Lecturer Aaron Wunsch shows a map detailing the extent of the PECO system by 1961, at The Wagner Free Institute of Science.

Everyone in the Philadelphia technology community relies on it for their livelihood, but few think much about Philadelphia’s electrification system except for when it fails or it comes time to pay bills.

For The Wagner Free Institute of Science, though, electricity is on the mind. The museum, near Temple University’s North Philadelphia main campus, plans to revamp it’s ancient electrical system, but before they do, they brought Aaron Wunsch, a lecturer in Penn’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, in on Wednesday to explain how Philadelphia, beginning in the 1880s, got electricity in the first place.

Below we’ll take you on an abbreviated version of Wunsch’s photo tour of Philadelphia as it was becoming electrified.

An Edison Electric Light direct current power plant. Before PECO rose to dominance in the 1890s and implemented alternating current power plants, these direct current power plants were privately owned and could provide power within a few-block radius, Wunsch said.

An old postcard of City Hall lit up. At the time, City Hall had its own isolated generation system, according to Wunsch.

A few of PECO's central stations. All of the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) central stations built in the early 1900s were designed by John Windrim, the son of the man who designed the Ben Franklin Parkway, Wunsch said. The"grand" or "bombastic" neoclassical style of each of the buildings was an intentional attempt to create a clear corporate image, according to Wunsch.

The Industrial Parade, headed into the Sesquicentennial fairgrounds, June 4 1926. This enormous Liberty Bell replica display is encrusted in lightbulbs, according to Wunsch.

If you’ve always wanted your very own 3D printer, but were hesitant to shell out the cash, maybe you’d rather pay to make one yourself.

For roughly the same $2,000 price tag as a retail version of the MendelMax 3D printer or just a bit more than buying your own kit and trying at home, NextFab Studios will to help you build your own and provide you with the 3D modeling software license you need to get printing, even if you just want to print another printer. That’s right the printer can supposedly self-replicate (we’ve never seen this happen so we can’t confirm).

“It’s not something you can do on your own without any knowledge or experience,” NextFab’s Community Service Specialist Itsuki Ogihara said. “You need to know some tricks.”

The 3D prototyping community workspace currently located at 37th and Market in the University City Science Center will be hosting the two-day, seven-person “Build-Your-Own 3D Printer” workshops three times throughout the summer.

To register for a workshop click here.

There’s a certain element of sticker shock to a $2,000 registration fee, but those in the NextFab community may eventually get used to it.

Ogihara says that NextFab currently derives no revenue from running these types of big ticket workshops (due to the cost of materials), but that is likely to change once the studio expands to its new space at 20th and Washington, which is currently under construction.

“We’ve been doing this more as a community service and PR,” Ogihara said, referring to events like the Build-Your-Own 3D printer workshop. “But in new space, we are going to have much bigger classrooms, where we can hold substantial workshops. There, we intend to bring in revenue through them.”

NextFab’s model of using classes and workshops to reach out to the community and attract more members is not unique. TechShop, a similar membership-based workshop in Menlo Park, CA, also holds classes and events, but Ogihara says they don’t have full time staff. NextFab has 16 full time staff members.

At the moment, the studio derives half of its revenue from memberships — they have 160 full-timers — and half from contract work it does for clients seeking custom fabrication, Ogihara told Technically Philly.

We’ll have to wait until the new space is up and running to see how more space, membership, and programming interact to fuel their bottom line.

To find out more about building your own 3D printer click here, or get glimpse of what to expect by watching the time-lapse video of a MendelMax being built:

And a quick video of a finished printer starting a job:

You’re a seasoned entrepreneur. You’re heavily involved in the Philadelphia tech community. You’ve given plenty of business pitches in high stakes situations. You think you’ve seen or done it all.

But have you ever let someone pitch your business to a panel of judges for you?

