It was in the first days of publishing Technically Philly two years ago that we came to understand that the city’s broadband infrastructure played a crucial role in our technology community.

Wireless Philadelphia, an effort to provide free, wireless access to city dwellers, had ended a failure. Verizon had only recently been allowed to expand its internet connectivity services to residents here, and Comcast had staked a much bigger claim over the city by altering its skyline with its tallest building.

So it was with much bewilderment that when we browsed through the Planning Commission’s comprehensive Philadelphia2035 plan, the first undertaken in more than 60 years, there was little mention of the copper, cable and fiber-optic lines that run deep beneath the city, helping connect it with a global economy. Though the plan is incomplete, summaries of the plan have under-represented what we believe is vital to the city’s economic growth: broadband connectivity. Without more detailed plans to implement next-generation connectivity, the city risks missing an important opportunity.

A few weeks ago, the Commission released the first draft of the plan [PDF], seeking comments from city residents.

That’s where you come in.

Today, we’re asking for some input that we can provide immediately to the Planning Commission on your vision of this city’s needs to support and expand broadband access. What needs are unmet for your individual or business purposes? What problems have you witnessed regarding broadband infrastructure that you’d like to see changed? What are other cities doing that are a benchmark for success? Respond in the comments below, or send an email directly to info@technicallyphilly.com before Monday, March 28, and we’ll make sure your comments are heard. Now’s your chance to help shape the future of Philadelphia’s broadband access.

And after the jump, more details on the Broadband2035 project, the editorial series that we’re officially announcing today, which will take a deep look at this city’s broadband infrastructure.

In March, the Division of Technology announced plans to compete for Google’s ultra-high speed Gigabit fiber pilot program, electing separately University City — where the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University are located — and a stretch of neighborhoods from Old City to Fishtown which relies on commercial infrastructure. Though it is assumed that both areas would attract more businesses with higher-speed access, some neighborhoods in the city struggle to provide little affordable broadband access.

What lessons can be learned from these areas that can help inform the city’s comprehensive Philadelphia2035 plan? Does broadband investment in University City and along the city’s waterfront translate to increased economic activity? How does the investment unique to each of these two areas compare with a neighborhood with little investment? Finally, how can the city best support the creation of next-generation high-speed connectivity to spur growth?

In partnership with online news provider PlanPhilly, which covers planning, design and development in Philadelphia, in November Technically Philly was awarded $5,000 from J-Lab, a journalism innovation think tank based in Washington, D.C., to produce Broadband2035, a series of reports that will help examine the impact of broadband infrastructure in the region.

Through June, freelancer Chris Reber will write a series of seven reports covering such topics as Philadelphia’s broadband failures, Comcast and Verizon’s involvement with connecting the city, dark fiber that runs beneath our city’s municipal buildings, the role of broadband in encouraging business relocation in neighborhoods here, and overall, a report we hope will help impact the Planning Commission’s comprehensive plan.

Look for the first of those reports in a few weeks.

Hispanic voters and their use of the web will both have an impact on Tuesday's election, says Tek Lado magazine Editor Liz Spikol.

This is a guest post by Liz Spikol, Editor of bilingual Tek Lado magazine, as part of our Guest Contributor Week. Want to have an op-ed or feature you’ve written to appear on TP, now or in the future? Drop us a line.

One way you can tell it’s election time: Latinos are in the news.

President Obama is reaching out, first by highlighting Latino kids at the White House’s first science fair, and then—one day later—revealing a broad plan to encourage educational achievement among Latino children. He’s also suggested, in ways big and small, that voting on Nov. 2nd should be a priority for the Hispanic community.

He’s not wrong to push for those votes, particularly in such a hotly contested battle.

CBS News reports that in some states, the battles may be decided by Latinos —and Latinos tend to vote Democratic. The country’s fastest growing minority has a lot of power, and Obama knows it.
Right now about 19 million Latinos nationally are eligible to vote.

There are implications on both sides of the aisle for Latinos, and to understand where each party stands can be of significant value when pulling a lever behind that flimsy blue curtain.

Understanding that those 19 million voters don’t necessarily vote in lockstep, how Latinos get their information about each party — on the web or through mobile devices — can be just as crucial to that understanding.

Some information is, of course, available in print publications. But most people aren’t getting election news by dirtying their fingers with newspaper ink. They get that news—and opinion—online.

