Jim Querry: City of Philadelphia GIS is among country’s best, part of open gov future [Q&A]

Jim Querry at center, with the City of Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology GIS services group that he leads, including, starting at his right, GIS specialist Sarah Cordivano, GIS manager Brian Ivey, GIS application developer Adam Conner and system and database manager Julia Jia

In 1996, when Jim Querry started at the then called and still evolving Mayor’s Office of Information Services, there was a single Internet connection, an Apple dial-up tool at 1234 Market Street.

“That’s where you met to get on the web,” he said.

Fifteen years ago, Querry, who now leads the city’s geo-spatial information systems group that is responsible for mapping, tracking and evaluating city services, was joining an effort by some in the city to get ahead of what was already being billed as the digital revolution, a chance to bolster transparency and efficiency of government systems.

The Planning Commission, Querry said, led the charge to put the City of Philadelphia in a position to be setting the standard for what municipal use of GIS could yield.

To create the foundation on which the city’s crime analysis evaluations, trash collection routes and 311 complaint locations are determined, early city leaders chose platform tools from Calfornia-based Esri, now the global gold standard for GIS products. After early hesitance, Philadelphia became a leader in publishing its longitude and latitude-based map layers to state clearinghouse PASDA. By 2000, the city had won the prestigious Esri President’s Award, an honor again earned in 2008 — a two-time win that no other organization or level of government has yet duplicated.

Though other big cities have caught up in the GIS space in the last 10 years and the surging open data movement has captured public attention in other ways, Querry says the City of Philadelphia maintains some of the most dependable map layers around.

If accuracy is at the heart of making impact with data, then, Querry might argue, Philadelphia has a lot of reason to be a leader again.

Below, Querry speaks to Technically Philly, flanked by his young, four-person team, about the past, present and future of city GIS.

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Open gov movement in Philadelphia: year in review post from Mark Headd

A year in review of the open government movement in Philadelphia from Tropo developer Mark Headd:

The time of year-end reviews and top 10 lists is now upon us, so I’m compiling the details of a watershed year for open data and civic hacking in two cities where I’ve seen huge leaps made in 2011 – Philadelphia and Baltimore.

In this first installment, I’ll focus on the “City of Brotherly Love” and highlight some of the events and developments of the past year that made it such a special one for the open government movement there.

Also, O’Reilly Media’s Open Gov correspondent Alex Howard gave a broader year in review, noting Philadelphia’s role in scalable solutions.

[Full Disclosure: Tropo has been a past Philly Tech Week sponsor and this post mentions this reporter.]

Joystiq’s Fishtown editor Chris Grant is leaving [LINKS]

• Nurturing a nascent video game industry in Philadelphia [NewsWorks]
• This Is Philly [Hidden City] – The 2012 Maskar Philly Calendar and Almanac shipped. We covered the effort last year.
• Azavea app for travelers finds nearest emergency rooms [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• Thomas Scientific gets $12M laboratory supplies deal with military [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• This is a Goodbye Post [Joystiq] — Fishtown’s own Chris Grant, who has kept one of the country’s best known video game blogs rooted in Philadelphia, is moving on to other challenges.
• Exton-based Scala sees 20% growth in 2011, fine tunes leadership team for future growth [Philly Tech News]

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:

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.

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

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.

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.

Springboard Media — Springboard Media is a certified Apple Specialist and retailer with two locations in Center City, including its newest in Midtown Village. They’ve got a ton of accessories and a great trade-in program that can score you up to $1,500

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.

Google Indoor Street View rolls out in Philadelphia

Johnny Brenda's in Fishtown is one of the first Philadelphia businesses included in Google's Indoor Street View program.

In October, Google representatives announced plans to pilot a program to offer indoor photos of businesses it catalogs.

Yelp and Twitter users have noticed those indoor street view shots have started popping up in some Philadelphia bars and restaurants.

The photos are dated from spring 2010, when the program began in earnest, as described by a Google spokeswoman in October. They include Old City’s Eulogy and Fishtown’s Johnny Brenda’s, as depicted above.

Hat tip @TheGreenGrass.

iTrans: native SEPTA regional rail iOS app has ‘three killer features’ that sets it apart

iTrans SEPTA is the localized regional rail-specific version of a popular native mass transit app with, as Brooklyn web developer Adam Ernst describes it, “three killer features: offline access, live departure info, and push alerts.”

• Offline access: “Since schedules are stored right on your device, you can pull up the times within a couple seconds at most, no matter how spotty your cell connection,” he said.
• Live departure info: This “is incredibly useful for checking your train while you walk to the station. Right on the timetable view, iTrans shows you if each train is on time or late and how late it is,” he said.
• Push alerts: “You can just set an alert for your train line and get instant push alerts whenever there’s a disruption announced by SEPTA. You can even set alerts for individual trains: so if you usually take the 5:45 train from Market East, tap a switch and we’ll send you a push alert whenever it’s delayed on the days you choose,” he said.

The app costs $3.99 in the app store. Live departure info and push alerts are an additional 99 cents per month, said Ernst, since they “require server-side resources that I have to maintain.”

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Comcast-Spectacor sued for $2M over 76ers sale finder’s fee [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.

• Pair sue Comcast-Spectacor over $2M finder’s fee in 76ers sale, say they brought in buyer [Associated Press via Washington Post] -  “Two sports executives have sued former Philadelphia 76ers owner Comcast-Spectacor seeking a $2 million finder’s fee over the team’s October sale.”
• Cable Providers to Offer ‘HBO Go’ Service [New York Times] — Comcast had offered to its customers earlier in the year, followed now Time Warner Cable and Cablevision
• Comcast exec named to bank board: Angelakis to remain at cabler while serving Federal Reserve [Chicago Tribune] — Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis

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How to download an e-book from the Free Library of Philadelphia

Considering that Philadelphia was home to the nation’s first library, innovation comes naturally to the city’s library system.

Skipping forward more than 200 years, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Free Library of Philadelphia offers a robust selection of downloadable e-books that could be compatible with the new e-reader or tablet device you may have received this holiday season.

Leaving no user behind, the library also offers the opportunity to download books for your desktop or laptop PC.

After the jump, our step-by-step guide — which is not without some expectations of experimentation — to check out free books and transfer them to your device of choice.

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Monetate: How to get hired by a startup [Startup Roundup]

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 a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’s RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

MUST READS

Wondering how to get hired by a startup? Monetate has put together the above Philly-focused graphic visualization for just that. [h/t BostInnovation]

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10 best read Philadelphia technology stories of 2011

The 10th best read Technically Philly story of the year focused on broadband adoption in Philadelphia.

What is the end of December if not full of inevitable year in reviews?

We at Technically Philly are always interested in seeing what were the 10 best read stories of the year, so we collected the 2011 batch.

10. Where will broadband competition take Philadelphia?

See the rest of the top 10 below.

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