at the next community event.

• In the “ENJOY” section, the all-comedy acting company 1812 Productions gets the nod as the city’s best Theatre group. We’ve covered their work for an iPhone app about Abraham Lincoln to promote the Rosenblach Museum.

See seven others from the magazine’s nearly 300 listings after the jump.

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Friday Q&A: DIY Days founder Lance Weiler

Tomorrow more than 27 filmmakers, musicians, game developers, storytellers and tech geeks will speak to patrons gathered at the DIY Days conference, a free event being held at the University of the Arts, to talk about the future of the media entertainment business.

It’s a future that seems uncertain, yet exciting: the struggle and embrace between amateur and professional work. The transformation of storytelling. Creating sustainability in media.

But most importantly: Do-It-Yourself culture. A culture that the event’s founder and organizer Lance Weiler says is as much about doing-it-yourself as it is about community. And perhaps surprising to some, a culture in which technology is deeply ingrained.

Weiler got his break with The Last Broadcast, a low budget horror film that he and a partner cobbled together for next to nothing. The film ended up being the first desktop feature film made with consumer grade video materials, the first movie distributed via satellite, and grossed $4.5 million dollars through the years.

Some believe that the Blair Witch Project might have borrowed a few ideas from the film; both are horror films presented in documentary-narrative style about low-budget filmmakers searching haunted woods who go missing. Except Weiler’s was filmed a year before the latter (and featured Jersey instead of Maryland).

Out of that experience, Weiler learned how to self-distribute, negotiate with broadcasters, and taught himself all sides of the media business.

DIY Days, Weiler’s baby, is the result of a book deal gone bad. On his own volition, that is. Offered the opportunity to write about his self-made success, Weiler decided to create the same resource for folks free online. From that decision evolved the Workbook Project, a content-rich portal for digital creatives. DIY Days is what he considers physical manifestation of WBP.

We’d be lying if we said we weren’t stoked about it. After all, we’re doing it ourselves, too. So, we reached out to Weiler to hear the why’s, how’s and who’s of DIY Days. As it turns out, we don’t have to sell our computers to gain some DIY cred.

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Friday Tech Links: Eric Smith, Philly Turkey and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

• Innovation Philadelphia reports that our local BlobLive was featured by Time magazine.
• Plan Philly profiles popular transit blog SEPTA Watch and its writer Michael Froelich, who also does other fun stuff like the West Philly Tool Library.
• The Philadelphia Examiner has an interview with Eric Smith, the bubbly editor of uwishunu and co-founder of Geekadelphia.
• The Infrastructurist has a very interesting interview with IBM’s new chief of railroad innovation. Fast Eddie Rendell is mentioned, so we had to share.
• Satirical news site Philly Turkey is dead.
• Innovation Philadelphia previews the third annual Success in the City event to be held Aug. 26 by Empowerment Group’s Women’s Business Center.

• Our Most Trafficked Story of the Week: Philadelphia Zoo and Laurel Hill Cemetery get tech exhibits

Every Friday morning we make sure you didn’t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners: Budget cuts would “unravel” local startup support

Ben Franklin Technology Partners is keeping a close eye on the state budget.

For the past five weeks, Pennsylvania has been operating without a budget as state legislators wrestle between a 16 percent income tax increase and cuts in state spending, among other points of contention between the Democratically-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

As a result, state employees are no longer being paid, and expired unemployment benefits are not receiving an extension (though a tiny no-frills emergency budget may pass soon).

Caught up in the hurricane of the state budget debate is BFTP, a state-funded early stage investment group that could see its budget slashed by up to 60 percent. The organization is now asking its constituents to help push their state legislator to keep the group’s funding levels intact.

Otherwise, a cut to the funding to BFTP could have a dramatic impact on the city and the region.

And if you’re a reader of Technically Philly, that probably means you.

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Comcast Roundup: Inqy helps bring Phillies baseball to retirement home, NBC Sports is pissed and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

Ninety-four-year old Jessie Foyle probably wouldn’t get a personal patch into her beloved Phillies games from Comcast if not for old media, it might be fair to guess.

The “legendary” fan now lives in a city retirement home that has a subscription with DirecTV, which doesn’t send nearly as many televised games from the Phightins as the ‘Cast, but, as Inquirer columnist Dan Rubin wrote last week, Taylor got some special treatment after he wrote a column early this month about her dilemma.

Six residents and four guests showed up for the first showing against the Cubs, Rubin reported, after Comcast wired the home so they could get all the Phillies games.

“We made an exception with [her retirement home],” Jeff Alexander, a Comcast spokesman, told Rubin. “We took into consideration the fact that Mrs. Foyle is such a legendary fan and the property was quick to partner with us.”

Rubin, a newspaperman of the truest order and a Hell of a columnist to boot, brought the popcorn.

After the jump, more Comcast iPhone app buzz, ESPNU on board and eight more Comcast stories for the faithful.

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Shop Talk: Devon Segel CEO of Dining Info and GoBYO.com

This is something of a family business.

In 2005, serial entrepreneur Joseph Segel, a 1951 Wharton graduate who made a name for himself launching the Franklin Mint and the multibillion dollar home-shopping behemoth QVC, decided Philadelphia needed a database for its restaurants.