In Philadelphia, you might be inclined to go to seventy.org, the website for the Committee of Seventy, which advocates for fair elections and educating the populace. Maybe you go to phillyelection.com to see where and when you vote. Maybe you want to know who the League of Women Voters of Philadelphia are endorsing. Or you might want to know that MyFoxPhilly.com reported results of a study saying that Latino voters are less likely to go to the polls in the election, and you want to see why, and to prove them wrong.

There is no shortage of national political news sources online too, but for people who are merely interested in what their vote means, all of these sites can be edifying.

The problem is that when future voters don’t graduate either high school or college, they get alienated from critical thinking and from access to new technology.

Yes, Latinos do utilize technology in prolific ways. But not everyone in this city—and certainly not everyone in Latino communities—are wired. After the vain attempts by Wireless Philadelphia to link lower-income homes to the Internet, we are now faced with a city that’s wired to serve people who would probably be wired already.

There have been other initiatives, like the Gigabit Philly proposal, which fell short for now, and Obama has put pressure on the FCC to increase broadband accessibility nationally, but the agency has been grappling with net neutrality policy which is on hold until after Tuesday’s election. Comcast made splashy news by announcing it had created 2,000 wireless hotspots in Philadelphia, but, to date, they are only for their paying customers.

So for now, though without that access will continue to fall behind.

A report from the NASFAA Journal of Financial Aid reports that computer access is strongly determined by income. Ninety-six percent of households making above $75,000 own a home computer. When that income number drops to below $15,000, only 45 percent own a home computer.

We must make sure that Internet access in Philadelphia fosters equality and an educated citizenry among all ethnic groups. There is so much that is hopeful, including the fact that Latinos are making innovative use of cell phone technology, social media and blogging in higher numbers than the general population.

Laptop ownership has soared among Latinos, as has use of the Internet among English-speaking Latinos, as Pew has found. But according to Pew’s Research Center Internet and American Life Project, “foreign-born and Spanish-dominant Latinos dramatically trail not only whites but also native / English-speaking Latinos” on broadband adoption and home computer ownership.

Another newly released Pew study says, “Just one-third (32%) of all Latino registered voters say they have given this year’s election ‘quite a lot’ of thought. In contrast, half (50%) of all registered voters say the same. And when it comes to their intent to vote, half (51%) of Latino registered voters say they are absolutely certain they will vote in this year’s midterm election, while seven-in-ten (70%) of all registered voters say the same.”

Liz Spikol

Why this disparity between Latino voters and others? Could it have something to do with the digital divide?

I’m no statistician so I won’t venture a guess. But one thing we can ask Obama to do: Make sure all our neighborhoods have access to the Internet. Being a conscientious citizen is hard, sometimes boring work. But it determines the future.

Liz Spikol, former executive editor of Philadelphia Weekly, is now editor of Tek Lado magazine, a bilingual publication about technology and pop culture. See our recent Q&A with Liz here.

Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States addresses the Chamber of Commerce event at the Cira Center.

If you think Philadelphia is mired in debt and inefficiency, try wading through the federal government.

The nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, offered a peak this morning inside the Obama administration’s use of cloud computing and crowdsourcing to help streamline the inner-workings of the federal government and overcome a culture of bulky IT budgets and lack of accountability.

With a bustling 30th Street Station as a backdrop, a room full of business leaders listened to Chopra outline the inefficiencies of the old way government was conducting business in an event hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. He said that the president wanted to add transparency, collaboration and smart investment to help government be more accountable and effective.

Sound familiar?

As Philadelphia struggles with the fate of the Board of Revision of Taxes, the DROP pension program and its plans for a Digital Philadelphia there may be lessons to learn in some of the government’s efforts:

• Chopra said that every government department’s CIO must update the progress of their IT investments to display the information on the government’s IT dashboard. The site offers a graphical way for citizens and government officials to assess which investments are going to waste.
• While the city grapples with the ghosts of Wireless Philadelphia and the technology community pushes for gigabit broadband in the city, Cleveland has already begun rolling out gigabit connections to some of its poorest neighborhoods. Chopra said that the efforts took some philanthropy from technology companies and told of how one sick resident uses the connection to video chat with a doctor that specializes in the resident’s illness.
• Chopra said that a priority was taking government data and making it more accessible to programmers and the average citizen. He pointed to Health and Human Services data that was turned into a card game. In a city that guards voting records and only tuned SEPTA data after the iSEPTA guys took it by brute force, maybe we could learn a thing or two.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs often frustrates its constituents with long delays in processing requests for soldiers returning from war. The government used a Get Satisfaction-like voting system to help crowdsource the best ideas from the department’s frontline employees. They then created a business plan competition out of the top ten ideas and implemented them. A handful of which, says Chopra, came at no cost. “If you embrace openness internally you can get tremendous value,” he said, “so imagine what you can do externally.”

