Gov Fresh Awards 2011: Philly runner-up as City of the Year, wins in four categories

The City of Philadelphia was named a runner-up as City of the Year and was represented in several other categories by other initiatives in the 2011 Gov Fresh Awards, celebrating open government initiatives.

The honors, offered by the three-year-old online news site, followed an outpouring of support in online voting and final decisions by a panel of judges. The City of Philadelphia, which had almost double the number of online votes of second place New York City, lost to the 67th ward after judging and was tied in a runner-up slot with Chicago.

Local data catalog OpenDataPhilly.org won in two categories — Best Government/Citizen Collaboration and Best Open Data Platform — the Code for America team-built ReRoute.It won Best Transit App and the recently unveiled Sheltr.org won Best Social Services App. Runner-up nods were given to ElectNext for Best Civic Startup and Septa.mobi, built by the Devnuts crew.

Updated: As noted in the comments, also the Azavea-built DistrictBuilder tool was a runner-up for the Best Use of Open Source.

How the City of Philadelphia spends $3.5 billion annually: 10 best charts and graphs

How the City of Philadelphia spends $3.5 billion annually should be better visualized online, we say.

The state-empowered Philadelphia Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), which is chaired by investor and former mayoral candidate Sam Katz, released in November a citizen’s guide to the City of Philadelphia General Fund that was full of visualizations — all buried in a PDF.

While we shared the document a few weeks ago, after seeing it on PhillyDeals, it seems that it all passed with too little fanfare. While we at Technically Philly would love to work with PICA to develop a friendlier, more interactive web version of this project, we thought we’d start by sharing our 10 favorite of the many charts and graphs detailing where the city government gets its money and how it’s spent.

In addition to the one above, see our 10 favorites below.

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Novotorium announces 25 partnerships [VC Roundup]

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 READS

Novotorium, the new Langhorne-based business accelerator, has announced 25 partnerships to help support the businesses it will house. The partnerships include Chariot Solutions, SEER Interactive and Weber Law. Novotorium is currently accepting applications for resident companies.

In case you missed it, we chatted with Louis Toth of Comcast Ventures for our Friday Q and A last week. We talked about the differences between a strategic VC firm and a regular one, as well as Comcast’s focus on media and content.

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‘Firewall:’ the anti-SOPA music video from meme maker Leah Kauffman

The Internet craze calling out against the Stop Online Piracy Act has perhaps slowed the progress of the House bill that has been described as pitting old media against new.

But the conversation continues.

Locally, Philly.com entertainment editor and songwriter Leah Kauffman, who skyrocketed to national awareness on the back of a 2007 viral video detailing a crush on presidential candidate Barack Obama, has taken up the cause. She wrote, performed and helped produce ‘Firewall,’ a love song for the Internet, played dutifully by Geekadelphia co-founder Eric Smith behind a cardboard computer monitor.

Philly.rb, Build Guild and PhillyCocoa [Event Highlights]

It’s that time of year, Philadelphia.

No, not the holidays, but the time of year when our calendar gets a little thin as our city’s user groups pack it in for the year. However before we break for the holidays, we have one week of tech goodness.

This week: hack with Philly.rb, hang with Build Guild and step into PhillyCocoa’s office.

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Friday Q&A: Louis Toth of Comcast Ventures

Comcast Ventures was thinking about content long before its parent company acquired NBC Universal. The venture capital arm of the cable giant counts Flipboard, About.com, SB Nation (now Vox Media) and BlogHer among its dozen of investments. Now with NBC in tow, Comcast Ventures has a powerful channel for helping its portfolio companies.

“We have access with all of these resources to help entrepreneurs and tell them how the market is going to evolve and give them heads up on what’s next for Comcast,” says Toth.

Like its parent company, Comcast Ventures has offices in The 67th Ward, Silicon Valley and San Francisco along with its presence on the 55th floor of the Comcast Center in Center City.

After being locally active during the first tech bubble over ten years ago, the firm (which is, as Business Insider pointed out, run by a woman) is dipping into Philadelphia once again funding five DreamIt Ventures companies through the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program and was one of the investors in Invite Media, the ad platform that exited to Google in June 2010.

We spoke to Managing Partner Louis Toth shortly after the firm closed a $6.1 million investment in Catalog Spree in November. After the jump, read why Comcast bothers investing when it could acquire, how his firm views Philadelphia and why it invests in the turbulent media industry.

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More jobs here than those with degrees in tech, engineering and math: Campus Philly annual meeting

Addressing the group's annual meeting at WHYY is Campus Philly board chairwoman Joan McDonald, who is Drexel University's Senior Vice President of Enrollment.

Better tying employer needs with degrees conferred at regional universities is a major next step in a broad, years-long effort to bolster retention at and broaden awareness of higher learning opportunities in and around Philadelphia.

That was a primary claim from Deborah Diamond, the president of regional brain drain combatant Campus Philly, at the nonprofit’s annual meeting held at WHYY Thursday morning. Diamond was joined in Old City by Mayor Nutter, CEO for Cities President Lee Fisher and others in trumpeting the successes of the region and calling for greater heights.

“Education is economic development,” said Nutter in his address, calling for regional universities to do more outreach in the city’s poorer communities, offering summer programs and campus awareness seminars for city neighborhoods. “It will benefit us all.”

[Full Disclosure: This news site's parent company led the new redesign of Campus Philly's website, and this reporter was involved in the effort.]

In backing her claim, Diamond used three data points showing differences in the region between where the jobs are and where the job candidates are:

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Youth Empowerment Station: small Strawberry Mansion computer lab gives access to North Philadelphia community

Evettia Harden took advantage of the computer access available thanks to the YES program.

From PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com:

The Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Action Center helps more than just the community. It also has a positive impact on the individuals who walk through the door. The YES program, also known as the Youth Empowerment Station, located in the center at 2829 Diamond St., offers computers to all residents who do not have one of their own. There are currently six computers available for use.

MORE

Aide who made iOS game poking fun at School District may be fired [LINKS]

• City should be more open about property-tax values data [It's Our Money: Daily News] — More on developer Tim Wisniewski’s PhillyAddress.com, which was built at April’s Philly Tech Week hackathon.
• School aide who helped Ackerman’s secret projects now expects to be fired [Inquirer] — The same school aide who built this critical ‘Teachers of Philly’ iOS game.
• Cheaper way to deal with the waste heat at data centers? [Inquirer] — A Villanova research team is looking into more efficient ways of cooling computer processing
• Three Pennsylvania Universities Receive Awards to Bridge the Funding Gap  [Business Wire press release] — “Lehigh University, Philadelphia University and Thomas Jefferson University were each awarded $200,000 in the fourth round of the University City Science Center’s QED Proof of Concept Program”
• New Co-Working Space Opens at Science Center Port Business Incubator [Business Wire press release]
• geekadelphia.com/2011/12/13/science-cheerleaders/ Science Cheerleaders: NFL & NBA Cheerleaders Turned Scientists  [Geekadelphia] — on the Science Cheerleaders group we’ve told you about
• Roving thermographer records evidence of heat loss from Philly homes [NewsWorks] — On the Mark Group, as we’ve covered in the past
• Philadelphia Technology Park Partners with Sunesys to Expand Connectivity Network in Southeastern Pennsylvania Region [Business Wire press release]

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.