Turns out, despite the focus on them in technology news, there are lots of questions about what exactly a ‘startup‘ is.

Any new business might use the word as an adjective, but we at Technically Philly think we need a philosophy for what exactly constitutes a technology startup when we categorize and cover their work in the Philadelphia region.

Here’s our definition. Tell us what we’re missing.

• Broadly, a startup is a new business that is testing plans for scalable revenue.

Though not always, a technology startup typically has these common traits:

• Fewer than 20 employees
• Younger than three years
• Seeking or have secured early-stage investment, especially angel and Series A.
• Looking at scale of a product, rather than growth of a service
• Led by initial founders who describe themselves as entrepreneurs
• Focusing on disrupting existing processes through greater efficiencies
• Often involves technology solutions to create efficiencies through product over service

Loffles.com boasts that it is the best way to enter sweepstakes online. And now the company is live.

The site — the name deriving from the combination of ‘lottery’ and ‘raffles’ — offers users access to an updated catalog of prizes from familiar brands. Users watch a promotional video, answer questions — to show they watched — and gain entry to a drawing for, say, a Best Buy gift card, a Netflix membership or an Xbox 360. Each entry also earns users ‘loffles,’ which can be redeemed for other prizes or used for additional contest entry tickets.

Technically Philly first told you about Loffles, which has regional roots, in October, when the company quietly sought $500,000 in funding, and received $162,000. First listing the company in Gladwyn, where co-founder Brandon Yoshimura grew up, the startup has more formally set up its headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, near where Yoshimura, 22, and his fellow co-founders met at Brown University.

The team has six other members, including the following: co-founder Steve Boland, 22, from Lafayette Hill, a graduate of Germantown Academy and Penn State; Chief Technical Officer Daniel Johnson, 29; Chief Marketing Officer James Kwon, 27; Director of Sales Vincent Tumbleson, 20, a junior at Brown; team developer Jake Buob, 20, a student at Johnson and Wales University and social media director Ashley Farquharson, 21, a student at UMass Amherst.

Loffles, which is actually incorporated in that tax haven of Wilmington, Del., is represented by Center City law firm Morgan Lewis and local PR agency Zer0 to 5ive and another co-founder is from Lafayette Hill and attended Penn State University. Though primarily in Providence, Loffles does have a small administrative office at 16th and Wood street where the team will “set up periodically,” said Yoshimura, an alumnus of the Haverford School.

First place winner Alexandre Scialom smiled as he accepted his award plaque for his winning business plan, theCourseBook.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

theCourseBook, billed by its founder as “Yelp for adult education” won Thursday the two top prizes at the second annual Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan, netting San Francisco entrepreneur Alexandre Scialom a cool $50,000 $25,000.

Thursday’s event, held by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, was a business plan competition that challenges young entrepreneurs to apply their innovative business ideas in educational formats.

Of the more than 200 entries that were submitted from around the world, nine finalists were invited to the event, which was held in Silverman Hall on the University of Pennsylvania main campus in University City.

The daylong competition began at 8 a.m., with each team giving presentations to the 10 judges and others in attendance on the specifics of their business models in areas such as scalability, distribution and business structure.

Two separate awards were given, one by the Milken Family Foundation of Santa Monica, Calif., and the other made five finalists eligible for the Startl Prize for Open Educational Resources from Hewlett-Packard. The Milken prize included a cash reward of $25,000 and $15,000 for the runner up, and Scialom doubled his gift for the Startl nod.

Judging, which lasted more than two hours, ended in a unanimous selection for Scialom winning both prizes for his educational resource database theCourseBook. Second place was awarded to a team from Troy, N.Y. for its syllabus management platform Intellidemia.

Phoenix Wang read her critique about a contestant's business plan.elopment.

“Basically you can search for what you want to learn, find interesting classes, events, books and online materials. All of it is aggregated in one place and we make it really easy to search it and make it useful for users,” Scialom said of the CourseBook.

Many judges said they were impressed by the ease of access that theCourseBook provides to users along with its potential for further development.

“We picked theCourseBook because it levels the playing field of content providers and provides an interesting distribution model. At the same time it’s a model that has a growth model that has the potential to become a big, real business,” said Phoenix Wang, the founder and managing director of Startl and representative from the Open Educational Resources prize.