Chopra said that the federal government spends $76 billion on information technology each year, $19 billion of which is invested in infrastructure. While the city certainly doesn’t have resources of that magnitude, it does have an entrepreneurial community like ones that the government has tapped elsewhere to help speed along policy changes. It also has many of the same problems of waste and lack of transparency that the government is trying to solve.

So Technically Philly has to dig up an old Philly standby: Why Cant Us?

Technically Philly's interactive timeline follows the history of Wireless Philadelphia. To see the full resolution version of the timeline, click through the image.

The City of Philadelphia plans to purchase for $2 million the city-wide wireless network once known as Wireless Philadelphia, currently owned and operated by Network Acquisition, the Inquirer reports.

The network will be utilized by the city for municipal services, like its public safety network and for its mobile city workers. Free access will remain available to the public in “targeted public spaces,” according to a City press release published by Philebrity. The City says it will need to invest $17 million through 2015 to improve the network.

The City has been in talks with Network Acquisition since it began convening stakeholders earlier this year to talk about the future of Philadelphia’s technology ecosystem, as we reported in our comprehensive Digital Philadelphia coverage.

Since the network was purchased from Earthlink by Network Acquisition, the network has seen its adoption increase from 10,000 unique users to 170,000, Councilman Bill Green said at a broadband policy panel in September. Green, who has long expounded the savings benefits of owning a municipal network, said that the city “blew it big time” when it did not purchase the network when Earthlink was pulling out of the deal last year.

The deal is pending City Council approval and is expected to begin operation in the spring.

The city has been taking serious steps to move beyond Wireless Philadelphia and to develop a new plan of action to help bridge the digital divide, what the DOT calls Digital Philadelphia. In August, it submitted a broadband grant proposal to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration - as did 2,200 other groups – with hopes of grabbing a slice of $4.7 billion being given out for broadband initiatives as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the broadband stimulus fund.

Because of the tremendous influx of applications, the NTIA turned over some of the decision-making process to state governments. Last week, the Governor’s Office offered recommendations to federal agencies promoting two dozen broadband stimulus grants, including six from the Philadelphia region, as we reported.

And to the surprise of many, the City’s $21 million dollar middle mile infrastructure project was not recommended. Its Free Library-sponsored $14 million broadband adoption program was given an honorable mention, so to speak, but the state’s recommendations certainly cast doubt on the Digital Philadelphia vision.

Anytime we have a question about municipal broadband in Philadelphia, we turn to the sage wisdom of broadband business strategist Craig Settles.

Settles is sourced often for national broadband issues and his analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, Wired and other technology publications. He’s written extensively about the federal broadband stimulus process and advises municipal governments on broadband programs as a consultant. But his value to us is his depth of experience with Philadelphia’s digital divide. It always keeps us coming back.

The once Southwest Philadelphia-native  - who attended St. Joe’s Prep – now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he has written extensively about Philadelphia broadband, including a book  - Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless – on the city’s failed Wireless Philadelphia initiative, well-known throughout the industry.

We turned to Settles this week for some answers on how the stimulus proposal review process is winding down and what he thinks are next steps for City of Philadelphia broadband.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

When is the federal broadband funding going to be distributed?

I’d expect it in the month of November. The pressure is still on to put it through, but it could be well into December.

We had agreed before that it seemed like the City of Philadelphia had done all the right things to create a strong application. Why do you think they weren’t recommended?

The wild card of this whole thing is the politics involved. What you have, starting in Congress and moving out is a bias toward rural areas. You can hear it in people’s comments, you can see it in how the rules are structured. If you’re in a poor area of Philadelphia, you are closer to a service provider than someone who is in some small township. The people that are reviewing proposals will reflect that bias, and I think that states, to a certain extent, will have a similar bias.

What about the Philly projects that were recommended, mostly pertaining to computer centers and broadband adoption programs?

