GoodCompany Ventures graduates 10, Princeton incubator launches

Welcome to the VC Roundup, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

MUST READ

Socially-minded incubator Good Company Ventures graduated ten companies this week. PhillyInc has the coverage. Among the grads includes pureNano, which also won the Temple University Be Your Own Boss Bowl and ElectNext, a member of the Fall 2011 DreamIt Ventures class.

Following a model very similar to DreamIt Ventures, incubator Ecelerator has launched in Princeton. The incubator takes six percent equity and offers up to $25,000 cash. Ecelerator is still accepting applications and is focusing on B2B and enterprise-focused companies.

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City of Philadelphia IT consolidation: a status report as new CIO Adel Ebeid settles in

Somewhere in this fuzzy camera phone picture is Adel Ebeid on stage, alongside Tommy Jones and Rich Negrin, addresses 250 city IT staff for the first time. Photo regretfully from this reporter.

Rich Negrin has dreamt of this day.

At least that’s what the city’s Managing Director told 250 city IT staff last month before introducing Adel Ebeid as the city’s first ever Chief Innovation Officer and their new boss.

“The weight of leadership is often taken for granted, and so we have put in all the hours to find the right guy,” Negrin said. “And this is the right guy.”

Ebeid, walking to the microphone on stage in a vast conference hall at the Convention Center, referred to himself as “vertically challenged,” perhaps 5’9″ to Negrin’s hulking height advantage of more than six inches, winning passing laughter from his diverse crew of employees. Throughout the hour-long session, Ebeid seemed to be well-received by what appeared to be more than half of all city IT personnel. He shared the stage with Negrin and his immediate predecessor, former interim CTO Tommy Jones, who has expressed interest in staying on board.

When the time came for staff questions, the deepest conversation came from on an unsurprising topic: the city’s controversial IT consolidation. It’s been more than two years since Mayor Nutter first signed the executive order combining all city technology services under then CTO Allan Frank. With a new IT chief in, where does consolidation stand?

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NBC 10 hosts Ask the Mayor: Michael Nutter to live tweet, answer questions Sept. 27

In an effort to continue to highlight the administration’s social media affection, Mayor Nutter will appear on a special program hosted by NBC 10 on Tues. Sept. 27 at 7 p.m., in which he will answer resident questions that are emailed, tweeted or, yes, posted on Facebook.

The event will also be livestreamed online. Check out more details on NBC Philadelphia here.

Stephanie Alarcon discusses open gov and OpenDataPhilly at Chaos Communication Camp in Berlin

Stephanie Alarcon in one of the two talks she gave at Chaos Communication Camp.

Philadelphia’s movement around open data, including the launch of OpenDataPhilly.org, was included in a lecture on e-gov at the noted Chaos Communication Camp in Berlin last month. The celebrated event happens every four years and is organized by the Chaos Communication Club.

The talk, called “Data Mining Your City:  Early Lessons in Open City Data from Philadelphia, USA,” was given by Stephanie Alarcon, who is active in the Hacktory hacker space in Spring Garden, and Florian Stoller, a Swiss open gov specialist. Including an overview of the e-gov movement, Alarcon spoke at length in the 40-minute presentation on the community of developers around OpenDataPhilly.org. Stoller gave the European perspective.

“As taxpayers, we paid for this data, so we should be able to keep it,” Alarcon said. She lauded Azavea and founder Robert Cheetham for building OpenDataPhilly.org.

Find video of the presentation to be downloaded here.

Full Disclosure: Technically Philly discussed the presentation with Alarcon before giving it.

Events: Ignite Philly 8, Philly Tech Meetup

Happy Fall, Philadelphia.

All the signs of the changing season are here: Cool, crisp weather, the Phillies winning the NL East, Ignite Philly and a late-game collapse by the Eagles defense.

This week: get enlightened over beer, get demoed before beer and just drink beer.

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PNG file format, now ubiquitous on the web, was shaped by P’unk Ave developer Tom Boutell

Tom Boutell is a modest guy. Considering that one of his most notable achievements is so much a part of the background of the web, figuratively and literally, maybe that character trait makes sense.

Boutell is responsible for heading up the working group that designed the framework and specification for Portable Network Graphics, known more commonly as the PNG file format. It’s a format that you’re likely to find on any page on the web, seated beside and behind JPEGs and GIFs, more well-known image formats. “It would be hard to find a website that doesn’t have at least one PNG on it,” Boutell says. There was even a book written about the format, published by the industry leader O’Reilly, pictured above.

Boutell moved to Philadelphia in 2002 to be close to family, while working with his consultancy, Boutell.com, selling web analytics and image map editing software he had written. Eventually, the business fell behind the wave of web innovation as a solo act, and Boutell joined P’unk Ave, the South Philadelphia web development firm, where he cherishes the ability to “work with people of complimentary skills,” he says.