He started with his own personal Excel spreadsheets, detailing restaurant information, offerings and accomodations, but he wanted to expand it online.

So he turned to his 29-year-old, more tech-savvy granddaughter, Devon Segel, for help. She was busy building people-search databases for the American Red Cross with Comcast and Google during the melee of Hurricane Katrina, so occasional help and direction was all she could give.

He launched in spring 2006 an early incarnation of his idea, not just reviews or food writing but a comprehensive collection of information backed by deep data sets about the Philadelphia dining scene, which, of course, has a lot to do with BYO-style neighborhood restaurants.

But Joseph, now 78, wanted Devon to bring her design and development background to what he aimed to be another in a more-than-two-dozen-long list of business ventures.

“He and I have always had a great relationship. He’s a very serious and focused businessman. I am a young woman whom he tries to groom into a serious and focused businesswoman,” says Devon, now CEO of Voorhees, N.J.-based Dining Info LLC, which operates GoBYO.com and DiningInfo.com with plans of launching more. “He calls himself my ‘part-time adviser.’”

It wasn’t until 2007 that she took the job with pop pop, who splits his time between Bryn Mawr on the Main Line and Florida. Now, three years after first launching, their sites use a database that has some 100 data fields on 52,000 restaurants, including 17,000 BYOs, from 10 metro areas and growing.

Devon is sitting on a four-tiered revenue model, the funding to get there and, with a blurb mention due for the August issue of O Magazine, buzz surrounding a new look and focus.

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Philadelphia Zoo and Laurel Hill Cemetery get tech exhibits

Two mainstays of Philadelphia tourism have added tech-inspired exhibit additions.

The Philadelphia Zoo and Laurel Hill Cemetery have both embraced clever technologies meant to help educate their customers in interactive ways.

The zoo has installed touchscreens with an interactive application that highlights the conservation of its prized Amur and snow leopard cats. Laurel Hill, on the banks of the Schuylkill River south of East Falls, now lets visitors roam its acres of gravestones with only a cell phone as a guide.

It’s innovative stuff like this that has us considering leaving our PCs. For a few hours, anyway.

Philadelphia has seen an increase recently in technology-based tourist attractions, including the Rosenbach Museum and Library’s Abe Lincoln iPhone app, which we reported on in May. Last week we offered a few of our own local recommendations in a top ten list of Philly iPhone applications that don’t exist but should.

But those are housed on a phone. The cemetery and zoo are encouraging us to get out of the house, which is a recommendation duly noted.

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Report: Philly had nation’s largest increase in VC investment in Q2

We at Technically Philly love July.

Not because this is the month we celebrate the birthplace of our nation (Ed.: In the birthplace of our nation) or because we get to travel to the Jersey Shore. No, because we’re amped for the second quarter regional venture capital numbers.

If you recall, last quarter was abysmal for the region and the rest of the country as VC investment slowed to a near halt. Some declared a sort of VC armageddon.

This quarter, the national numbers went the only direction they could have: up.

In the aggregate, the national venture capital outlook only received a modest bump in the second quarter with some regions growing faster than others. But no region saw growth like Philadelphia.

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Technically Not Tech: The Travelocity Traveling Gnome

Courtesy of the gnome's Facebook page

For a city that is used to being voted to the wrong end of top ten lists, Philly is making a comeback. Ugliest? Fattest? Psh.

This is the birthplace of American democracy, and we are finally starting to show it. Earlier this month, Philadelphians rose up en masse and voted Phillies CF Shane Victornio to the final roster spot in the MLB All Star game, beating out players from San Fran, Washington and Los Angeles.

In our latest victory, thanks to the urging of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation, Philly won the right to host Travolcity‘s traveling gnome for a week over Boston and D.C.
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Event highlights for the week of July 27 – August 2, 2009

It’s true, folks. Media is no longer the empire it once was.

That’s why we’re psyched to see Saturday’s all-day DIY Days, featuring an impressive list of innovative speakers ranging from writers to filmmakers to musicians to game developers, all there to try to figure out the future. Represented organizations include Wired, Weathervane Music, P’unk Ave, Philly.com’s Phrequency and more. Hell, even the Blair Witch Project made it on the list.

Our guess, which is hardly a guess? All are secret techheads. Gadget geeks. Media monsters. Which is why you should be there. You’re thinking: this must cost like a million bucks, right? Two Grants? A Benji?

What’s that? It’s free? Gosh it’s good to do it yourself.

Another hot development? Looks like a group of gamers is getting together to explore the possibility of bringing a LAN Party biz to the city. The complaint is that there’s plenty of LAN locales in the ‘burbs, but nothing that you can bike or walk to (unless you’ve got Schwarzenegger legs). As always, we’re psyched to see some more developments in Philadelphia’s gaming community, including this one from Philadelphia LAN Party.

For the Web developers, Philadelphia Drupal Camp is sold out, but waiting for last minute cancellations. And maybe you know somebody, wink wink. If you can’t make it in, you can always sharpen up on the basics with HTML for Beginners.

A few other events and plenty of links to our comprehensive events calendar, after the jump.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.

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