Scialom is originally from France and currently runs theCourseBook with only one intern whom he pays out of his own pocket. The cash prize will go directly to expanding the staff and resources of theCourseBook with a little going towards celebration, he explained.

“Maybe I’ll have a beer tonight,” Scialom said with a laugh, “ but the rest will go to the business.”

NFTE announces winner

(Left to Right) Sylvia Watts McKinney, Executive Director of NFTE Philadelphia, with first place winner Bianca Nieves, and Doug Alexander, President at ICG and co-Chair of NFTE Philadelphia’s Advisory Board. Photo by Daniel Burke Photography.

NFTE Philadelphia also announced the winner of its Philadelphia Final Regional Business Plan Competition 2011. The group, which encourages entrepreneurship in high school students nationwide will send student Bianca Nieves to the White House thanks to her business Grandama’s Secret, a venture based on her grandmother’s Hispanic spice for meats.

According to Executive Director Sylvia Watts McKinney, other finalists included:

• Farwa Batool is a Junior at Samuel Fels High School.   Her business, Sheila’s Boutique, has both an ethnic and international flare: high-end Pakistani and Indian clothing purchased wholesale from Asia and sold retail in Philadelphia.  Farwa has plans to eventually have her own line of clothing manufactured in India and sold in large cities throughout the United States.
• Sasha Carrero is a Senior at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden, NJ.  Sasha is enrolled in the Culinary Arts program at WWHS, and her business is A Taste of Cake.  Sasha plans to enroll in The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. Afterwards, she plans build up a chain of bakeries and restaurants.
• Darryl Howell is a Junior at World Communications Charter School.  Darryl’s business is MYCAR, a tutoring service for children from Kindergarten through Eighth Grade. Darryl has plans to attend college after graduation from high school.
• Viktor Vabishevich is a Junior at George Washington High School. Viktor is running his own lawn care and landscaping business called Vito Lawns.  Viktor plans to expand his business into a  commercial landscaping business that will pay his college tuition.

See the group’s Facebook page for photos and additional information.

Woodshop Films founder Marc Brodzik gives direction to Scrapple TV Sports co-anchor 'Hot Carl' during a recent shoot.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

A man in a suit and white beard with a deep baritone began to read the news in front of a green screen.

Suddenly, the bright ring of a cell phone broke the silence in the otherwise quiet recording studio. Marc Brodzik, who was standing behind the camera, wearing a faded Tide detergent shirt, shorts and flip-flops, reached into his pocket and with a grin pulled out his phone and shut the ringer off.

“Phones off, bitches.”

It is with that humor and laid backed demeanor that things are run at Brodzik’s Woodshop Films, a local video production company that started its own internet channel, called Scrapple TV, three years ago.

“I call it unprocessed television,” said Brodzik of his programming, which is as brash and as unapologetic in its humor as Brodik himself. “Scrapple is more gritty and more real.”

Scrapple TV is shot from Brodzik’s former woodshop studio, hence the name Woodshop films, on Green and 5th streets in Northern Liberties. Brodzik described the operation as a “pirate TV station” that fits with a changing trend in video content production.

“All of a sudden now HD video is in the hands of the common man, so I’ve kind of turned my art studio into this television station,” Brodzik said.

As of now, Scrapple TV features a number of different original shows with a range of characters from the anchor of Scrapple News, AP Ticker to the co-anchor of Scrapple Sports, Slow-Pitch Mike.

One of Scrapple TV’s most popular shows is a music review show called Breakfast at Sulimay’s. The show features three senior citizen regulars at Sulimay’s Restaurant in Fishtown giving reviews of hip hop and rock music with often hilarious results.

“I thought it was garbage. I think they need to hire better technicians. It was a mindless muttering,” said one reviewer after listening to a song by mashup artist Girl Talk.

How Brodzik came up with the idea for Breakfast at Sulimays is a perfect example of the eccentric creative process that fuels Scrapple TV.

“I was sitting in a diner and hearing these three old people have this triangulation in the room and it was just really funny,” said Brodzik, “And I thought we should have them review bands, that would be f—— awesome.”

Frank Baker or 'AP Ticker' as he's known at Woodshop Films reads the headlines for Scrapple TV's news program Scrapple News.