But back in 1993, Boutell was hooked into a community that was helping define the future of the World Wide Web. We caught up with him to hear the back-story, after the jump.

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What is a Startup Leader?: Links

• $1M each for 2 Phila.-area economic development groups [PhillyInc: Inquirer] — BFTP and PIDC
• How Philadelphia is failing to proceed on taxes owed [PlanPhilly]
• What is a Startup Leader? [Thinking with Brian] — Perspective from Brian Glick ahead of the PSL fishbowl. Thoughts afterward from others here and here.
• State of Startups: A New Philly Underdog Story? [Flying Kite]
• MOVING PICTURE: Ship It Society Makes Ideas Happen [Flying Kite]

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:

Morgan Lewis — Morgan Lewis provides comprehensive transactional, litigation, labor and employment, regulatory, and intellectual property legal services to clients of all sizes—from global Fortune 100 companies to just-conceived startups—across all major industries.

Alteva — Reduce your total cost of telecom ownership and improve employee efficiency and customer satisfaction with Alteva’s cloud-based Voice over IP phone systems and services.

Colin M. Lenton Photography – Philadelphia Photographer Colin Lenton specializes in portraits of interesting people in interesting places. His work takes him around the country for clients that include Deloitte, Kiplinger’s and Technically Media. He also owns a rental photo studio that is available for multiple purposes.

Reed Technology — Reed Technology’s Web Archiving Service is a litigation protection, web compliance and e-discovery solution for all your online assets.

The University City Science Center — The Science Center has officially opened Quorum, a central gathering space to enable the entrepreneurship and innovation communities to meet, share and learn.

Splat Productions — Splat Productions provides smart, brand-centric website design and internet marketing services to privileged clients in the Philadelphia region and beyond.

Your Local Security — Providing affordable home security systems in Philadelphia. Top of the line equipment and monitoring services from ADT keep your home and family safe.

Caffeine Fish — Caffeine Fish develops iOS apps including Trainboard and PhillySubway and offers consulting in the Philadelphia area.

MOGO Media — MOGO Media provides best-of-class training for designers and developers through world-wide conferences and seminars. The organization will host a Dreamweaver seminar on December 15 in Philadelphia.

Newsworks — NewsWorks is the online home of WHYY News and its growing network of journalism partners. This public media service covers the Philadelphia region, Delaware and South Jersey, with a focus on regional issues, neighborhoods, health and science, and arts.

Interested in joining these organizations and individuals in supporting Technically Philly? Check out our ad packages and contact our Ad Sales Manager. Can’t find something that fits? We’ll customize a package for you.

State of Young Philly 2011: ‘Building our Future’ Oct. 3 to Oct. 14th

Young Involved Philadelphia, the established umbrella group of 20-something civic pride in the city, will host in October its second annual State of Young Philly.

See the scheduled events here.

Last year, the week closed at WHYY with Mayor Nutter and former Mayor John Street calling for more aggressive cheerleaders for Philadelphia. The week also featured a business entrepreneurship event that Technically Philly sponsored and called for more education opportunities in Philadelphia.

Comcast says Internet Essentials not its first effort to bridge digital divide: Roundup

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 email subscription for our weekly Comcast roundup or other news updates

• Philly Live’s first phase to open in spring, create 500 construction jobs  [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Led by Comcast Spectacor
• Comcast boss Burke flip-flops on retransmission fees [New York Post] — On Steve Burke: “The Comcast executive, after fiercely resisting for 12 years paying broadcasters any retransmission fees, appeared to find religion yesterday, surprising a media conference audience by promising to doggedly pursue “millions of dollars” in — wait for it — retransmission fees for his NBCU unit.”
• Comcast names VP for public policy, adds to growing high-profile D.C. roster [Washington Post: Post Tech] — “Comcast continues its hiring spree of tech policy experts, announcing Monday that investment analyst Rebecca Arbogast will join as vice president of global public policy.”
• FCC’s net neutrality rules to trigger legal, Hill challenge [Washington Post: Post Tech]
• Comcast launching low-cost Internet [Twin Cities Pioneer Press]  — The Internet Essentials program launched here in Philadelphia is spreading, to the Twin Cities of Minnesota and parts of Illinois and then beyond.
• Comcast says it was helping low-income students before NBC deal [Comcast] — The company doesn’t want to be criticized for only launching Internet Essentials after NBC merger approval, as pitched by David L. Cohen.
• Potential Comcast (CMCSK) Trade Has $19.59 Breakeven [Market Intelligence Center]
• Comcast Introduces Its First Multiplatform Hispanic Film Festival [Market Watch press release]