[UPDATED] Friday Q&A: Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Avencia

Cheetham asked to clarify several statements. Substantial edits are demarcated with cross-out text.

Robert Cheetham can’t quite speak Japanese anymore.

In the early 1990s, the founder and CEO of Callowhill-based geographic analysis and software development firm Avencia worked for three years as an international relations coordinator for a small municipality an hour train ride from Kyoto. It was a chance to return to the land of the rising sun after studying there during his undergraduate days at the University of Michigan in his home state.

He returned back to the United States for an Ivy League education, at the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate school of design. Unsure of his future in landscape architecture, his path led him to a class in geographic information systems, which gifted him a career in chasing data.

In 1997, fresh out of Penn, he and another landscape architecture graduate took the natural first step. They were asked to find a way to make sense of the crowd of data the Philadelphia Police Department was collecting.

“For about six months, we were tossed in a room and told to do whatever we wanted with the data so long as it came back looking interesting and allowed conclusions to be made,” Cheetham, 41, says now to Technically Philly.

By spring 1998, a new police commissioner came to town, John Timoney, high on the CompStat movement of a far wonk-ier New York City police department.

“He found our unit, and we were set,” Cheetham says. He helped lay the foundation of the city police department’s data analysis, crime-mapping and internal projection systems. By 2001, after a stop in what is now the city’s division of technology, Cheetham launched Avencia.

After the jump, we talk with Cheetham about the state of municipal government data, the company’s 10 percent time, and why they decided to base operations in Callowhill over the ‘burbs.

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Links: World Series tech scene match up, city stimulus management in “disarray” and More

DEFINITE READS

• Philadelphia Business Journal’s Peter Key shares two interviews and their comparisons between the technology startup communities of Philadelphia and the 67th ward.
• The Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong reports on a rash of more ugly numbers related to employment and Philadelphia’s business tax burden.
• Inquirer City Hall reporter Marcia Gelbart reports on a fairly startling amount of “confusion and disarray” by the city government and its management and pursuit of federal stimulus dollars.

After the jump, more World Series economic impact math, you’re going to be hired in health care and ten more stories to chew on, including our best read piece of the week and a video pick me up.

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Safeguard Scientifics invests $5 million in locally-based Quinnova

Now this is what we like to see: local VCs investing in local companies.

Wayne-based Safeguard Scientifics has invested $5 million in Newtown-based Quinnova Pharmaceuticals. The investment leads a Series B expansion round of $17.4 million.

According to a press release, the company will use the investment in part to fund a Phase III clinical trial and to aid in the company’s sales and marketing efforts. Quinnova specializes in developing drugs that can be applied through the skin and has a patent on technology for a delivering skin medicine in a foam.

According the Inquirer’s Joe Destefano, Quinnova employs 40 people and is developing additional products under its Proderm and Neosalus brands.

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Comcast Roundup: Calling broadband stimulus packages ineligible, Yellow Pages on TV and More

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscription for our Comcast news updates.

The Inqy’s DiStefano reports that Comcast submitted data yesterday to the federal government suggesting some proposals for broadband stimulus would duplicate its services and effectively subsidize competitors. The Daily Herald adds that the company says that may make those proposals ineligible. Relatedly, a series of Philadelphia proposals for that pot of money came up short.

New York Times media columnist David Carr suggests Comcast’s “likely” bid to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal is foolhardy. If it were to get through, the Inquirer’s Joe DiStefano writes on the undercurrent conversation about whether the federal government would even allow the deal to happen.

After the jump, the latest in net neutrality, video online news and ten other Comcast links to see, including video of Brian Roberts at the Web 2.0 summit.

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Shop Talk: Viddler takes care of business

To call the online video space crowded would be an understatement.

Youtubes, Blips and Vimeos all crowd the scene, each searching their way toward profitability. One, though, local online video company Viddler, may have just found the answer.

Yesterday the Bethlehem-based company announced a robust package of video analytics, directly targeted at the site’s business users, that takes Viddler one step further away from money-hemorrhaging consumer platform YouTube and closer to revenue-generating business-based Brightcove.

Earlier this year, Technically Philly spoke with Sandie about the company’s self-serve advertising platform.

The company’s recent focus on business services has founder Robert Sandie thinking that next year will be huge for the company as it plans to expand and reinvest revenue in itself. Having received a few funding offers, the company is holding its ground.

