MC Hammer offers thoughts on Philly entrepreneurship, delivers keynote at Wharton Technology Conference

MC Hammer addresses the Wharton Business Technology Conference

Depending on whom you ask, MC Hammer is a rapper. Or a dancer. Or a reality TV star. But today, the former diamond-certified recording artist addressed the Wharton Technology Conference as MC Hammer: entrepreneur and social media evangelist.

“I’m a super geek,” the DanceJam.com CEO said with a smile, referencing the song “Super Freak” by Rick James and the sample track behind his best known hit “Cant Touch This.”

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Links: MC Hammer at Wharton, chatting Jimmy Wales and More

DEFINITE READS

• Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports that that city will put a bid in for Google’s announced ultra-fast Internet product.
• Keystone Edge has a Q&A with University of the Arts professor and tech-art entrepreneur Slavko Milekic.
• The Inquirer reports that MC Hammer will be appearing at a Wharton event, and, yes, TP will try to crash the party.

Below, Gabe Weinberg talks with Jimmy Wales, comic book classes and more.

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Friday Q&A: Steve Barsh, CEO of Packlate.com

Update: Minor copy edits. Changed logo.

As reported in this week’s Venture Capital Roundup, Steve Barsh has had a busy week.

The DreamIt Ventures managing partner got his tons of national press for his latest startup, Packlate.com, from TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The company, based in University City (though with plans to move to West Conshohocken) aims to be a last-minute vacation booking service and has received funding from ETF Ventures and First Round Capital.

“It’s not a rocket ship yet, but it is kind of jiggling on the launchpad,” says Barsh.

Barsh says the idea has been brewing for years as he mentored young entrepreneurs at DreamIt while maintaining vacation properties in Utah.

“You know the saying ‘Those who do, do. And those who don’t, teach? I like to do both,” he says.

Currently he says he is still dedicating ten percent of his time to DreamIt but says he wants to focus most of his efforts on his new startup. We spoke with Barsh about Packlate’s future, how DreamIt can survive with preoccupied management and when we’ll be able to book a Jersey Shore vacation with Packlate.

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Startup Leaders hosts second annual Founder Factory to mixed reaction

Founder Factory audience members were given a chance to offer advice, along with panelists, to startups like language-learning tool PlaySay.

More than 250 gathered throughout the day for the second annual Founder Factory, a sold-out gathering of entrepreneurs, investors and students organized by Philly Startup Leaders at World Cafe Live in University City Thursday.

The event was a chance for business-minded folks to gather, discuss, dissect and learn about the work they are doing throughout the spheres of startups, education and investing.

Presenters from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Wharton Business School, Internet Capital Group, myYearbook and Monetate were rotated with fishbowl sessions— where young startups pitch their idea to experienced business people for advice—each ushered onto the stage to red and blue stage lighting and dramatic rock and jazz music.

During the afternoon, 150 attendees listened to entrepreneurial conversations while seated at long dining tables in front of the stage, standing at the bar, or gazing down from the mezzanine level, while a handful mingled in a nondescript lobby.
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Knowledge@Wharton expands to rural India, Australia; Penn opens African hospital

Knowledge@Wharton, the bi-weekly web-based business publication of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, has expanded to Australia and rural India.

According to a press release, K@W has published in India since 2006 but will enlist the help of the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal to help cover the country’s rural areas. Despite India’s designation as an “emerging market,” 70 percent of its residents still reside in poorer, rural towns and have become the target market for much of the country’s new commerce.

In Australia, K@W will be partnering with The Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. The new publication will also cover business news in Southeast Asia.

The rural Indian edition is available now, while the Australian edition is due to be released early next year. And all of this expansion news comes on the heels of the University’s recent opening of a hospital in Botswana.

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Technically Not Tech: DocASAP is Open Table for doctors

A screenshot of DocAsap's homepage

Wharton student Puneet Maheshwari’s child had an ear infection.

And, as any parent can tell you, hell hath no fury like a child sick. After combing through the Yellow Pages for the right doctor, Maheshwari was forced to go to the emergency room out of frustration and pay significantly more money than if he had found a specialist.