Brodzik funds the entire operation himself through commercial work for pharmaceutical companies using his background in the visual arts, specifically painting and woodwork. Beyond computers, most of his equipment is bought new, and he is helped by friends, unpaid interns and volunteers. Fittingly, considering the opening graphic to each show is an animated pig singing “Someday we’ll get paid for this.”

“I take any money I make and dump it back into my company. It’s completely hand to mouth,” Brodzik said.

Two years ago Brodzik received a Pew Foundation grant for media arts, which funded him for a year, and he has plans to begin to monetize Scrapple TV’s programming.

“We’re just about ready to go to venture capitalists to be first-stage investors just for Philly,” Brodzik said.

Brodzik said his vision for Scrapple TV expanded far beyond the Delaware Valley.

“My plan is to have what I call hyperlocal cells. We’ll have a staff of writers in each city who will create local content and then they’ll also syndicate stuff, “ said Brodzik, who said he would like to model it after weekly newspapers like City Paper and Philadelphia Weekly.

Brodzik would also like to see any expansions follow his model and have shows that cover not just entire cities but specific areas such as what Kenzo News, which covers the Kengsington area, does for Scrapple TV.

Expansion for Scrapple TV doesn’t just mean geographically for Brodzik but also an expansion for its content as well.

“I’d like to do more editorial or investigative type pieces. I like the idea of partnering up with journalists and bloggers. Getting into bigger and more juicier stories,” Brodzik said.

Marc Brodzik, right, talked with some of his staff during shooting at Scrapple TVs studios.

Although Brodzik’s ambitions are great, his viewership has not always been been able to match it.

Scrapple TV’s programming has some shows that bring in several thousand viewers, with highs including several popular episodes of Breakfast at Sulimay’s near or above 100,000 views and nearly 70,000 views from episode six of the show Smut Cave. Many other Scrapple TV episodes receive a few hundred views on Youtube.

Brodzik said he thinks this is more of a result of how he has handled the launching of Scrapple TV than shortcomings in its content.

“It doesn’t really get tons of views because I didn’t focus on marketing, but now I’m getting more obsessed with that and getting my numbers out there,” Brodzik said. “I was really trying to master making daily content on a regular basis and trying to nail that down first. I feel like once I get that solid, I can worry about building up an audience as opposed to getting an audience and having them be disappointed.”

Still, Brodzik said he knows the risk of online television programming.

“Definitely, I’m the f—— captain, and this is my ship, but I’m the only one that is going to sink. You can jump off with the life raft. I’m the one that has to go down with the boat,” said Brodzik, adding with another wide grin, “I’m all about sharing the booty though.”

He’ll just have to get more people on board.

To find out more about Scrapple TV visit its website at scrapple.tv.

Watch a video interview with Brodzik below.

The car repair business needs disruption, says a Drexel University alumnus, and he has the platform to do it.

YourMech.com, billed as ‘a car concierge service,’ connects car owners with vetted mechanics who handle minor repair jobs at up to a third cheaper than repair shops, says CEO Art Agrawal, a 2007 Drexel graduate now living in the Bay Area. The service is currently testing in Philadelphia, the first market for the early stage startup.

Users can get an instant quote and schedule an appointment online, where all the maintenance records are kept in the cloud, and a mobile mechanic can come to a person’s home or place of work for smaller jobs.

“Mechanics who work for repair shops make very little money, like $15 an hour on average. Consumers pay $60-$75 an hour to the repair shops,” says Agrawal, 28. “We are empowering these mechanics to work directly with the car owners and make twice as much money. Car owners can get an awesome and convenient service at [almost] 30 percent lower fees. Everyone wins.”

YourMech ensures the quality of mechanics and guarantees repairs, he said. Parts are sold at wholesale prices.

“Of course, there are jobs we cannot do on the curb side — welding, big engine job, transmission work — but we can do about 65 percent of all jobs,” he said.

On his team, Agrawal is joined by co-founder and CTO Dongyi Liao, 35, and Whitney Ortiz, 40, who handles operations and has been a car mechanic in Philadelphia for 15 years, he said.

Technically Philly readers can give it a try by using code “TechnicallyPhilly” to get 10 percent off.

YourMech.com is one of fewer than 60 startups currently in the Plug & Play Ventures accelerator program, which has three Bay Area locations, said Alireza Masrour, the incubator’s vice president of technology and investment who also serves as an adviser to the group.

