Shop Talk: Interphase Systems CEO John Biglin on Ready-IT BioPharma

A year ago, John Biglin, the CEO of Interphase Systems, was talking to the CFO of an emerging Center City pharmaceutical company.

The CFO, intent on keeping in order the financial house of his blue-chip invested life sciences startup, had a problem.

“Is it normal that sometimes you don’t get e-mails, or e-mails take a couple days to arrive or when you do get them, they come in triplicate?” Biglin remembers the CFO asking.

John Biglin

“Our IT has been cobbled together by an employee or by his nephew or uncle,” Biglin recalls the CFO and others in his position saying. “Someone just shows up in a truck and sets stuff up in our office. If the FDA came in here and we say we can’t produce this lab data or that, we are out of business.”

The CFO talked about multiple versions of contracts lost, emergency Best Buy trips for whatever hardware is on sale and documents that are never seen again.

That conversation last January set into motion the long-discussed plans for Interphase, which does 60 percent of its business in the life sciences, to develop a turn-key, managed IT platform targeted for small and medium-sized emerging pharmaceutical and biomedical companies that need top-level security, guaranteed disaster recovery, FDA compliance and flexibility. Biglin says that Ready-IT BioPharma, which launched late last month, just might be the only system of its kind.

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BREAKING: PhindMe acquired by Movitas

This time, they tell us it has really happened.

PhindMe Mobile, the mobile Web direct-to-consumer advertising company based at Drexel University’s Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship, has been purchased by Collegeville-based Motivas Mobile for an undisclosed sum, according to a message sent to Technically Philly by the company’s chief operating officer Doug Bellenger.

This announcement comes fives days after a draft of the announcement was published on PhindMe’s corporate blog accidentally, Bellenger telling us then “this has not happened.” The message was quickly taken down, but Technically Philly and Philly Tech News spotted it.

Motivas specializes in mobile marketing for the hospitality industry, according to today’s announcement on the PhindMe blog. According to the post, “PhindMe has already begun deployments of its products within the Movitas customer base of hotels and resort properties,” including its recently release Everywhereigo.

More details to follow. See the Motivas press release here.

State grants and local investment fund $300k into IT training

Information technology job training is coming for unskilled workers in Philadelphia.

More than $300,000 in state grants and matched local funding is being divvied out to training programs for tech support, Web design, programming, networking and a variety of IT vocations.

The grants and matching funds are a part of a larger investment of $760,000 in grants and $510,000 in matched funding for a total impact of $1.25 million, according to an announcement made last week by the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board.

The funds are being distributed to improve industry competitiveness and to address workforce needs in the region in logistics and transportation, advanced manufacturing, higher education and the allied health fields.

The most significant IT investments include Cheney University, with grants equaling $73,875, Pierce College, with $69,000 and Lincoln Tech, with $58,642.

“We know only 30 percent of the jobs in Philadelphia are unskilled, so this investment will play an integral role in keeping people employed and helping businesses to improve productivity,” Investment Board CEO Sallie A. Glickman said in a statement.

According to the organization, 70,000 workers have participated in the program since 2005, resulting in a 6.6 percent average wage increase.

TNT: Historical Society’s interactive PhilaPlace Web site needs your stories

The Keystone Sewing Machine company, based at Second and Poplar in Northern Liberties, is located in a building that was once a dance hall built in the late 1800s.

Frankford Avenue’s Bike Stable was built in 1890 to house horses, once sharing a wall with a Kensington police station on neighboring Front St., before Kensington was a part of the city.

These stories, along with more than 150 others, are being shared with accompaniments of video, audio, images and scans of historical documents at PhilaPlace, a new site designed by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a three-year project that launched last week.

“[We focus on] neighborhoods ‘beyond the bell,’ beyond the revolutionary history. The history of neighborhoods of people who built this city, who make Philadelphia, Philadelphia,” project coordinator Melissa Mandell says.

PhilaPlace had very different beginnings, after a modest grant from Pew’s Heriage Philadelphia program helped the Historical Society package together two trolley tours in South Philadelphia and Northern Liberties.