“We’re done funding,” Sandie says.

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Tara Levin: Our new ad-sales manager just might be giving you a call

Please welcome the first new addition to the Technically Philly team.

Last week , Tara Levin came on board as our ad-sales manager, primed to find opportunities to make TP profitable, sustainable and able to continue to grow.

“I believe in the idea of entrepreneurship and that Technically Philly is a worthwhile investment of my time and energy,” she says.

Contact her at tara [at] technicallyphilly.com.

Levin will be making the rounds to talk to businesses and members of the community who are interested in partnering with us and helping make sure we’re here to cover technology, science, innovation and entrepreneurship now and in the future in Philadelphia.

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TNT: Chris Bartlett of the Gay History Wiki project

The site, at the moment, is awfully ugly.

“A Web site for dead people shouldn’t be too fancy,” says Chris Bartlett.

That proclamation was met with laughs from an engaged audience of 200 or more during his presentation at Ignite Philly 4 earlier this month, video of which can be seen below. But that five-minute presentation was a bridge from 20 years in a community, three years of research and the nearly half-century old Philadelphia gay community.

Bartlett, 43, is the founder of the Gay History Wiki, which aims to collect the life stories of at least 4,600 gay Philadelphia men who since 1981 have died following complications to their battles with AIDS/HIV and the friends and places who helped develop one of the country’s richest LGBT traditions since the 1960s.

The profiles are notably and purposefully varied, showing the lack of order the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s followed, Bartlett says, from a 31-year-old deli clerk at the Bellvue Stratford hotel to a fashion designer with growing clout to who just might be Kensington’s most famous drag queen and a driving force in driving Bartlett’s passion for the project.

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Event Highlights for October 26-November 1, 2009

It’s the last week of the month, and October isn’t going to go quietly. Our events calendar is chock full of fun times to close out the month. And, as a bonus, only one involves costumes.

IndyHall double dips our event highlights this week with a town hall and a Halloween party with the help of our friends at Geekadelphia. Meanwhile, we partner with Young Involved Philadelphia and others to host a forum about the future of news, and designers converge at Rittenhouse for free lectures.

Oh, and as an aside, can we end the horrible Halloween puns? It’s not Rocktober. It’s not Shocktober. And I will NOT have a “frighteningly good time” at your party.

So without delay, let’s get to our highlights. Because they’re so good, its scary.

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Friday Q&A: Broadband biz strategist Craig Settles talks Digital Philadelphia future

The City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology was handed a tremendous setback last week.

The city has been taking serious steps to move beyond Wireless Philadelphia and to develop a new plan of action to help bridge the digital divide, what the DOT calls Digital Philadelphia. In August, it submitted a broadband grant proposal to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration - as did 2,200 other groups – with hopes of grabbing a slice of $4.7 billion being given out for broadband initiatives as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the broadband stimulus fund.

Because of the tremendous influx of applications, the NTIA turned over some of the decision-making process to state governments. Last week, the Governor’s Office offered recommendations to federal agencies promoting two dozen broadband stimulus grants, including six from the Philadelphia region, as we reported.

And to the surprise of many, the City’s $21 million dollar middle mile infrastructure project was not recommended. Its Free Library-sponsored $14 million broadband adoption program was given an honorable mention, so to speak, but the state’s recommendations certainly cast doubt on the Digital Philadelphia vision.

Anytime we have a question about municipal broadband in Philadelphia, we turn to the sage wisdom of broadband business strategist Craig Settles.

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Links: Pittsburgh top 10 city to launch business, Best Places to Work and More

• CNN Money ranks Pittsburgh as the second best city in the country to launch a small business, behind Oklahoma City. Houston, the 67th ward and Baltimore were listed among the top 10, but, no, Philadelphia wasn’t.
• Clickz reports that myYearbook has seen a marked 40 percent decline in its less than 2 percent share of U.S. social network traffic. H/T Philly Tech News

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

• The Philadelphia Business Journal’s Peter Key reports that four companies from the 2009 DreamIt Ventures class were part of a NYC Demo Day, organized by two of those business.
• The Business Journal released its 2009 Best Places to Work list.

After the jump, recognition for the Neat Company, a big investment firm for a Princeton music software startup and more.

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