Philadelphia 2035: city-wide comprehensive plan website launches
City planners released yesterday, as PlanPhilly reported, the draft of Philadelphia’s first city-wide comprehensive plan since 1960.
In an email from Planning Commission Alan Urek:
Archive for March, 2011
Startup Roundup: Founder Factory on demand
Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated newsletter or RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
MUST READS
Startup Leaders has posted seven of its Founder Factory 2010 program videos, which include engaging speaking from Invite Media CEO Nat Turner, alternative funding options with Chris Cera and Nick Araco of AchieveNext and Benjamin C. Ashpole of Bashpole, Hal Real, founder & president of World Cafe Live, business scaling and rapid growth with Greenphire and Urban Escapes, Ascentive CEO Adam Schran, a fishbowl with EqualApp, Healthy Humans and XIPWIRE, and Document Depository Corp. founder and CEO Farid Naib. PSL’s video channel is here.
Read more
Philly Tech Week update: WHYY headquarters, civic hackathon and more
Philly Tech Week is starting to focus in on impact. Today we have four big announcements for the April 25-30 week of events.
HEADQUARTERS: WHYY, the region’s public media organization based in Old City, will be the official headquarters for Philly Tech Week, offering up its beautiful, modern Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons.
Working with TEDx, Barcamp Philly and Refresh Philly event planner and community builder Roz Duffy, WHYY will play host to a brown bag lunchtime speaker series that week, in addition to our Friday night signature event, which will serve as the week’s highlight. More details to come there.
CIVIC HACKING: In other exciting news, as part of the third annual national BarCamp NewsInnovation, held Saturday, April 30 at Temple University, we’ll also be hosting the Open Gov Hackathon organized by Tropo. Coders, designers and developers will be creating civic-minded tools, largely using newly shared government data. We want the hacker crew and journalists to work together to create projects that will be utilized and have the best chance to make impact. It’s a good fit with our Transparencity coverage. Find out more on the BCNI blog here, and expect more to be finalized soon.
GETTING THE WORD OUT: We’re also proud to announce that we’re working with Grid magazine publisher Red Flag Media to land the first Philly Tech Week print supplement on the streets that week, which will feature the week’s calendar, but also fresh content on our community and sponsor shout outs. That’s in addition to that hot Philly Tech Week website from the Jarv.us development team in Northern Liberties and the forthcoming Philly Tech Week app from Alkali Media.
NEW PARTNERS: New sponsors include the City of Philadelphia Commerce Department, Chariot Solutions, Reed Technology, the University City Science Center and Tropo, and new event organizers include Wharton, First Round Capital, the Philadelphia Science Festival from the Franklin Institute, Indy Hall, the African American Chamber of Commerce and more. Many, many more conversations are still alive.
Check out our Sponsorship one pager and Event organizer guide to become a part.
Expect lots more events, partners and details soon. Clear your calendar for April 25-30 and get involved!
Ticketleap wins Mobile Monday demo contest, McCord cheerleads Philadelphia
Rob McCord addresses Mobile Monday at the Cira Center.
Rob McCord took to the podium and spoke quickly.
The state treasurer since 2009, McCord, whom we interviewed last month abotu Philadelphia as a low-cost entrepreneurship center, was the opening keynote for last night’s Mobile Monday event, the occasional gathering of mobile and technology professionals. McCord was the warm up for the group’s demo night, where seven companies had seven minutes each to demo what they have been working on.
McMord spent much of his speech imploring the room full of young technology entrepreneurs to be more involved in the political process (see video below).
“If you have all the entrepreneurs retreating from the political table, they are on the menu [for budget cuts],” said McCord. “[Older entrepreneurs] rotate through their third wives and get into their flying jets … but they aren’t going to waste five grand on a political race.”
McCord emphasized a need to continue to trumpet Philadelphia’s strengths while improving on its weaknesses.
“It’s important to remain the buckle on the money belt between New York’s private capital and DC’s public capital,” he said, imploring the audience to tell friends about the cheap urban living available in the city.
After McCord left the stage, King of Prussia-based EverComm Technologies kicked of a night packed with demos (though most were more in the “pitch” department), including a locally-based Groupon competitor and an app that has the backing of a Phillies outfielder. Highlights and videos of all the demos after the jump:
Jesse Middleton: “The best thing about Philadelphia is the closeness of the whole community”
This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.
Jesse Middleton tells his story like small town boy makes good.
He went a small high school — graduating class of about 70 people — an hour north of Philly and got his first taste of city life when he attended Drexel University and then stayed a half dozen years.
“I found an amazing co-op job, traveled a lot and went on to do network security consulting, technology writing, SaaS implementations for enterprise companies,” Middleton says, “and finally moved to New York City.”
It was strictly about a job, he says, traveling where the money was good at the time but still harboring all the intentions to come back to the place he first made his home.
Below we talk to him more about what pushed him to leave and why he is so sure he’ll come back.
