First Lego League: youth robotics championship tournament held Saturday at Penn

Photos by Matthew Albasi and Erica DePascale for Technically Philly.

Hotdog hats, bright white lab coats and Rosie the Riveter costumes set the atmosphere Saturday for the Penn First Lego League Championship Tournament, held in the Irvine auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania Saturday.

FLL, a robotics program designed for kids ages 9 to 14, aims to get young students excited and involved in science and technology. Fifty-two teams from across the tri-state area traveled to University City to participate in FLL’s annual championship tournament after advancing in regional qualifying rounds in December. Like elsewhere in the region, the City of Philadelphia’s School District is grappling with the need for strong STEM education.

This year’s theme was ‘Food Factor Challenge’, where judges evaluated elementary and middle-school teams on three events.

“It’s basically an exhibition of elementary and middle school students to show what they’ve learned in the area of robot design, core vales, project presentation and robot performance,” said Kendrick Davis, the head judge advisor.

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Venturef0rth: new near-Center City incubation space from three serial entrepreneurs seeks applications [VIDEO]

Updated, 1/12/12, 1:08 p.m.: The base price for Venturef0rth’s rental fees is $395, not $345 as previously reported. A 12-month commitment brings the fee down to $345.

A new early stage incubation space opened its doors for the first time last night in what could have been a familiar setting for some in the creative realm of Philadelphia.

Venturef0rth — with a zero, not an ‘o’ — offers cheap, collaborative space for a curated group of small entrepreneurial teams and access to the initiative’s three founders, all of whom have experience in building and exiting technology businesses in Philadelphia.

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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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MacBUS: the Macintosh Business Users Society has talked Apple since the 1980s

Chris Urban, the president of MacBUS, speaks at a meeting held in Connelly Auditorium in the University of the Arts.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

While most tech groups around Philadelphia were founded in the 21st century, the Macintosh Business Users Society, known as MacBUS, has been around since the Macintosh 128K computer in the 1980s.

Once a month, businesspeople, lawyers, engineers or retired persons convene to discuss the latest happenings around the Mac world and exchange tips and tech support from a business angle. The group usually meets the last Tuesday of the month in Center City. Membership is encouraged.

“MacBus was always specifically geared toward business users, it’s not so much for people who used their Mac for drawing, painting or writing, it’s for people using them professionally,” Chris Urban, the president of MacBUS, said. “They were doing pre-press, design, photography and anything else you can imagine using a Mac for professionally.”

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What problems can be solved during Random Hacks of Kindness 2 this weekend?

The second local version of Random Hacks of Kindness to be held at Drexel University is this weekend. It’s the fourth global RHOK, which are held in cities throughout the world.

Like last June, the weekend hackathon is being kicked off with a reception at Indy Hall in Old City where developers and non-developers alike can talk about what could be built, designed and delivered.

RSVP for the free Friday night reception here and the hackathon here. All are welcome. The hackathon is organized by Drexel PhD student Mike Brennan and, full disclosure, the reception is sponsored in part by Technically Philly.

Though participants will be able to choose from problem definitions offered by U.S. AID, Voxeo Labs, NASA, like last June, Technically Philly has collected a few other ideas:

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SEPTA developer showcase puts realtime schedule apps on display for transit agency officials [VIDEO]

Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.

Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’

By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.

More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.

The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]

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Improv Everywhere: Youtube prankster Charlie Todd speaks at Drexel University [VIDEO]

Drexel University mp3 experiment led by Improv Everywhere's Charlie Todd, a Drexel alumnus. Photo Will Tanksley

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Since 2002, Charlie Todd has been making a name for himself by starting flash mobs.

Charlie Todd

They’re meant to be the good kind of flash mobs, which Todd organizes as the creator of Improv Everywhere. The prank collective based in the 67th Ward performs large-scale stunts and publishes videos of said stunts on YouTube, where some of his handiwork has received tens of millions of views.

As part of Drexel University’s Comedy Week, Todd visited University City where he conducted an mp3 experiment where some 250 participants performed pre-recorded instructions from Todd as a flash mob-esque stunt. See video from the Inquirer of the prank below.

Todd was brought to the school by student group Urban Playground and its founder Ari Melman, a junior business student at Drexel. It was Todd’s and the group’s first time in Philadelphia, he added.

After the outdoor  Todd, gave a behind the scenes look at how Improv Everywhere got started, how it operates today, and he held a question and answer session with the audience.

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Authorship recognition software from Drexel University lab to be released December [VIDEO]

Two competing software tools focused on ‘authorship recognition’ from a Drexel University computer science group are scheduled to be released publicly for the first time at a conference in Berlin at the year’s end.

The Drexel Privacy, Security and Automation Lab
work, led by Dr. Rachel Greenstadt and PhD student Michael Brennan, began in 2009 with research on the shortcomings of software used to uncover the identity of an individual based on writing style, like word choice and sentence structure.

“We have come a long way since then and are currently working on two tools that can be used both to recognize and to anonymize authors,” said Brennan, who organized June’s Random Hacks of Kindness and will organize another again in December. See the sidebar below for details. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly have sponsored both events.]

Yes, at the next Chaos Communication Conference in Berlin in late December, Greenstadt and Brennan will unveil two pieces of software, each meant to outdo the other.

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K’House: info session bar crawl on Indy Hall cohousing project Friday

Envisioning of the K'House, the cohousing project from Indy Hall, set for the 1700-block of Howard Street.

K’House, the Indy Hall cohousing project, will be the focus of a fireside chat information session this Friday in a lot in Kensington.

Uh, well, the lot is 1711 Howard Street, which is due to become a sustainably-minded private residence with communal space to foster collaboration and community. In true Indy Hall fashion, they’re going to light up a fire pit and have a conversation right out in the open. In addition to discussion, more drawings will be unveiled for the K’House, dubbed by excitable Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman and pronounced KA House, like kaboom, as noted in this month’s Philadelphia magazine profile.

RSVP on Facebook here.

The lot is right above Cecil B. Moore Ave. near Front Street, nearly equidistant from both the Girard and Berks El stops.

The information session, which will be followed by a bar crawl, will update those interested in renting one of the initial spaces, in addition to those curious and supportive. 

TEDxPhilly 2011: “Cities are the most complex man-made artifacts of our time” [STORIFY]

Urban communities should be seen as complex computing programs that can operate efficiently and smartly, offering the infrastructure for innovation and entrepreneurship, said Temple University Fox School of Business Professor Youngjin Yoo.

That assessment of smarter, leaner cities, owned and operated by the people to make the world a better place, was the central message from the second TEDxPhilly, which boasted a theme of ‘The City.’ The event was first held in Philadelphia at the Kimmel Center last November, bringing some 600 attendees.

“Cities are the most complex man-made artifacts of our time,” said Yoo, who is leading the university’s new Urban Apps and Maps Studio. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a TEDx media sponsor]

Held at Temple’s newly renovated eponymous Baptist Temple, the local iteration of the popular, innovative lecture series, organized here by designer Roz Duffy and dozens of volunteers, drew some 200 people for the high-price, high value day-long conference Tuesday.

Below, find Technically Philly’s notes from the two dozen speakers and a Storify of the Twitter chatter.

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