That’s the premise behind PitchSwap, a new business pitching event being organized by Brad Oyler, founder of W3Portals, organizer of Philadelphia Startup Weekend (PHLSW) and early contributor to Center City incubator Seed Philly. Oyler said some of the crew from PHLSW are helping him with this new, experimental event as well as acting as sponsors.

“I know that may sound silly, but this event is all about spontaneity and having fun with ideas,” Oyler said.

To register to participate or spectate click here.

Here are the ground rules, according to Oyler:

1. Bring an idea to pitch or observe.
2. You CAN’T pitch your own idea. You have to find someone to
PitchSwap with.
3. A panel of judges vote on the winner

Here are the event details:

• When: June 14, 2012, 5:30pm-7:30pm
• Where: McGillan’s Old Ale House
• Who: 40 PitchSwappers, 5 judges
• Cost: $5 registration fee, includes entrance, open bar, food buffet

Oyler says he came up with the idea for PitchSwap while thinking about how to create a fun pre-event for Startup Weekend.

If this first attempt is a success, he’ll attempt to organize PitchSwap events quarterly, Oyler told Technically Philly. As of publication, 3 judges and 18 entrepreneurs were committed to attending.

To register or learn more click here.

VideoLink Philadelphia, a corporate media services company headquartered in Newton, Mass., has made the move from Logan Square to Center City for fancier digs.

With locations in Newton, Boston, Baltimore, Manchester, NH and Irvine, CA, VideoLink provides video production, broadcast and creative media services to corporations and networks. The new studio in Philadelphia is one of the company’s’ three full video production studios and the site is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the company boasts.

From a press release:

“The studios are also open to any organization in the Greater Philadelphia area looking to create professional quality video or connect with the media.”

The new 4,800 square foot site, located at 1524 Delancey Street, offers the following services, according to the web site:

• Live insert studio
• Multicamera studio with control room
• Satellite trucks (high definition)
• Live or On Demand Video streaming ability for webcasts and websites
• Live and recorded Remote event and video production
• Post Production
• Video Crewing

If you work with HTML and CSS everyday, but want to learn how to be more efficient, Jonathan Snook promises you could be in luck.

The leading developer and designer is bringing his book-based touring CSS workshop, Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (SMACSS), to Philadelphia on June 1, 2012. Snook is offering a deep $100 discount off the $486 price tag to the Philly set.

“Snook’s work was influential on my early days as a software craftsman, so I’m pretty proud that he’s coming to Philly,” Indy Hall cofounder Alex Hillman said in an email to Technically Philly.

But, there’s a catch. The all-day workshop, which will be held at the Hub Cira Centre adjacent to 30th Street Station, is limited to just 25 participants.

To see a schedule of what to expect from the workshop click here. To register click here and enter PHILLYLOVE to claim the discount.

If you ever wanted to feel late to the tech game, you could do no better than watch a group of local high school and middle school students demonstrate their own Android applications last Friday night at Temple University’s engineering building.

One student, Francisco Castellanos, even used his newly developed programming skills to win over a girl, he told the audience.

The students were part of a class of high school and middle school students, predominantly from Carver High School, graduating from a five-month Java/Mobile Apps Design Studio initiated by local, Emmy-award winning technologist Dean Harris, who Technically Philly profiled here, and the Pennsylvania Math Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA) program led by Temple professor Dr. Jamie Bracey. MESA is a Temple initiative that runs engineering programs for urban youth.

The students met every Saturday at the Temple Engineering building to learn the fundamentals of computer science and apply that knowledge to building Android applications.

“In high school we have a computer science class and my teacher saw that I was good at programming and he just said, ‘Hey, do you want to take this class?’” Castellanos said. “I said yes and came in on the first Saturday.”

The students’ main teacher Java Presenter and Drupal expert Tariq Hook led the graduation festivities, though mechanical engineer L Dollio Durant and Harris’s son, Askia Harris, also helped teach the students.

