How the City of Philadelphia spends $3.5 billion annually: 10 best charts and graphs

How the City of Philadelphia spends $3.5 billion annually should be better visualized online, we say.

The state-empowered Philadelphia Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), which is chaired by investor and former mayoral candidate Sam Katz, released in November a citizen’s guide to the City of Philadelphia General Fund that was full of visualizations — all buried in a PDF.

While we shared the document a few weeks ago, after seeing it on PhillyDeals, it seems that it all passed with too little fanfare. While we at Technically Philly would love to work with PICA to develop a friendlier, more interactive web version of this project, we thought we’d start by sharing our 10 favorite of the many charts and graphs detailing where the city government gets its money and how it’s spent.

In addition to the one above, see our 10 favorites below.

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RJ Metrics: Why Our Startup is Doubling Down on Philadelphia

From the blog of RJ Metrics, a Center City business analytics firm, written by co-founder Robert Moore:

2011 has been an outstanding year for RJMetrics.  We’ve tripled our headcount, creating eight new high-tech jobs in Philadelphia and filling our Center City office to capacity.  We’re proud to have done this profitably and without the use of any outside capital.

Today, we signed a new lease that will significantly expand our office space in The Philadelphia Building at 13th and Walnut.  This was not a decision that Jake or I took lightly.  2011 brought with it a number of strategic opportunities, including offers that would have involved moving our company to New York or Silicon Valley.

We turned down those offers and we’re doubling-down on Philadelphia.  Not because it is the path of least resistance, but because it is the right path.  We believe that Philadelphia is the best possible home for our start-up.  Here are five reasons why…

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Rezscore: Gerrit Hall, Sean Weinberg grow free, online, algorithm-based resume grade service [VIDEO]

Rezscore is simple, fast, thorough and free. That’s how the algorithm-based resume grading startup is going to own its corner of the online jobs market, says co-founder and chief operating officer Sean Weinberg.

It works like this: visit the website, upload a document version of your resume and let the service’s robust algorithm review it, evaluating word choice, layout, experience and more. No registration required: it’s sleek and just might offer you the kind of advice you’re seeking during your job hunt.

No direct competition in the instant resume grading for consumers exists to date, though LiveCareer is due to launch a competing product, Weinberg, 26, said, and products like LinkedIn, Klout and Grader.com are near enough to keep Rezscore growing.

Those growth plans include introducing industry specific algorithms, noting that a resume for a professor’s gig might need to look different than that for a graphic designer.

Still, Weinberg and fellow co-founder and CEO Gerrit Hall say they already have a rarity among online startups: a service that can actually help its users.

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Drink Nation: DrinkPhilly.com launches national expansion plan, including DC, Baltimore, NYC

TheDrinkNation.com will launch “in the next two to three weeks if all goes well”, beginning the national expansion plans of DrinkPhilly.com, says founder Adam Schmidt.

“That will serve as a nation-wide content site and parent site for all the cities we are in. The nationwide content will be aimed at being general enough that anyone could enjoy it and will help populate the content to the local city sites and those local sites will also have freelancers contributing local content. So the city sites will have a combination of local and nationwide content, as well as all the happy hour data like what we have for Philly,” Schmidt, 29, tells Technically Philly. “I think it will be a pretty new type of media model in this industry.”

The online bar guide and nightlife news site launched in 2009 as an expansion on Schmidt’s Excel spreadsheet of Philadelphia Happy Hours. Technically Philly has spotted splash pages for DrinkDC, DrinkBaltimore and DrinkNYC.

“We’re looking at launching DrinkBaltimore and DrinkDC in early-mid October. No firm dates yet as we are still working to organize the launch parties. DrinkNYC is a ways away yet, probably in the spring or later,” he said.

In May, Schmidt announced the site’s launch to the Jersey Shore. New DrinkPhilly Editor Danya Henninger, who replaced outgoing edit lead Justin Giza, will lead the DrinkNation editorial operation, she told Technically Philly.

Justin Giza: Drink Philly editor, nerd rapper leaves for NYC to pursue music career

This is Exit Interview, an occasional interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

At the Philly Geek Awards last month, the Geekadelphia crew behind the event included an ‘In Memoriam’ segment.

Pictures of a dozen former members of Philadelphia’s technology community who had moved in the past year, many of them Exit Interview alumni, were shown on the large projector screen, set to ‘It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday’ from Boyz II Men. The bit was funny and well received.

In the audience was Justin Giza, then editor of DrinkPhilly.com, which was founded in 2009 by Adam Schmidt and Technically Philly profiled in June. At next year’s Geek Awards, Giza could be on that ‘In Memoriam’ screen.

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Road Map for the Digital City: NYC unveils plan for digital future

Read more and download the report here. The Business Insider graded the report here.

Trulia: Philadelphia property is more affordable to buy than rent [INTERACTIVE MAP]

From Trulia, a neat infographic based on the company’s own metric comparing rent and bought properties. Play with the interactive map here.

The map shows Philadelphia to be the most affordable place to buy a home among the country’s five largest cities, though Phoenix, San Antonio and Dallas were ranked as cheaper to buy among other big cities. [That big red circle shows that New York City is 'very much more affordable to rent,' when compared with buying.]

MindSnacks moved to Bay Area for the best environment to build a startup: Andy Mroczkowski

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

Andy Mroczkowski tells an important story without meaning to do so.

“Honestly I’m not that critical of Philly,” says Mroczkowski, 31, who moved mobile educational game development startup MindSnacks. “I just had an opportunity for adventure, and we thought the Bay Area was the best place for our company.”

A theme in the Exit Interview series has been a lack of competitive advantage for business in Philadelphia. Today is the last in the weekly series, though we’ll always seek perspective from those who leave — and those who come. In a fitting close, Mroczkowski notes that he’s actually rather fond of Philadelphia, he and his team felt that to give themselves the best shot at success, they planned to migrate westward.

Mroczkowski, a South Jersey native and Drexel alumnus left in January. The founder of local Mac programming group CocoaHeads, he had worked for the Neat Company and freelanced out of Indy Hall.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that MindSnacks, a DreamIT ventures startup that now has five full-time staff, raised $1.2 million in funding on the West Coast. So far, the plan is working.

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David Lifson: “I would definitely consider Philadelphia over San Francisco”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

When deciding on the headquarters for Postling, co-founder David Lifson said he had only crossed one city off of his list of possible locations: San Fransisco.

“The West Coast is so much of a tech bubble, it’s really easy to forget who your customers are,” says Lifson.

When Postling, a web application that allows small business owners to streamline social media campaigns, graduated from DreamIt Ventures, the company took some time to decide where to move next. After some thought, the company chose to leave Philadelphia for North Jersey and New York City.

We ask Lifson, why he decided to leave Philadelphia and why the state government impresses him.

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Wil Reynolds: Turn city entrepreneurs into a Philly cheerleading army

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.

Wil Reynolds, The founder of SEO shop SEER Interactive, is passionate about growing the Philly tech community (read: Philadelphia the city first, and then the region.)

Reynolds, 34, who was leading the now deceased Phillyblog at its time of closure and launched its successor Philadelphia Speaks, grew up in Willingboro, N.J. but moved for a spell in Connecticut. Reynolds came back to his roots in the region, moving to Northern Liberties. In the process, he has developed a perspective to be sure. Like how we need to create a Philly cheerleading army out of local entrepreneurs.

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