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.

Philadelphia vying for ‘City of the Year’ for open gov efforts in 2011 GovFresh Awards

The City of Philadelphia and its residents have been nominated in a variety of categories in the 2011 GovFresh Awards, organized by an two-year-old open government news site of the same name.

As of publishing, Philadelphia is battling with New York City to be named City of the Year, and a variety of city organizations and efforts are mentioned in nearly each of the 20 categories. Both Azavea and ElectNext are nominated in Best Civic Startup. OpenDataPhilly.org is mentioned in multiple categories, including the Best Open Data Platform and the Best Government/Citizen Collaboration.

With a quick email sign up, users are given 10 votes for each category, though they’re allowed just three votes for each option. Voting ends next week, when a judging component will begin.

Rendell talks tech, national politics at NPower community service awards fundraiser

On Friday, two technology leaders were recognized for their commitment to the local community and for their commitment as board members of nonprofit information technology service provider NPower.

Marty Judge, who founded the Judge Group — growing the recruitment company from a $2,000 investment in 1970 to more than 4,500 employees — was awarded the Community Impact Award. Accenture‘s Nicole Tranchitella, who leads the company’s global corporate finance practice, received the group’s Founder’s Award.

The two were awarded at an NPower luncheon, which was keynoted by former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and attended by more than 400 technology executives who gathered at the Crystal Tea Room in the Wanamaker building in Center City. The event was intended to raise funds for the nonprofit. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was invited to attend the event by a member of Npower's board of directors.]

At at least one table before the event, attendees exchanged stories of growing up in Philadelphia and caught up with one another before Npower executive director Patrick Callahan opened the award ceremony with a number of comments about the organization’s commitment to providing information technology services to nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, and about its ITWorks program, which helps connect disadvantaged youth with IT internships and training. We covered ITWorks in February 2010.

Rendell then took the stage for a speech focused on technology, economic policy and the political rifts currently facing the country.

“You picked the wrong guy to talk tech,” Rendell said to the crowd, made up of companies like SAP, Judge Group, Accenture, Cigna, HP, Brandywine Realty Trust, NetApp, and dozens of others, many which sponsored the event.

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Philly Geek Awards: Geekadelphia to honor geek, technology communities Aug. 19 at Academy of Natural Sciences

The team behind Geekadelphia, the playful geek culture blog, has announced the first ever Philly Geek Awards to take place Friday, Aug. 19 at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Free tickets, with a suggested donation of $5, are now available, as co-founder and lead organizer Eric Smith announced last week.

“A black-tie, red carpet event, we’re taking this ‘jawn’ seriously. Think of it as the local Daytime Emmy of the Webby Awards. Presenters will take to the Academy of Natural Sciences’ stage to talk about the nominees, open up an envelope to announce the winner, all that good stuff.  Expect beautiful trophies/plaques,  a fantastic pre-awards cocktail hour  thanks to National Mechanics and DrinkPhilly, and lots of laughs.”

[Full Disclosure: Geekadelphia has nominated Philly Tech Week and work we've done with the National Constitution Center; we can only assume to throw pie at us.]

Philadelphia Geek Awards
Friday, August 19th, 2011
www.phillygeekawards.com

Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 299-1009 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (215) 299-1009 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
www.ansp.org

Ignite Philly 5 marks age of social entrepreneurs, city’s Google bid

Organizer Geoff DiMasi hands a check to Girls Rock Philly for $1175

Last November, we asked if the Philadelphia technology community was ready to take the next step. Tonight, at a trimmed-down Ignite Philly, we got a glimpse of what those next steps may look like. The event, which forces speakers to cram a presentation into a fast-moving five-minute speech was better attended and was better at holding the attention of attendees than its predecessor (see our humble slideshow).

Fresh on the heels of new technology-based tax incentives, City Councilman Bill Green and Philadelphia CTO Allan Frank kicked off the event by announcing the city’s effort to lure Google’s new Fiber project to the city, an effort that began earlier this week using a #phillyfiber hashtag campaign (much more about the effort here).

Shortly after the rushed Google announcement and after Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman‘s subtle rebuttal, the night was characterized by a string of presentations focusing on social entrepreneurship.

The event was one of over 60 Ignites taking place on six continents as part of Global Ignite Week. As part of the Philadelphia event, the organizers were able to donate the event’s 235 five dollar ticket sales to raise $1,175 for Girls Rock Philly, a summer camp that helps young girls become musicians.

After the jump we hand out some awards for the event including best quote, best presentation and the “Kids Table” award.

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bluecadet interactive’s Josh Goldblum wins Emmy

A Web-based multimedia package on living with AIDS in Jamaica is not done winning awards for the firm that designed it.

Josh Goldblum, founder of the Art Museum area’s bluecadet interactive, won a News & Documentary Emmy last week for his work as interactive producer on the project, called Live Hope Love.

The project, which combines photography, video documentation, poerty and interviews with the victims of AIDS, began in 2007 with a request from the Virginia Quarterly and became a broad partnership between the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, D.C.-based Joshua Cogan and South Carolina poet, activist and Jamaican native Kwame Dawes.

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Best of Philly nods to our community from Philadelphia magazine

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine has its annual and ever-popular Best of Philly awards, edited this year by Michael Callahan. It will come as no surprise that lot’s of familiar faces pop up, including a number from our creative communities of technology and innovation.

Below, we breeze through the names you just might stumble upon at the next community event.

• In the “ENJOY” section, the all-comedy acting company 1812 Productions gets the nod as the city’s best Theatre group. We’ve covered their work for an iPhone app about Abraham Lincoln to promote the Rosenblach Museum.

See seven others from the magazine’s nearly 300 listings after the jump.

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