Agrawal, who grew up in India, moved to the Bay Area after graduating from Drexel while working on another startup, Symbiosis. He met his co-founder Liao, an MIT grad who grew up in China, and was introduced to Ortiz by a mutual friend.

YourMech plans to launch in the Bay Area next, he said.

• Growth at Azavea, Stroll lands them on Inner City 100 list [Philly Inc: Inquirer]
• ComedySportz Hosting ComedyGeekz this Saturday… And We Will Judge Them Harshly [Geekadelphia]
• Beer vendor wants you to “tweet from your seat” at Phillies home games [NewsWorks] — Bill Watkins (@PhilsBeerman)
• Ditch the Litter Box, Scoop Up Sales [Wall Street Journal] — Yardley, Bucks County entrepreneur Rebecca Rescate ‘s CitiKitty company is a retailer of potty-training kits meant to teach cats to use a toiley in five weeks.
• Philadelphia To Become Second City to Host GameLoop, Local Game Developers Organize Their Own Unconference [Geekadelphia]

DEFINITE READS

• Fake out: Twitter group writes the book on its grammar spoof [Inquirer] — South Philly resident RJ White is a contributor to the @FakeAPStylebook that is now publishing a book
• Study asks well-to-do Philadelphians how they’re investing [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• Penn’s new billionaires: FarmVille creator, Groupon backer [Inquirer] — Mark Pincus of Zynga and Russian investor Yuri Milner
• Philly’s Food in Jars a finalist in Saveur Magazine’s best food blog awards [Geekadelphia] Marisa McClellan

Below, see what Philly startup is moving into a church, big startup perks in Pittsburgh and more.

MIGHT INTEREST

• Liz Solms is putting a sustainable touch on apartments her late father renovated [Inquirer]
• The new SEER Interactive Office – Pics & Video [Business 1.0] — The Northern Liberties SEO shop is moving into a renovated church
• Still ‘wait-and-see’ on the economy for small business [Philly Inc: Inquirer]
• Pittsburgh’s Perks: What Companies are Offering to Lure Top Talent [Keystone Edge]

GIVE A GLANCE

• Sen. Rockefeller to introduce ‘Do Not Track’ bill [Post Tech]
• Penn’s $370M research center [PlanPhilly] — The research facility integrated into the hospital opens
• Maiden Media Group Welcomes Four New Hires [PR Newswire] — Old City creative digital marketing shop
• Largest unemployment rate decline in Pa. since 1987 [Philadelphia Business Journal] “The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Pennsylvania has fallen a full percentage point in the past year, representing the biggest year-over-year decline since August 1987.” It’s 7.8 percent, down from 8.8 in March 2010, though New Jersey’s rate increased.
• Pulse Live in the App Store, Cipher Prime Looking for Local Philly Musicians for Updates [Geekadelphia]
• Ocean Spray cites tax for move [Courier Post] — A state voluntary cap-and-trade emissions program in New Jersey is said to have chased away Ocean Spray to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley
• CarSense, Helicopter Tech among local SBA award-winners [Philly Inc: Inquirer] — No Philly area companies up for Small Business Person of the Year for, as Armstrong puts it, “the umpteenth time,” but there are Delaware and western Pennsylvania finalists.
• 11% increase in sales for Destination Maternity [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Including almost a quarter jump in web sales
• Tales From the Con: Too Many Games Recap [Geekadelphia]

Cristina Greysman from Document Depository Corporation explains some of the setbacks young entrepreneurs face in Center City.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

For Paul R. Levy, the president and CEO of the Center City District, the transformation that area has experienced over the last 20 years has been a huge success story amid the backdrop of serious economic troubles. But not necessarily for the reasons you might think.

It’s the outdoor cafes. All 213 of them.

“To me, that is the ultimate vote of confidence in downtown. People think it’s clean and safe,” he said.

Currently holding 214,433 jobs and paying over $12 billion in salaries annually, Center City relies primarily on the health care and education industries for the bulk of its economic drawing power, Levy said.. While not an alarming statistic on the surface, one need look no further than Detroit to determine what happens to a city that puts all of its progress behind a limited number of industries.

“We cannot rely on health care and education as the primary means of support,” Levy said.

So how about a move to the tech industry? Well, that’s a little easier said than done.

Co-founder of Indy Hall, Alex Hillman, explains the current climate in Philadelphia for young entrepreneurs.

