Four legal falsehoods of freelancing

After more than 20 years of practicing business law in Philadelphia, working mostly with entrepreneurs, John Gerber became a freelancer himself.

He joined the self-employed workforce to help businesses grow from a legal and operational standpoint as an independent consultant. Since then, he has helped more than 100 companies launch.

Now, he’s created an opportunity to spread the wealth. He recently formed Upstart Legal, an online legal repository for the freelance community. On the site, paid users can download modular, semi-customizable documents on the cheap. These “tools for entrepreneurs,” as Gerber calls them, help protect freelancers from potential legal liabilities.

On the site, there’s documents there for developing a service agreement with a client, the proper paperwork needed to hire sub-contracts and more. For an all-inclusive fee of $395, users get all the documentation they need to create their business, from forming a Limited Liability Corporation to tax registration. All that’s left is paying the State its due.

Well, it’s not always that easy. Let’s please not forget Technically Philly’s 15 steps to open a business in Philadelphia. Still, properly setting up your business with the right legal framework is easy and cost effective, Gerber says. “Because the key protections of a legal entity and good contract forms can be purchased at a relatively low cost, from a cost/benefit standpoint,” protecting your freelance work is a no-brainer, Gerber says.

After the jump, Gerber shares four often misconstrued truths of the legalities of freelancing.

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Wharton’s WIMI can predict your future

This is first in a series of posts profiling speakers at this month’s Supernova conference, a technology conference at Wharton that is co-sponsored by Technically Philly.

Wharton professor Eric Bradlow sees his department as a matchmaker between guys in suits and guys in lab coats.

“We want to connect companies with large data sets with academics that want to build data models,” he says.

Bradlow along with fellow professor Peter Fader started Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) in August 2008 to help companies take the large mounds of user data and use it to predict customer behavior.

WIMI is able to predict the viewership of ESPN programming across cable, online and mobile. They’ve told Omnicom what online advertising methods are most effective and they’ve helped Hulu forecast user consumption “with ridiculous accuracy.”

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visitPA and Foursquare send you after badges for Pennsylvania trekking

If you make it out to South Philadelphia’s rapidly redeveloping East Passyunk corridor, Pennsylvania’s tourism board wants to give you  a badge.

Last month, visitPA announced a partnership with location-based social networking juggernaut Foursquare, offering three badges for users who check in at various locations across the Commonwealth.

Visit East Passyunk and a couple others from a list of two dozen stops shops and commercial venues in Pennsylvania and earn the PA Retail Polka badge. Hit up Nat Mechanics on your way to the PA Shooflyer or the Mutter Museum in your quest for the PA 4 Score and 7.

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Invite Media’s Philly roots run deep

Earlier this month, the tech world’s eyes were set squarely on Invite Media.

The small company, headquartered in Rittenhouse, made big news when it was purchased by Google. Industry analysts were mostly concerned with how the purchase of Invite’s real-time display advertising bidding software played into Google’s long-term strategy.

But here in Philly, we’d guess that there were likely a handful of celebrations taking place from West Conshohocken down to University City as Invite Media’s Philadelphia ties run deep.

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Museum Without Walls audio program tours the art of the Ben Franklin Parkway

The Iroqoius model at 24th Street north of the Ben Franklin Parkway by Mark di Suvero. The story behind the sculpture is part of a new audio initiaitve from the Fairmount Park Art Association.

Ben Franklin Parkway, the cavernous promenade that thunderclaps from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, never developed the type of urban density that the French boulevard after which it was modeled in the 1920s.

In reaction, city and state officials announced this week the immediate launching of $19 million in improvements meant to make the signature thoroughfare more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Tomorrow, another, unrelated initiative launches to better connect the prize art and acclaimed cultural institutions that litter the parkway like trash blowing in a neighborhood breeze.

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Superior Technology integrated IT solutions eases logistics at local beverage producer

Even for small beverage production startup Cintron Beverage Group, based in South Philadelphia, tracking inventory was, in a word, chaotic.

