Kinecthesia takes top prize at PennVention competition, to demo during Philly Tech Week [VIDEO]

This post is provided by guest contributor James Feuereisen, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Above photo courtesy of Lamont Abrams.

Kinecthesia, a belt-mounted navigation device for assisting the visually impaired, (see a demo) took first place and a $5,000 prize after besting 11 other finalists of the University of Pennsylvania’s PennVention competition where a total of $20,000 in prizes was awarded.

Forty-three student teams, a competition record, entered the first phase of the competition back in February, with a rigorous process to narrow the field to 12. The first place company was started by by junior computer engineering students Jeffrey Kiske and Eric Berdinis, who have been working on their product for nearly a year. PennVention is part of the Weiss Tech House, which hosts other entrepreneurial events throughout the year and houses an in-house fund for startups.

“After seeing the competition this year, I can’t really say I was expecting to win,” Kiske said after the event. “All of the teams were so well put together and presented very well.”

Watch a demo video below.

In second place was Invisergy, which makes a solar powered window that is completely transparent and can be implemented into existing infrastructure. Invisergy has participated in other pitch competitions and is in the running for the MIT Clean Tech Competition.

Third was The Campus Rep, a tool for startups to easily access students to represent them on college campuses across the nation. They are already on the ground at several schools and are planning a large scale expansion.

A panel of nine judges, who selected the winners and the sponsored prizes, included Michael Aronson of MentorTech Ventures, serial entrepreneur Jay Tapper, and Jason Glickman and Bert Navarrete of the newly established TigerLabs incubator.  The competition has been heating up over the years and companies have seen success after the competition. Last year’s winner, uBeam has been featured in the All Things Dconference and one of its founders, Meredith Perry was one of Forbes 30 under 30 for 2011.

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AWeber Communications Raises $5,700 for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in video game marathon

This event coverage was written by Liz Cies, a spokeswoman for Huntingdon Valley-based email marketing firm AWeber, and edited by Technically Philly.

For the second year in a row, the staff at AWeber Communications put down the keyboards and picked up the gamepads to participate in the nationwide Extra Life video game marathon.

This past Saturday at 12 p.m., the AWeber game changers team locked themselves in AWeber’s game room to play video games in support of kids at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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Can we tackle Philadelphia’s poverty problem with technology?: Guest Post

The First PHA Graduation Ceremony for the Freedom Rings Computer Training Program, held Aug. 11, 2011. Each graduate to complete the program walked home with a free Dell netbook computer. Courtesy of GPUAC.

Arun Prabhakaran is the Director of Government and Strategic Partnerships for the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition. The group has taken an active role in fighting digital divide issues in Philadelphia.

Our economy has taken a sustained pounding. Unemployment is out of control and the economic outlook for the next decade looks questionable, at best.

With a quarter of all Philadelphians living in poverty, many fear that we may be entering a new down-graded reality that is structural and permanent.  However, we can use technology and training to get us on the right track again.

We must address the major gap between the skills people have and the skills that the available jobs require.  Many of the jobs that are open now require at least functional literacy, a high school diploma or GED, and some training.  In an increasingly digital world, even the lowest skill, entry-level positions require a basic level of literacy and digital literacy. Even to apply for a job at McDonalds, you need to go online, which is a real challenge when 40 percent of households in Philadelphia are without internet access.

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Goldstar CEO Jim McCarthy: why membership-based discount ticket seller expanded in Philly

Goldstar.com CEO Jim McCarthy

Goldstar.com, the Southern California-based, membership-driven discount event ticket seller made Philadelphia its 21st market in September. Now, Goldstar CEO Jim McCarthy writes about why Philly was the right choice and how the company is differentiating itself.

Studies show most people wish they went out more. Yet most of the time – and the statistics back this up – they do not. They watch movies on the couch instead.

And yet while all of these wannabe ticket-buyers are warming their sofas at home, concert halls, theaters and arenas put on shows to half-filled audiences. A costly business problem, not unlike the plane that takes off mostly empty.

Fortunately, it’s a challenge we’re helping Philadelphia solve with technology. Goldstar.com, which launched in Philly in late September, sells tickets to events and venues like the Philadelphia Film & Music Festival and the Philadelphia Orchestra for half-price, helping people find budget-friendly ideas for going out – and driving additional revenue for the local live entertainment industry.

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Girl Geek Dinner: Philadelphia chapter kicks off during Philly Tech Week

Girl Geek Dinner Philadelphia chapter kickoff during Philly Tech Week.

More than 30 self-proclaimed “geek” women met up at Triumph Brewing Company in Old City on Tuesday, April 26 to kick off Philadelphia’s Girl Geek Dinner chapter during the first ever Philly Tech Week.

The event started at 6:30 p.m. with the opportunity for attendees to network and enjoy drinks from the cash bar. At 7, chapter organizer Tristin Hightower welcomed the group and gave a brief introduction to the overarching organization, explaining why she started the chapter and her goals for it.

Maggie Avener of the Prometheus Radio Project spoke about demystifying technical topics to make them accessible to less geeky audiences, emphasizing techniques borrowed from popular education. She covered tips on audience-appropriate advertising for beginner technical trainings, assessing and acknowledging what participants already know, designing trainings that reach people with varying learning styles and pushing people beyond their comfort zones while maintaining a feeling of safety. Click to see slides from Maggie’s presentation here [PDF].

Hightower closed out the speaking portion of the evening by thanking everyone for attending and answering questions about where the group could go from there. Attendees ate dinner and mingled until about 9pm.

Pictures from the event can be found on Flickr and Facebook.

Up next for Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia will be a May Happy Hour welcoming to all. To stay connected with upcoming events or activities, follow @GGDPHL on Twitter, like them on Facebook or join the GGD PHL
announcement mailing list. Visit www.ggdphl.com for more information.

