Yael Borofsky: new Technically Philly reporter returns to Philadelphia after 2.5 years in Bay Area

Another in the Entrance Exam series, as part of the Why I Love Philly campaign from Young Involved Philadelphia and Indy Hall. Tell the world why you love where you live by tweeting #whyilovephilly.

When it comes to covering a community, it has always been an asset to have a healthy mix of reporters with deep ties and others who bring fresh eyes. After three years of intensive coverage of the technology community here, it was time for a new perspective.

A young, curious reporter who was living in San Francisco but with family in the region here seemed like a fine choice to add to the Technically Philly team as our newest dedicated reporter.

Meet Yael Borofsky, who was most recently serving as a project director and associate editor at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif. based think tank dedicated mostly to global energy and climate issues.

Borofsky, 24, was born at Thomas Jefferson Hospital and was raised with stints in the Art Museum district, Overbrook Park, New Jersey and Reading, though mostly in Oaks. To be fair, her Philadelphia authenticity needs no defending.

Despite her time in the Bay Area and dedicated Ivy League undergraduate career at Cornell, Borofsky was still penning a Flyers column for a small blog network. Yes. A Flyers column.

In the interview process, she stood out for other reasons too, so, like we do with other smart people who join the technology community here from areas far and wide, we wanted to learn more. Below, we talk more about her interests and how you can start a conversation with her before talking about your latest project.

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New Media Unplugged: Uncapped Live Technically Philly + 215mag.com welcomes indie publishers

How communities find news and information is of great importance and often has a tease to technology.

Next Tuesday, Sept. 6 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Technically Philly and 215mag.com are hosting New Media Unplugged, something of a workshop and meet-and-greet with Philadelphia indie publishers. Consider it a slightly more evolved blogger meetup. It’s happening at the historic Sigma Sound, 212 N. 12th, just north of Race Street.

More info here and the Facebook invite here. We’ll have some free beer, so please RSVP so we know what to plan for.

The event is sponsored by Vitamin Water, as part of its #UncappedLive event series, spread over 16 days.

Doors open at 6 p.m., at 6:30 p.m., we’ll highlight some of the coolest things happening in Philadelphia web communities and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., we encourage everyone introduces herself to every other person in the room.

Among others, we’ll welcome a handful of Philly’s best talk about who they are and what they’ve learned:

• Generocity.org: David Raible, the executive director of the new nonprofit-focused niche news site will talk about its launching and plans for scale.
• NakedPhilly: Mr Fox will be in attendance to talk about his strategy for building a community.
• Geekadelphia: Co-founder Eric Smith will talk about the recent Philly Geek Awards and having success with events
• NEast Philly: Shannon McDonald, the founder of the Northeast hyperlocal, on helping partnerships with sites like Yahoo and hurting partnerships with coverage like the popular Right NEast/Wrong NEast feature.
• DrinkPhilly: Adam Schmidt, the president and founder of the popular nightlife news site will talk about building a business around news.
• Technically Philly: Co-founder Chris Wink, yes, this author, will talk about Philly Tech Week.

Little Giant Media, a sponsor of Philly Tech Week 2011, is working with Vitamin Water to host the event series.

Happy April Fool’s Day, Philadelphia

No, Technically Philly is not moving to New York to pursue an online news site in a new niche community, even if it meant the chance of running into Rupert Murdoch, pitching that media acquisition, and living the high life at News Corp.

Today was April Fool’s Day, after all, and we’re proud to be here in Philly’s tech community. Where else would we be able to make such crude jokes, rip-off the Onion, and take a day off from our editorial calendar?

To sum up our trickery [Updated: now all below], no, First Round isn’t investing in the food market, we’re more emotionally attached to Port Richmond than you could believe, Mike Werth beat the entire Mario Brothers series years ago, keep those urban farms at Ignite coming, the power of GIS will continue to amaze and excite us, yes, we’re still a little bitter about the Gigabit thing, and actually, the Comcast parade kinda sounds like a good idea.

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Thank you for supporting us: today is Technically Philly’s second anniversary

As we tweeted this morning, today marks two years since we first launched Technically Philly with this post.

It was followed the next day by our first piece of news, an item on free cell service for low income Pennsylvanians and since then every weekday since, we’ve offered a little bit of coverage and clarity on a still growing technology community of creatives, entrepreneurs, technologists and geek heads. This is our 1,232nd post here.

Last year for our birthday, we celebrated with a Philly Startup Leaders Fishbowl to move on our building a business.  Plenty has happened internally since, and we’re tried to keep you apprised so our community of readers was part of our growth as a startup vying for sustainability like many of you.

Of our three founders, two of us are now full-time, and last month featured about 17,000 unique visitors to the site, clicking through to nearly three pages per visit, despite our 1,800 RSS and 500 email subscribers receiving a full feed. We have also long curated a conversation with our more than 3,000 Twitter followers.

In addition to covering this community and its trends, with your support we are proud to say we’ve done the following in the past two years:

• We launched Technically Media, a parent publishing consultancy company.
• We’ve started a grant-funded research project on the open data movement in Philadelphia.
• We have started organizing the first ever Philly Tech Week, to be held April 25-30.
• We kicked off a tech startup demo event called Switch Philly to help show off our scene.
• We’ve grown a national journalism conference called BarCamp NewsInnovation.
• We pitched a News Inkubator concept that is informing major investment in Philadelphia journalism.

Now we hope to move from startup toward established business and bring all of these concepts together. Thank you for supporting us. We look forward to many more years growing together.