Like any good Wharton student, Maheshwari thought he could do better, and DocAsap was born.

The service, much like what OpenTable does for restaurants, searches for doctors based on criteria you define and allows you to schedule appointments with them. For example you could search for pediatricians that take Blue Cross in South Philly and DocAsap would give you all of the eligible candidates. Currently, the site only reviews Philadelphia-based dentists, however the site plans to expand to other markets and more types of physicians.

“We should have a really good coverage ratio in the Center City area soon,” said co-founder Vicente de Baca. After filling out the Center City area, DocAsap will then branch to the suburbs and, if everything goes according to plan, nationally. And unlike many Wharton grads, the duo plans to stick around for a while.

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Friday Q&A: Dave Konopka of HigherEdCamp

Edit: corrected date.

Continuing in BarCamp Philly’s success, HigherEd is the latest in a long line of BarCamps that included HealthCamp and Technically Philly’s own BarCamp News Innovation. On June 6 at The University of Pennsylvania’s Huntsman Hall, HigherEdCamp will gather members of a large group of local universities to help foster collaboration between the typically fractured academic community, especially when it comes to technology.

Technically Philly sat down with Dave Konopka, a Web developer at the University of Penn and one of the event’s organizers. Konopka believes highly in Philadelphia’s role as a college town, and believes like many, that the technology industry is key to the city’s innovation.

We ask him why should the tech community should be interested in this event, how he got the usually rigid world of academia to support him and how he believes tech nerds can take advantage of our vast university system.
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Events highlights for the week of May 11 – May 17, 2009

Hello, newly sunny Philadelphia, that’s a hell of a farmer’s tan you’ve got there.

Let’s keep that weekend energy going with our region’s active tech community. Half of our highlights are straight outta West Philly. It’s not bias, we swear! But if you just refuse to do anything West of the Schuylkill, our events calendar would be happy to schedule an appointment for you.

On Saturday and Sunday, help University City with some GPS mapping. The folks at Philly OpenStreetMap realized long ago that Google might one day threaten our existence—so they’re mapping the world until it happens. How else are you gonna find the way to good Chinese restaurant when the Goog steals your identity and shuts down Maps?

Wednesday, academia will sign-up for Second Life, get harassed by creepy dudes and annoying tweens, and beg for a way to get the heck out of there—while still applying some of those virtual concepts to higher education. With Wharton hosting, it might be a little smarter than our summary.

Monday, IndyHall will host a PHP Meetup featuring Sigurd Magnusson of Silverstripe, an open source CMS for the Wordpress haters out there. Magnusson will even be taking feature requests, so give him some advice or he’ll ignore your feedback when the next version hits.

Philly Office Geeks are trying to spread the word about social media in the business community on Tuesday. It might be a clever attempt at getting network privileges for Facebook in the office, but we’d bet there’s a little more too it than that.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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NIR Diagnostic wins Wharton Business Plan Competition

Chris Schaeffer of Realistic Eye gives his elevator pitch. The company ended up placing third.

Edit: added RIMS video.

The main event was over already, but the eight hopefuls gunning for the Wharton Business Plan Competition had a chance to bag an extra $3,000 by convincing the dinner audience that they were deserving of the People’s Choice Award.

Each company sent a representative to the steps in the basement of Wharton’s Huntsman Hall to plead their case to roughly 100 attendees who may or may not have been taking advantage of the free food. Approaches ranged from the youthful, energetic charisma of StealthRowing’s Daniel Harbuck (covered earlier this week by TP) to the frank nature of Cuddlebot’s owner, who told the crowd, “we’d love your cash.” After the pitches were finished, the judges huddled to decide the grand prize winner as the audience members dropped ballots in a silver box carried around by the organizers sporting yellow ribbons.

Hours later, NIR Diagnostic came out of the four-round competition $23,000 richer, bagging the $20,000 grand prize as well as the $3,000 people’s choice award. The company is developing a wound diagnostic device that would bump accuracy up to an estimated 85 percent from 50 percent.

After the jump we summarize and comment on each company’s elevator pitch and tell you which one is most likely to lead to a Terminator-like future.
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