Friday Q&A: Ryan Davis, Philly.com President

Updated: colleague’s name @ 1:47 p.m. 1/8/10

He may not live in Philadelphia quite yet, but Philly.com President Ryan Davis says he’s “a southeast Pennsylvanian at heart.”

Ryan Davis

Of course, in the interest of disclosure, it should be made clear that Davis, who was put in charge of Philadelphia’s most visited Web site in October, lives in New York City, a rival if there ever was one.

The native of Allentown takes a daily train trip to Center City but says he, his wife and their new baby daughter — who he says has delayed the move — will be relocated to the region in the coming months.

If you’d think his location would keep Davis from the gig, the age of this 32-year-old might, too, seem like an obstacle. Yet there at the Market Street Philly.com headquarters he is, and, like every where else he’s gone professionally, he’s gotten there quickly.

Outside of college, Davis has never spent as much as three years with a single organization during his precipitous rise from aspiring journalist to newspaper dot com chief executive.

After graduating from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2000, Davis spent 29 months reporting with the St. Petersburg Times and then two years and nine months at the Baltimore Sun. He spent two years in Manhattan with executive management consulting firm McKinsey before taking the director of strategic operations position with Philly.com in February. Nine months later, he was named president of the 70-person staff.

That rise, he says, has put him where he wants to be when he wants to be there.

“It’s an exciting time when a lot of people are trying to figure out what local means on the Internet,” he says.

Below, Davis explains living in New York, lays out his priorities for improving on 72 million monthly page views and talks about the coming explosion of local on the Web.

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Friday Q&A: John Pino, CEO of networking site i-Meet

John Pino loves launching companies and loves Philadelphia.

So where else would you expect him to launch what he says just might be the next big professional networking service?

In November, Pino founded and self-funded i-Meet.com, which utilizes social-networking features to connect like-minded people in their efforts to organize, plan and promote events. The South Philadelphia-native, who grew up near 17th and Oregon Avenue in St. Monica’s Parish, didn’t want his tech startup based anywhere else but Center City, which he says is on its way to being the next great corridor of innovation.

His “strong launch team” all learned the tech-business game in Philly.

“The impetus,” for the launch Pino says, was a “screaming need for a worldwide network in the meeting and event industry, and we decided we would make it happen. Especially when we figured out how to put a business overlay over the social aspects of the community.”

Now i-Meet has more than 7,000 members from 100 countries worldwide, Pino says, and, though he wouldn’t disclose specific revenue figures, the company has a real monetization strategy, including premium options.

We didn’t mention that we caught the social networker on Facebook, but he did mention how he’s going to make bank, why we don’t need another social network and that his parents were not part of organized crime.

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Technically Not Tech: How Happier.com will make itself money and you, well, happier

They offer a path to happiness, for five bucks.

Based on research from a noted University of Pennsylvania psychologist and coordinated by a team of three telecommuters in various Philadelphia neighborhoods, Happier.com is on the forefront of positive psychology and research dissemination.

Last week, the site rolled out a Freemium-style revenue strategy to its 20,000 users — a $4.99 monthly subscriber charge for full access to the site..

“The best researchers get up everyday trying to figure out how to get a grant, write a paper, be seen to fund their work,” said Andrew Rosenthal, a co-founder. “We get up everyday building tools for people to use this research.”

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Friday Q&A: Chris Barron of Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems, an infrastructure software company based in Exton and run by four brothers, might  ride the wave of federal stimulus dollars in the region.

With more than 450 employees in southeastern Pennsylvania, including at least 300 in tech fields, Bentley is a major player in the region’s creative economy.

“Bentley has a large number of users throughout Pennsylvania designing, building, and managing infrastructure for water and waste water, roads and bridges, rail and transit, power generation and alternative energy, and green buildings and environmentally sensitive land development,” said Chris Barron, the company’s vice president for corporate marketing. “Some” of their clients will be involved with projects that will benefit from the stimulus spending, though he declined to go into specifics.

Though four brothers are the top dogs, Barron says he’s never confused them — “They are all very unique individuals,” he says — but, after the jump, he does share with us his favorite Bentley clan story and suggests, if they were superheroes, just what superheros they’d be.

