Mason and Megan Wendell: from indie record execs to husband-wife branding and design Drupal team

Seems like ditching the record label for the branding and design firm was the right way to go.

Mason and Megan Wendell, the husband-wife team behind Mount Airy-based Canary Promotion + Design, met at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

“We started our own record label (Solarmanite Records) to release our own music and some other artists, and more and more bands started coming to us for advice on everything from how to publicize a release to how to get a barcode,” says Megan, 35, who handles the marketing side of the firm.

So they started a business doing just that outside of New York City, where she was working for a dotcom and Mason was handling Web work on Wall Street. By early 2002, the duo moved to Philadelphia and found a niche in the region’s arts and culture community.

Now they have a heavy hand in the look and feel of the Philly arts scene and open source content management system Drupal is their tool of choice.

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Friday Tech Links: Mount Airy teen hacker in WSJ, Digital Philadelphia summit video and More

Ari Weinstein, 15, in the computer lab of Germantown Friends School, where he just finished 9th grade. Yukari Kane/The Wall Street Journal

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Ari Weinstein is the youngest Mount Airy-based hacker we’ve featured on Technically Philly in our long and illustrious history.

Weinstein, 15, is apparently “getting job offers from Israel and all over the place,” and will follow in my footsteps and appear on Fox 29 Monday morning (See clip here), after his place in a Wall Street Journal cover story that ran this week, as reported dutifully by our boy Joe DiStefano.

Weinstein is a contributor to iJailBreak.com, a blog devoted to help users install unapproved software onto Apple’ iPhone and iPod touch products.

Dude is keeping it straight tech raw in northwest Philly, even while he’s in summer camp on the Left Coast. Dude’s father Ken is a developing playing a large role in something of a retail resurgence in Mount Airy, DiStefano reports, including his ownership of the Trolley Car Diner.

H/T Joey D

After the jump, more Ben Franklin Technology Partners dispute, a Digital Philadelphia op-ed and six other tech stories you should read, including our best read article of the week.

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