Devnuts: the youngest collaboration and incubation workspace in Northern Liberties

The two dozen 20-somethings behind Devnuts are organizing.

The Northern Liberties collaborative workspace is aiming at being seen as a more comprehensive collection of professionals.

Announced with a sleek new website launch yesterday, the Devnuts crew is abutting its form of co-working with a heavier focus on incubation and selling its pooled talent.

“Devnuts does three things,” says John Fazio, one of the co-founders. “First, it’s a co-working space that you can apply for a desk space to rent. Second, it’s an incubator [for young startups]. Third, because we’ve built a talent pool around us, we’re selling development talent.”

With a contractor circle of 22, including seven employees and at least that many interns, in addition to others on the periphery, relationships with Drexel University and the Science Leadership Academy to bring in new startups to house and testimonials for building homepages for the Roots and TEDxPhilly to name just two , the Devnuts crew seems to be doing well with all three.

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Drexel boasts tech, with smart grid system and incubator entrants

The City Six school with the computer science cred boasted its tech influence from two different places in big ways in recent weeks.

Drexel University is planning on deploying a smart grid system that will provide real-time measurements of location-specific energy outputs across its 65-acre campus in University City, as reported by inTech yesterday. The real-time pricing technology, which will come from Conshohocken-based Viridity Energy, will give Drexel the wherewithal to purchase power at low-demand times of the day and sell excess power back to the general power grid for profit.

That bit of news followed an announcement from the school’s LeBow College of Business that three new startups were welcomed into its Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship business incubator, all with a touch of technology. The three new entrants are Ranter, a social-networking tool that allows users to text groups; Konnect.me, a business-to-business Web portal and Stabiliz Orthopaedics, which is developing bone fasteners with bio-absorbable materials, as first reported by Mike Armstrong of the Inquirer.

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