“There were so many orders going in and out, and the ability to track inventory in real-time didn’t exist,” says Chief Marketing Officer Donna Davin, who handles production, operation, product development and marketing, a tall order.

So when the 20-employee company—which produces a line of energy drinks, iced teas and fruit-flavored beverages—was pitched by its logistics provider DF Young on a new IT solution that could ease the process and consolidate having to manage multiple tech vendors, things were bound to get easier.

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Shop Talk: Philly Beer Week gets an app

Update: The new version is out.

Edit: Corrected some minor features that aren’t in latest version, clarified Bilotta’s position.

Thanks to a new iPhone app, navigating Philly Beer Week just got a whole lot easier.

Philly Beer Week is a yearly festival – started in 2008 – where the city’s breweries, taverns and restaurants hold tastings and other events to back up the claim that Philly is America’s best beer-drinking city. Something that gets other cities (ahem, Portland) all hot and bothered.

To help Philly Beer Week attendees navigate the hundreds of events as efficiently as possible, the non-profit has enlisted the help of six members of Philly’s CocoaHeads to make a free iPhone application.

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Shop Talk: interactive design studio WellFed rides the Flash wave

Updated, 5/13, 4:11 p.m.: Added Partner Gavin Potts details.

At interactive design firm WellFed‘s office space at 2424 Studios on York Street in Fishtown, on a cold, late winter day, the firm’s excitable puppy, Bella, runs from desk to desk.

Founded by Wick Vipond, Ty Burrowbridge and Gavin Potts—who got their start at agencies like Red Tettemer and 1 Trick Pony—WellFed, which opened earlier this year, is a friendly place for Bella, who huffs up and down the steps of the two-floor loft to visit a handful of employees and interns, like partner and technology lead Gavin Potts.

Unlike the larger agencies where the founders got their start, Vipond, 30, says that WellFed’s small team that gives them an advantage.

“We’re small, lean and able to be more efficient,” he says, his hair curiously gray for his age. “This year will be interesting. It’s our first full year where we’ve been a brick and mortar shop.”

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Shop Talk: The Planning Collective wants to make Philly beautiful

Updated: clarified city’s role

In the city’s never-ending battle between bicyclists, pedestrians and automobiles, The Planning Collective wants to offer a reason for truce.

As Philebrity posted yesterday, The Planning Collective isn’t some official city organization, but a group of seven Penn grads that think the city could make better use of its space, especially vacant lots.

The for-profit company’s latest effort is to make the 12th and Morris intersection with Passyunk avenue into a pedestrian plaza. And they plan on doing it with funding from Pepsi through its Refresh project (vote here).

The Refresh Project is the soft drink company’s campaign to have customers vote on projects that help “refresh their community.” For a proposal to be awarded the cash, it in the top ten of its category at the end of the month. The Planning Collective is gunning to be eligible for the $50,000 grant for May.

“We are committed to changing the way things happen in Philadelphia,” says Clint Randall, one of the company’s co-founders. “We wanted to plan projects that were a little out of the box.”

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$2.1 billion in state technology spending at an all-time high, boosted by stimulus

Current state technology investments are budgeted at an all-time high, due in part to federal economic stimulus dollars and an increased interest in government technology that promises reduced costs and improved services in Pennsylvania.

According to a report from market research and professional services firm pjmathison, which assists clients with procurement, grants and loans, state government technology-related spending is estimated to exceed $2.1 billion this year.

The firm’s founder, Paul J. Mathison, whose background has been in both technology and government relations, has led the preparation of the company’s state technology forecasts for 10 years.

Mathison says that as federal economic stimulus money is awarded and depleted, the state will face a technology shortfall in future fiscal years. “That money is going to be drying up after this year and beneficiaries and recipients of that federal stimulus money are going to be scratching their heads,” he said in an interview with Technically Philly on Tuesday.

But the firm predicts that the state will continue investing in technology as the economy turns around and as tax revenues readjust.

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