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Friday Q&A: John Zito and Tony Trovarello of the Black Cherry Bombshells

Like other media, comic books have had to deal with the paradigm shift of the Web. Comic book artists that were previously limited to just ink on paper, now can use a wide variety of technologies to show the world their work. Just like the Internet has given independent musicians an alternative to record labels, the independent comic book artist can reach audiences like never before.

Tucked away in South Philly are two members of the city’s booming comic book scene, John Zito and Tony Trovarello who are riding the new wave of comic distribution. The two have been using the Web to publish Black Cherry Bombshells, a comic about a post-apocalyptic world where all of the men have been turned into zombies leaving the women to fend for themselves.

What sounds like a description of last week’s South by Southwest festival, is actually a entertaining read full of everything a comic fan for ask for: gratuitous violence, zombies and women who could take you in a bar fight. Technically Philly sat down with John and Tony to talk about the city’s comic book scene, the Web’s effect on comic books, and who played Lynne Abraham in their Ed Rendell musical.

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Friday Q&A: Howard J. Blumenthal of MiND TV

Updated: March 14, 2009 9 p.m.

Maybe you haven’t seen MiND: Media Independence.

Last May, WYBE, the public broadcasting station on channel 35, got a dramatic remodeling. It was part of a campaign by its new CEO Howard J. Blumenthal, somewhat of a legend in TV programming.

Stodgy and struggling WYBE became Web-based and forward-looking MiND, a short-form public access station. Anyone can produce one the channel’s shows, which often run in five-minute blocks and find themselves online, in addition to your TV. The angle was a smarter, crisper YouTube.

Update: Next week, you’ll be able to check out their digs during a free tour and film screen; details below.

Last year, MiND TV was going to revolutionize public broadcasting, now Blumenthal says it’s future is hanging perilously at the will of state funding.

In January, during his budget address, Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposed drastically cutting funding for the state’s public TV, in order to meet a budget gap. As Rendell’s budget makes it’s way through the state legislature, Blumenthal holds his breath.

If that funding blunder is rectified, Blumenthal said, MiND “will become an alternative form of public media, a model that sits beside PBS, but is fresher, faster, more closely connected to individuals and learning in the community, more fun, more accessible, more of-the-people than for-the-people.”

Below, watch Blumenthal describe MiND, and then read our interview with him to see what MiND has done, what it plans to do and why the TV legend who thought up “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” and led the design of MTV ended up in Upper Roxborough.

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Friday Q&A: Dr. Mike Steinberg of HouseCall123

After a beta launch at the end of 2008, Insomnia123.com, the first condition-specific Web site from Glenside-based Web start up HouseCall123 went live last month with new features and focus.

Dr. Mike Steinberg, who co-founded HouseCall123 last February, is the public side of the new Web franchise – not a small first foray into the Web world.

“Having my face across the internet is a strange experience,” says Steinberg, who is an assistant professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. HouseCall123 is a small operation of telecommuters that hasn’t focused on profitability, Steinberg says, telling Technically Philly he has “a personal interest in the mission of the project.”

But he is combining Philadelphia’s famed health care sector with its growing tech scene. We like it. Dr. Mike stopped curing what ails us long enough to talk about insomnia, recreating the family doctor house-call visit on your iPhone and why he’s technically Philly.

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Friday Q&A: Roz Duffy of Refresh Philly

[Update: expanded list of contributors]

To tell the story of Refresh Philly, you have to go back to last November. It was then that Web developer Roz Duffy and friend J.P. Toto planned Philadelphia’s first ever BarCamp. In the spirit of BarCamp’s success, Duffy and BarCamp attendees Aaron Held, Arpit Mathur and John Riviello of Comcast Interactive Media decided to start Refresh Philly.

Coming up with a succinct description of Refresh Philly can be rather difficult for two reasons. The first is that the organization’s motto of “refreshing” industries purposefully leaves a lot of room for interpretation. And second, the group is in its infancy with only three meetings under its belt. But under the guidance of Duffy, Held, Mathur and Riviello, Refresh Philly is growing. The next gathering is planned for March 5th at the Comcast Center (Disclaimer: I am scheduled to give a brief presentation at the March event). Technically Philly sat down with Duffy to get the details behind one of Philadelphia’s newest meetup groups. Q&A after the jump:

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