Around 40 percent of Center City’s job market is in the office sector, and of that number only about half of those jobs are in the tech services and information fields (admittedly broad categories that some say need updating). When combined with the knowledge that the district is facing a steady decline in office jobs, garnering less occupied office space — 88 percent — than in 1990, the challenge of moving the tech industry to Center City is compounded.

But with paperless electronic transfer company Neat Company recently making headlines for its decision to move its 52 employees from West Philadelphia’s University City Science Center to a 14,000-square-foot space on the 35th floor of Five Penn Center in mid-April, the tech industry’s hold on the area has increased.

“Center City provided a facility that matches the company,” said Neat Co. Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Garton in a recent interview with Technically Philly. “It fits the brand’s persona.”

Beyond that, said Garton, Center City also provides an easily navigable, commutable location that attracts more employees than other areas of the city and fits the overall needs of a growing company. Neat Co. is currently looking to add 25 employees to its roster, he added.

Cristina Greysman, director of business development at Farid Naib’s Document Depository Corp. agreed with Garton’s sentiment in a recent interview.

“There’s an aspect to our business that is security oriented, and we felt that having an address at 1500 Market St. helped provide us with some street cred,” Greysman said.

For DDC, which produces software for business finance management, its Center City location has also helped with the attraction of workers to their business because of the culture and nightlife of the area for prospective employees, she added.

While the district certainly has incentives to offer established technology companies like DDC and Neat Co., including tax breaks and an easy commute, tech startups are still largely absent from the area, with only a handful notable exceptions, like mobile payment companies XIPWIRE and Venmo.

The dearth of other notable examples is not only because of the city’s antiquated and highly prohibitive business and wage taxes.

Flowering Philadelphia success story SCVNGR, the mobile social gaming company behind the newly released application LevelUp, is looking to move out to Old City for an office space just above co-working pioneers Indy Hall on North Third Street.

While not opposed to Center City becoming a tech hub for the city, John Valentine, Philadelphia rewards leader at SCVNGR, believes there is a fundamental disconnect between the business culture of the district and the overall attitudes in and functionality of startup culture.

Gloria Bell of Philly Startups explains why Philadelphia is the place to be for young creative professionals.

“There are no whiteboards in Center City,” he said. “At SCVNGR, we get a lot of our ideas from brainstorming and writing it down on a wall that we converted into a giant whiteboard.”

Essentially, that disconnect comes from the notion that startups, as the tattooed, scrappy younger brothers of older technology companies, operate in a much more nontraditional, creative model to generate their ideas that will later be built into products and services.

As a result, the traditional business culture of Center City—formal attire, cubicles and, gulp, Starbucks—fundamentally clashes with the free-spirited, foolhardy nature of the startup culture that encourages taking chances and being overtly unique.

But complaining about cubicles, said Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman, can often be a red herring.

“The cubicle is usually indicative of a bigger problem,” he said. “Most people just want better co-workers, not a better office space.”

The good news is that Philadelphia, through its abundant number of culturally distinct neighborhoods, offers areas that are suitable for any business personality. Other hotbeds of tech startup activity include Old City, flourishing Northern Liberties, a variety of South Philly pockets, and, well, with news of proposed cohousing space from Indy Hall, perhaps along the fringes of Fishtown and Kensington, which is also home to sustainable e-commerce platform Zecozi.

“Is Center City the end all be all for tech companies? No, but it is a good place for some companies,” said Gloria Bell of Philly Startup Leaders. “But the great thing about Philadelphia is that companies get to choose the area that fits their cultural environment.”

Ohana means ‘family’ in Hawaiian. Ohanarama is the new family game network from a mother, serial entrepreneur and her team.

Ohanarama, which recently launched public beta, is the signature platform from BrainRewards, a co-educational gaming startup co-founded by Jane Hoffer (@janehoffer), the mother of three and president of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs.

“The old story is that, yes, adults are flocking to social networks like Facebook,” says Hoffer. “In doing our initial prototyping, we found two really interesting things: that children under 13 are very interested in playing with family online and that there are 70 million grandparents, 50 percent of whom live more than 200 miles from grand kids and there’s no real interactive way for an extended family to play from a distance, other than maybe Skype.”