“Within five minutes, I realized how engaged these kids were so I was like ‘Alright, this is what I need to do,” Hook said, who took over teaching after missing the first class. “It was exciting.”

In addition to showing off their mobile applications on the front end, the students each explained how they programmed the application, defining key concepts, such as the difference between XML and JavaScript, for the audience to show the knowledge they’d gained.

After the application demos and recognition for the younger students who were still finishing their applications, Hook announced that a group of his students were going to spend the summer trying to launch a development firm called Reach Development. The students may have the opportunity to join Center-City incubator Seed Philly for the summer to launch their business, but the program is still pending approval, Seed Philly cofounder Brad Denenberg told Technically Philly.

The students were then treated to a keynote speech from David Tarver, a successful technologist from Michigan and a former colleague of Harris’s at Bell Laboratories. Tarver discussed the key lessons he learned on the path to starting and eventually exiting a successful company, Telecom Analysis Systems (TAS).

Tarver explains the early day of TAS in the video below:

Check out footage of the students demonstrating their Android apps is available below. Hook says the students not only built their own applications, but helped each other with bugs and other obstacles throughout the process. Next year, the students will be helping to mentor the next class of students, Hook told Technically Philly.

Student Darren demonstrates The Maze Game:

Iyasu Watts demonstrates the Simple Browser:

Francisco Castellanos demonstrates Doctor Love:

Stephen Pettus demonstrates Music Globe:

AbuBakar Mohammed demonstrates Note to God:

While you may be busy watching the Sixers in the evening, there are plenty of day time tech events to balance the suspense.

This week: Talk “Big Data” at Temple, learn more about using SharePoint in your business, and discuss how building a network of “Information Advocates” might improve digital access.

Temple “Big Data” Symposium: Get a clearer perspective on how Temple can use “big data” through a day long series of lectures and panels on the technologies and methods used to manage large data sets. Monday, 12pm-6pm. Shusterman Hall, Temple University. FREE. RSVP.

SharePoint Information Architecture Workshop: Over the course of a three-day conference, which promises to be hands-on, learn how to use Sharepoint in your business to enhance content management and search optimization. The organizers say registration also includes a free, one-year MetaVis Architect license. Tuesday – Thursday. Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue. $1995. RSVP.

Information Advocacy Takes Root in Philadelphia: The Nonprofit Technology Resources organization will be holding a morning discussion on how to build a network of “information advocates” that can help make information technology more accessible to low income families who need access to achieve their goals. Friday, 9am-4pm. Philadelphia Central Library, Ben Franklin Parkway. FREE. RSVP.

In the meantime, there are plenty of tech events this week to keep you busy.

This week: Hacks and Hackers meetup, TEDx talks come to Drexel and IBM’s Lee Green shares insight from the tech giant at Temple.

All together now: Intro tools and team hacking//Hacks Hackers: Hack and Hackers meetup this week for three short 15-minute talks on tools of the trade, a demo and recap on what went down at the Open Gov News Hackathon, and a little preparation for the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon in June. Tuesday, 6:30pm. Philly Municipal Services Building, Center City. FREE. RSVP.

TedXDrexelU: Catch a day of TED-style talks centered around a provocative theme and mantra of three-year-olds everywhere: “Why not?” Fifteen speakers will take on the topic including Drexel University President John Anderson Fry. Wednesday, 10:00am-6:00pm. Mitchell Auditorium, Bossone Research Center, University City. $50-$75. RSVP.

EXPERIENCE CHANGE with Lee Green: IBM Vice President of Worldwide Brand Experience and Strategic Design Lee Green comes to Temple’s Fox Business School to offer a day-long course on IBM’s business methods, covering topics that range of from hiring to client relationships. Thursday, 8:30am -4:30pm. Alter Hall, The Fox School of Business. $595. RSVP.

Rick Rasansky

Imagine sitting in front of an audience, entertaining a litany of personal and professional questions. Then imagine you don’t know whose asking each question because the audience members are submitting them anonymously using a software product you created.