Introducing Technically Philly office space

As part of Transparencity, the grant-funded reporting project we’re leading, we’re proud to announce that Technically Philly now has Center City office space.

Based in Temple University Center City at 1515 Market Street, we’re still figuring out some logistical hurdles — like security, schedules and actually having functioning internet that visitors can use — but we have notions of using this great space as another way to get to know our community better.

Give us a heads up if you want to visit and co-work for a day. We accept one form of currency: you have you to teach us something interesting. …You know, or beer.

Sean Blanda gives you the quick tour below.

Transparencity: introducing Technically Philly coverage on open data in Philadelphia

Even you binary code aficionados out there might miss that in the image above, a message is spelled out: Data Sets You Free.

It’s supposed to be clever, but whether or not it is, we hope our insistence is clear. The next great wave in government and journalism and citizen action, of course, will be data driven. The power of numbers — and the transparency, accuracy, efficiency and accountability that can come with them — has not even begun to be realized.

Since Technically Philly’s inception, we’ve held a strong editorial stance that Philadelphia should be again seen as a leader — not a follower — in the areas of sharing and using smart, usable data to better the lives of all of us who live here.

So, it’s with great excitement that we say Technically Philly will be leading, in conjunction with the Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University, a six-month William Penn Foundation-funded project “toward collaborative projects using technology and journalism to increase the availability and use of actionable government data.”

The coverage series is called Transparencity and will feature reporting from all three Technically Philly founders. This funding will allow for deeper coverage in areas already of interest in our editorial mission: city technology policy, the Division of Technology and pursuits of government and other institutions releasing relevant data sets and related APIs and other actionable formats.

It should also be noted that this is grant funding for a specific reporting project for Technically Philly with a limited scope and does not come in conflict with our continued mission of growing our business.

Find details of the grant below.

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Technically Media Inc.: We build Audiences (and publish Technically Philly)

Just a quick update for those of you who have long requested we keep you apprised on the startup business side of things.

Earlier this month, we more formally introduced Technically Media Inc., the media services company that publishes this rag you’re reading right now. Just so we’re clear, don’t be impressed. That isn’t some multinational corporation. It’s still a startup from three schlubs in Philly, but now we just are a little more legally sound.

In addition to squandering late night hours tracking venture deals, startups and the technology community in Philadelphia, we like building audiences online.

So, in the catering business to this retail shop, we will be helping nonprofits, businesses and other media organizations grow an audience online through meaningful content, in addition to keeping TP alive.

Any potential conflicts of interest, as always, will be disclosed, as noted in our ethics policy.

If you want more, founders Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and Christopher Wink have all written about the move.

Thanks to our weekly sponsors

Technically Philly is made possible by advertisers and sponsors that are important to Philadelphia’s technology community. This week we’d like to thank:

Springboard Media – Springboard Media is a certified Apple Specialist and retailer based in Center City and now, in Exton. They’ve got a ton of accessories and a great trade-in program that can score you up to $1,500 when you’re ready to upgrade.

Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce – Earlier this week, the Chamber of Commerce hosted an entrepreneurial event highlighting the fact that small businesses are the employers of the future. Check the organization’s website for future events.

Nonprofit Technology Resources – Fairmount-based NTR refurbishes used computers and peripherals for families and individuals in Philadelphia who may not otherwise be able to afford to buy a computer. We urge you to donate to this great local cause.

Towerstream – Our newest advertiser is the leading 4G service provider in the U.S. and is setting up shop in Philadelphia. Contact Towerstream to find out how, in less than a week, you can have first-class 4G service for your business.

Mogo Media – Web and Graphic design event planner Mogo Media will host an Adobe InDesign training seminar May 5th. Use discount code “TECHNICAL” to receive 10 percent off the admission fee. We worked with Mogo on its successful Adobe Flash seminar in March. Register today.

Interested in joining these organizations and individuals in supporting Technically Philly? Check out our ad packages and contact our Ad Sales Manager. Can’t find something that fits? We’ll customize a package for you.

This week on our Jobs Board

Technically Philly’s Jobs Board is becoming a go-to resource for employers and job-seekers hoping to connect. We recently launched the board with new technology to better serve you, or customer, and hope that it will continue to be a go-to resource for technology-focused positions in the region. Check out the jobs currently posted!

Each week, we’ll highlight the some of the postings that you, your friends or family might have missed.

• The City of Philadelphia is looking for a Senior Application Developer. Two of them, in fact.
• The Chamber of Commerce is looking for a part-time Web designer.

If you’re a company looking to affordably connect with our audience of 16,000 technologists in the region, be sure to post your job openings here. Over 1,000 people checked out our Jobs Board in the past month, and each job is tweeted out to our 1,750 Twitter followers.

Every Monday, Technically Philly will highlight jobs on our Jobs Board.

This week on our Jobs Board

Technically Philly’s Jobs Board is becoming a go-to resource for employers and job-seekers hoping to connect. We recently launched the board with new technology to better serve you, or customer, and hope that it will continue to be a go-to resource for technology-focused positions in the region. Check out the dozen jobs currently posted!

Each week, we’ll highlight the some of the postings that you, your friends or family might have missed.

• The City of Philadelphia is looking for a Senior Application Developer. Two of them, in fact.
• The artists formally known as Avencia need a .NET or Java ninja.

If you’re a company looking to affordably connect with our audience of 16,000 technologists in the region, be sure to post your job openings here. Over 1,000 people checked out our Jobs Board in the past month, and each job is tweeted out to our 1,750 Twitter followers.

Every Monday, Technically Philly will highlight three jobs on our Jobs Board.