IGDA connects gamers and developers during Philly Tech Week

Gamers play Jamestown at the IGDA Showcase | Photo credit: IGDA's Flickr Page

This wrap up of the IGDA Philly Game Showcase was written by IGDA Chapter Secretary, Allison Berman. The showcase was part of Philly Tech Week.

The IGDA Philly Game Showcase 2011 brought together designers and programmers from across every major media platform: from mobile video games to game consoles to mobile apps for smartpads and smartphones, to computer games.  One adventurous presenter even created a unique motion-sensitive joystick to go with his game.

While the event was organized by the IGDA Philadelphia Chapter, it was open to any local game makers, regardless of affiliation or membership. Some studios have been very involved with the chapter over the last few years, offering help to up-and-coming students and first time developers.

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Gloria Bell: Technology and creative communities need to collaborate for real growth

Technically Philly is a platform to connect, cover and discuss Philadelphia’s technology community, and we want to give its members a chance to speak. If you’d like to offer a relevant perspective or cover a community event, drop us a line.

This piece was written by Gloria Bell, of Red Stapler Consulting, the events director of Philly Startup Leaders and a frequent supporter the Philadelphia technology community.

History has demonstrated that the development of sub-communities is often a commonplace result of advancement.

The rapid growth of the technology and creative communities in Philadelphia over the last few years is no exception to this phenomenon.  It seems that the more these communities grow, the more silos are developing between and within the spheres of business, technology and creativity.  A simple search on Meetup.com reveals 22 technology groups, 220 business groups and too many different networks falling into the “creative” sector to even accurately count.  And the reality is there are many other organizations, events and informal networks that are not even included in these Meetup.com counts.

However, these communities are now faced with a pivotal question.  How do we continue to shape this growth?

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Apparently, early stage investors aren’t endangered

This post originally ran on Philly VC Deal Lawyer a blog about Philly startups by Christopher McDemus. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a partnership.

You may recall my earlier post from a few weeks ago entitled “Are True Early Stage Investors An Endangered Species?“  After laying down some background, I took the position that super-angel funds and incubators/accelerators (e.g., Y Combinator, TechStars, DreamIt), had the best chance of solving the early stage funding gap and that capital efficiencies and bootstrapping might help temporarily fill in some of the other holes.  Since I wrote that post, there’s been a lot of online traffic surrounding this issue.

Much of it was ignited by conversations emanating out of Y Combinator’s AngelConf on July 29th.  All of the new super-angel funds popping up in the past few weeks just add to the fervor.  Just today, the WSJ put out a piece noting that Aydin Senkut (former Googler) is closing a $40M super-angel fund, which follows Ron Conway’s $20M super-angel fund, Chris Sacca’s (former Googler) $8.5M super-angel fund, Dave McClure’s (former PayPal’r) $30M super-angel fund and Mike Maples’ new $73.5M super-angel fund.

Here are some of the articles that popped up since my last piece:

Read the rest here.

Nutter looks to make the city, students, smarter with tech

Technically Phily is often unable to make it to local events, so we’re asking readers interested in writing guest posts to contribute content, to ensure that, despite our schedules, more events can receive the coverage they deserve. If you’d like to write about an event you are attending, drop us a line.

This guest post, about last week’s IBM Smarter Cities event—keynoted by Mayor Michael Nutter—at the National Constitution Center, was written by Michael Rowinski of IBM External Relations.

This week Mayor Michael Nutter joined nearly 150 local academic, business and government leaders at the National Constitution Center to share ideas on how to revitalize the local economy, retain the viability of Philadelphia and the role technology will play in the city’s future.

Mayor Nutter noted for the first time in 60 years Philadelphia is showing signs of population growth. With this growth, civic leaders will face an unprecedented series of challenges, including news stresses on old infrastructures and a shift in the skills private industry is looking for. For example, IBM’s Eastern Region, General Manager, Phil Guido noted that the average Philadelphian commutes 32 minutes to work. With a growing population and stressed infrastructure he expects this commute to only grow longer.

How can Philadelphia turn this and other challenges into an opportunity? As the city undertakes projects to make aging buildings and transportation systems more efficient, and to transform public services such as education and social services, using new technologies to make them “smarter” also requires people with these new skill sets. The participants agreed that educating young people to be tech-savvy, creative thinkers with leadership skills to meet these challenge will be critical.

More important though will be creating an environment that will encourage these young people to stay local and apply these skills to the Philadelphia’s future. This will involve making the city a destination for skilled workers looking for a lifestyle in tune with their priorities. The Mayor’s GreenWorks Philadelphia plan to turn the city into the greenest city in America by 2015 is the type of initiative some participants pointed to as being a draw and a retainer of talent.

IBM encouraged the participants to join the global conversation taking place around the future of cities taking place as part of the Smarter Cities Scan.

Guest Post: Josh Kopelman advises DreamIt companies to fail early and often

Editor’s Note: Technically Phily is often unable to make it to local events, so we’ve begun reaching out to readers who would like to write a guest post about an event they attended to ensure that, despite our schedules, more events can receive the coverage they deserve. This the first of such posts. If you’d like to write about an event you are attending, drop us a line.

This is a guest event post by Chris DiFonzo.  Chris is actively involved with multiple startups, as CRO of newly formed VidaView Technology Group and Co-Founder and CEO of OpenDesks.com. He is friendly with the folks at First Round.

Tuesday night’s DreamIt 2010 Speaker Series event at the University City Science Center featured an engaging, Powerpoint-free conversation with Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital.

The 90-minute discussion revolved around gathering feedback, making adjustments, and approaching startup challenges deliberately. Kopelman set the tone early: “One thing I know about all of your business plans, is they’re all wrong.”

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