It was a mandate to talk about 19th century ethnic and immigrant working-class history, Mandell says. “Not being in the trolley tour business,” HSP decided on focusing on a virtual environment as it moved forward.

And the project got bigger�much so.

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Comcast-NBC merger reaction from local Chamber head, others

A voice of Philadelphia’s business community has made clear his support for Comcast’s majority acquisition of NBC Universal.

“There is an immediate jolt to the reputation of the city and region. This raises our visibility nationally and globally as the headquarters of Comcast,” said Rob Wonderling, the CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, in an organization press release. “It makes Ralph and Brian Roberts decision to stay in Philadelphia and build the HQ here even more significant and admirable.”

Last Thursday, Comcast announced it had agreed to terms with General Electric to take a 51 percent stake in NBC. The deal will have to undergo federal regulatory approval, primarily from the Federal Communications Commission, which could take up to a year.

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Event Highlights for December 7 – December 13, 2009

Edited: Corrected time of BFTP.

Hope you weren’t trying to get any work done in these weeks before the holidays.

Our event calendar is as packed it has ever been, chock full of events for every kind of techie. Whether you want to brush up on your Python or throw down with your fellow new media heads, you have no excuse for driving straight home after work.

Start off the week at the home of our new Comcast overlords, taking in Chris Bartlett of Gay History Wiki, whom we’ve covered in the past, at this month’s Refresh Philly. Then, hold off until Thursday and take the day off to better familiarize yourself with Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ application process. When you are done plotting the next great Philadelphia business, head on over to PANMA’s holiday party to spend your future riches.

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Friday Q&A: Far McKon of hacker space Hive76

Far McKon, seated right, helped create hacker space Hive76, which recently moved into new, larger digs | Photo: Technically Philly

After moving into a new, larger studio down the hall from its original location in the Poplar neighborhood, DIY hacker space Hive 76 is celebrating.

“We had a good year. We were nonexistant to a big space and now we have a huge crew of people,” organizer and “instigator” Far McKon tells Technically Philly.

Founded in March, McKon says that Hive developed organically to 12 full-time members, slowly building with the space’s weekly free-to-all open house, to find itself in its new 40-foot by 30-foot space that is three or four times the size of its previous location.

The group’s weekly events and occasional classes like Jack Zylkin’s upcoming Guitar Effects 101 class compliment its normally laid back atmosphere, witnessed first hand by Technically Philly recently.

We had a chance to sit down with McKon to talk about what the hacker space movement is all about, the group’s innovative MakerBot platform and Hive’s falling out with the Hacktory, after the jump.

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Thanks to our weekly sponsors

Technically Philly is made possible by advertisers and sponsors that are important to Philadelphia’s technology community. This week we’d like to thank:

Nonprofit Technology Resources – NTR refurbishes used computers and peripherals for families and individuals who may not otherwise afford to buy a computer. We urge you to donate to this great cause.

Links: SAP goes green and More

DEFINITE READS

• The Washington Post reports that 61 percent polled by Newsweek and Intel say the economic recession hurt the nation’s edge in innovations.

After the jump, a software company goes green, a statewide emergency notification program and other tech stories you should eye, including our best read piece of the week.

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Comcast Roundup: NBC Universal deal announced earlier this morning 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 LEDE: As we reported this morning, Comcast announced it has purchased a 51 percent majority stake in NBC Universal from its current parent General Electric for $30 billion. Federal regulatory approval, which could take up to a year, remains, multiple reports say.
• The New York Times reported over the weekend that General Electric bought out French company Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC for $5.8 billion, clearing the way for its deal with Comcast and fueling expectations for the move to become final.
• The Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong gives “props” — yes, props — to Comcast for aiming high. Most Philadelphia-based companies take big buy outs, Armstrong writes, but Comcast has been the only in a generation or more that has sought to and succeeded in dominating its industry. Think notorious Philly.com commenters responded?
• The New York Times digs deeper into how Comcast’s NBC acquisition will almost surely precipitate a move to bolster its sports programming to challenge ESPN. The USA Today reports that Comcast ought not try to compete with ESPN but instead find a new niche to blossom a newly branded sports channel.

After the jump, more fallout and a dozen other Comcast news pieces you need to know about.

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