Great. Now you have an idea of what it was like to be seven-time entrepreneur Rick Rasansky last night as he jovially participated in an hour-long Q&A session at Venturef0rth that was scandalously entitled “7 Startups, 4 wives, 1 entrepreneur.”

Using his own realtime feedback application Yorn, an audience of about 40 people, many of them also entrepreneurs, anonymously shot questions at Rasansky as he perched on a director’s chair and awaited the moderation of the coworking space’s cofounder Jesse Kramer.

Rasansky answered questions ranging from how to choose engineers and advisers to how to balance a startup and a family. He also — sort of — answered questions about his handful of ex-wives.

Rasansky, who is currently married, likens his marital history to launching a startup.

“You might say that if you were to compare it to a startup. A startup goes through a lot of different stages and pivots a lot and ends up finding the right direction,” Rasansky said. “And I definitely did.”

Check out video of Rasansky explaining how pitching to potential investors is different in Philadelphia than it is in places like New York City or Silicon Valley.

Over the course of his career, Rasansky has started a variety of high-powered businesses that range in focus from food services to technology, including China Grill Management, Millennium Media Group, eCal, Intronics Corporation, Sapphire Mobile Systems, the Network Acquisition Company and, as of 2010, Yorn.

He is also known for his role in the acquisition of Wireless Philadelphia from Earthlink, though he expressed regret that since he sold the 4200-node WiFi network back to the City of Philadelphia, nothing had been done to deploy it.

Venturef0rth is the relatively new coworking space in Callowhill. Kramer and cofounder Elliot Menschik regularly hold events in the space that all tend to start off with free Philly brews and networking. This Q&A event was no exception.

To learn more about Venturef0rth’s event programming click here.

Panelists taking questions on "Innovation with New Information" (from left to right) Lisa Locke, Steve Spiker, Jason Kiesel, Mjumbe Poe.

Mjumbe Poe is not one of the Avengers, he’s an open source software developer.

But speaking at the Reinventing Older Communities: Building Resilient Cities conference, the Open Plans software developer and former Code for America fellow — who said he’d recently been inspired by the new blockbuster movie — drew a connection between the Avengers’ world saving abilities and civic engagement software.

“The core of civic engagement software is really around two things, inspiration and empowerment,” he said.

Inspiration and empowerment, that is, for everyday people to fix their little piece of a city whose problems otherwise seem too big to solve. Poe explained that everyday life is “disempowering in several ways,” and outlined three barriers to solving civic problems that can be addressed through civic engagement software:

1. Problems are often posed on an inhuman scale, but software brings problems to a human scale
2. Heroes are often not visible, but software can improve visibility for unsung heroes.
3. Even when people who are making change are visible, they are not visible in a tangible way. But civic engagement software can make the path to problem solving more tangible.

He offered Change by Us, which he and the other Code for America fellows built in 2011, as an example of software that accomplishes these goals.

Poe was speaking on the “Innovation with New Information” Wednesday afternoon panel in front about 40 people participating in the three-day conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Here is video of Poe explaining how civic engagement software can help citizens overcome what he referred to as the dis-empowerment of everyday problems.

Poe shared the mic with Steve Spiker, the Director of Research & Technology at the Urban Strategies Council in Oakland and Jason Kiesel, founder and CEO of CitySourced, a realtime mobile civic engagement tool. The panel was moderate by Lisa Locke, a community development specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Kiesel discussed the products CitySourced builds to help city governments engage with their citizens more directly, offering a practical example of how companies can help cities make use of the vast amounts of data they collect.

The conference brought urban policy makers and researchers to the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing for wide ranging discussions about how to improve and modernize cities across the country.

As Poe suggested in his talk, if you’re looking for The Avengers to solve problems in your city, you may be out of luck, but if you’re look for inspiration to help your city “aspire to greatness” you might want to start by watching the movie.