“So we said, ‘Let’s bridge that.’ The family is the original social network. It’s how kids socialize,” Hoffer says. “So we are taking the best of gaming and the best of social networking and bringing it to the fore to the multi-generational family online.”

Serving as a Facebook application, Ohanarama is a network of simple, sleek, family-friendly games that utilizes basic math, colors and spatial recognition and encourages users to challenge family members, using Facebook updates, though the games stands alone from the social network giant.

Jane Hoffer

The next release, due around summer, is meant to further differentiate Ohanarama as an independent platform, Hoffer says. Already, users don’t need a Facebook account, which is particularly important for their younger (and older) users who might not have one.

BrainRewards welcomed 80 families onto its private beta, which closed in the fall following a round of funding.

“We had on average seven individuals on the family network, some combination of a mom, a day, a kid and three or four extended family members,” Hoffer said. “It was interesting to see that 70 percent of kids played with a grandmother.”

Parents who home school their children were utilizing it as a supplement, and, Hoffer said, and a handful of families that had grandparents abroad were some of their heaviest users.

“These games are meant to be simple and fun, so there are very few language barriers,” she said.

BrainRewards is keeping overhead lean, with Hoffer working out of her Wallingford office near Media in Delaware County, and her co-founder Barton Listick is in Los Angeles. Hoffer likes the idea of someday being based in Philadelphia, though, she said.

The revenue plans for Ohanarama are a mash of social networking staples and online basics: micro-transactions, virtual goods, sponsored games, advertising on adult accounts and, with time, Hoffer says, affiliate revenue with “family-friendly brands.”

Hoffer has done the business build before. In 2009, she sold Prescient Systems, which supplied transactional and analytical tools to retailers and suppliers like Target and Russell Stover candies, according to her biography.

BrainRewards, by way of Ohanarama, has greater upside, she says.

“The real differentiation is that we’re not a single game. We’re a platform for family bonding.”

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.

In a few weeks, Colin Weir will be gone.

The Toms River, N.J. native video producer is leaving April 19 to work for TWiT.tv in Petaluma, Calif. A Rowan University alumnus, Weir, 25, is leaving a job as a video production specialist for a Center City hospital to chase dreams westward.

Though he wants to stay in Philly, he says there just isn’t a culture around video like Philly is developing in other creative fields. Below, Weir talks about how he sees Philly on his way to the airport.

Colin Weir, cheering for the Phillies.

What are the primary reasons you left Philadelphia?

I’ve been working at a hospital doing video work for just over two years now. For the past year or so, I’ve been looking for the next step in my career. But it just doesn’t seem to exist in Philadelphia.

I helped out doing video for a couple Ignites. I tried getting involved with a public access station, but they stopped responding to me after several emails. In between, I applied everywhere from major networks down to student films on Craigslist with nary a response.

Was there a specific event or moment that you realized you wanted to leave?

I don’t want to leave. I’d love to stay here in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the work I’m looking for just doesn’t exist in this area. This job I landed on came about by chance, and it’s working for someone [Leo Laporte] who I’ve been following since I was 13 years old. I’d be foolish to pass it up.

What lessons can we learn from you as a region and a technology community about retaining talent?

When I look at the people I follow and know in the community in Philadelphia, these are the groups I see: developers, graphic designers, writers, advertisers, and PR. Some may fall into more than one or may specialize in more specific niches, but these are the types of people I’ve seen the most in my two and a half years here. From my perspective, those fields look strong and the people in them are doing great work.

But in video production, there isn’t much here. There are groups like Viddler, who I love and use to host my demo reels, but most of their work is on the developer end; content comes from the users. Shooters in Old City is a staple for a lot of production under big names like Food Network. NFL Films is right across the river in Jersey, although the impending NFL strike may leave them in a bad situation.

But there’s no startup culture around video. A new public access station started here, and I tried to get my foot in the door and get a job there, which I was ultimately turned down for. I tried volunteering, but stopped getting responses after a few times back and forth.

When someone you meet from outside the region asks about Philadelphia and its tech community, what do you tell them?

That it’s a strong community of smart people doing things they love to do. And a great city to eat your way across.

What is the perception you most often find of Philadelphia?

That it’s dirty, smelly, unsafe, uncultured, and the people only like to eat cheesesteaks and throw snowballs.

Do you think you would return to Philadelphia under appropriate circumstances?

Absolutely.