Philly invades South by Southwest

Indy Hall founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi lead "How Geeks Grabbed Philadelphia by the Balls."

AUSTIN – In the Courtyard Rio Grande Hotel, just across the street from the Austin Convention Center, BarCamp Philly organizers Roz Duffy and Kelani Nichole walked up the escalator with a burlap sack and hustled down the hall.

“It’s our bag of balls,” said Duffy with a smile.

Culminating Philly’s strong presence here (TP has seen our share of Phillies caps and jerseys) was the Saturday session “How Geeks Grabbed Philadelphia by the Balls,” a panel led by Indy Hall co-founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi that aimed to help residents from other cities foster a tech community.

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Links: Pharma’s middle class, IndyHall gaming and more

DEFINITE READS

• Mike Armstrong of the Inquirer writes about the region’s pharmaceutical ‘middle class,’ with between $1 billion and $10 billion in annual sales.

MIGHT BE OF INTEREST

• Keystone Edge has a Q&A with Drew Becher, the new chief of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, discussing his interest in sustainability and technology in the nonprofit’s mission.

Below, a middle-class pharma company gets a little bigger, a 30 Under 30 nod for an e-mail marketer and more.

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Startup Roundup: Baltimore visits Philly, RailBandit updates NJ Transit offering, TrapCall supporting Sprint

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Baltimore coworking space BeeHive visited IndyHall last week, according to the Philly coworking site’s newsletter. And at IndyHall’s weekly Show & Tell lunch meetup, several startups showed off their goods, like MyClin which claims to “revolutionize clinical trials,” and Johnny Bilotta‘s UI prototyping software for Photoshop and Illustrator.

We’ve received word from Ignite Philly 5 organizers about some of the speakers set for the March 2 event at Johnny Brenda’s. We’ve got limited details, and organizers anticipate changes in the schedule, but so far, Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch will talk about food trucks and open source, Philly Startup Leaders‘ Blake Jennelle will discuss startups and nonprofit survival, Mike Levinson of DreamIt will offer ideas “that make it (and don’t),” and Happier.com Founder Andrew J. Rosenthal will tell you, mysteriously enough, “how to get people to like you.” Thank god for that.

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Startup Roundup: Lifehacker has trust issues with Lose It Or Lose It, myYearbook donates to Haiti

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch. Several of the tips in this week’s roundups resulted from a quick email to TP. Without further ado….

DEFINITE READS

Lose It Or Lose It founder Randy Schmidt offers insight into the how, why and how much of launching a startup Web product, and it doesn’t sound so daunting: Twenty-one grand and some serious, uhm, sweat equity.

Lifestyle-meets-technology aggregator LifeHacker ragged on Schmidt’s project, practically begging readers not to give money to the product. LifeHacker likely picked up the story when CBS3′s Nicole Brewer interviewed a contributor for her piece highlighting Lose It as a tech-savvy way to lose weight.

In light of the recent magnitude-7.0 earthquake in Haiti, New Hope’s myYearbook has pledged to donate at least $15,000 and up to $25,000 through its Causes social networking application this month. The company donated more than $250,000, contributed by members, to charities in 2009.

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