If you follow what’s going in Washington, there is an ‘out’ card with computer centers and broadband adoption programs. Those were bones that were thrown to urban areas.

The problem is that that segment is the smallest amount of money available. If you look at the big picture, you have 2,200 people applying for all of the money, and you have a greater number of people applying proportionally for computer centers and broadband adoption than you do for the other proposals. So in that environment, you’re working with the unspoken political undercurrent.

Without the state’s recommendations, what can the city do now?

If you do sufficient planning and needs assessment and figure out the financial aspect of how the network is going to pay for itself, if you have done that part well and it’s a strong enough proposal, then I say take the proposal and go find other funding sources and partners and try to make the thing work.

Take the Gates Foundation anchor institution approach, you rope in [institutions] into the same network structure you’re trying to build. [City CTO Allan Frank] wanted to do that from the beginning. He was talking to these different entities to find their needs, and I’m assuming to find out what they had, as well. Fall back on that and modify it. Say ‘we won’t get government money, but we can get a 2-, 3-, 4-year commitment from various institutions and city government makes a commitment to them,’ and there’s a way to make this work.

It will take longer and will be assembled in a piecemeal fashion – and you’ll have more political battles – but in the end, the city gets what it wants and what the city needs.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia’s technology community. See others here.

From left to right: Doug Faith, Derek Pew, Bill Green, Allan Frank, Todd Wolfson.

Five known members of Philly’s technology community discussed the impact of Wireless Philadelphia, the city’s digital divide and its application for federal broadband stimulus dollars Tuesday evening.

Local technology leaders and policymakers agree that lessons learned from the failed initiative put the city in a unique spot to advance its technology foundations, and they are hopeful that the city is awarded federal grants for the Digital Philadelphia Broadband Initiative.

Read about the history of Wireless Philadelphia.

More than 75 business leaders, policymakers, academics and activists filed into the Connelly Auditorium at the University of the Arts’ Terra Hall to hear the panel discuss broadband policy in the city.

“There’s really no other municipal network that has quite the resonant experience, not only in the tech side of networks but of its downfalls,” said Derek Pew, CEO of Network Acquisition which now owns the Wireless Philadelphia assets.

“Something can happen. We’re in a unique place, where a large asset, history, experience and desire have come together.”

In August, the City of Philadelphia submitted applications requesting $35 million of the $4.6 billion available from federal broadband stimulus grants for middle mile infrastructure, broadband adoption and computer centers, Technically Philly reported Tuesday afternoon.

Though finalists are not likely to be announced until November, City Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank detailed the application review process and offered hope for audience members.

“If I was a betting man, I think we’d have a heck of a shot,” Frank said.

Because the National Telecommunications and Information Administration received an influx of applications – 2,200 requesting $28 billion – officials in each state will make recommendations to federal agencies.

Frank said he’s talked at length with a representative responsible for the Pennsylvania state decision, who will choose about a dozen projects to champion, he says.

Panel member Doug Faith, COO of Conshohocken-based s2s Communications, told the audience that although he was a reviewer for the federal broadband stimulus money, he could offer little detail on the process.

Much of the conversation Tuesday evening centered around Wireless Philadelphia and the obstacles facing Philadelphia’s digital divide.

“We blew it big time,” Councilman Bill Green, vice chair of the Technology Committee said of the chance for the city to purchase Wireless Philadelphia assets from Earthlink in 2008. “The City of Philadelphia should have bought this network. We could have done it but decided not to for policy reasons.”

The panel was rarely tense, except on a few occasions when activism butted heads with politics.

“As we move online, the problems the city and country face [around digital inclusion] will be inextricable from social problems,” Media Mobilizing Project’s Todd Wolfson said in opening statements.

Wolfson referenced Margaret Pugh O’Mara’s Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley, which contrasts the high-tech environments of Silicon Valley and Philadelphia after World War II and why the former was successful and the latter not.

O’Mara writes that it was because Philadelphia’s academic institutions, like Penn, silenced poor and working class communities in an attempt to lure brains to the city, that it failed to become a high-tech leader.

“We need to move forward with this lesson in mind,” he told the crowd.

It was a thoughtful lesson for the panel, organized for Philly’s One Web Day broadband inclusion celebration, which kicked-off last night and will provide computer literacy training to Philadelphia citizens today and Thursday.

Councilman Bill Green disagreed with Wolfson and said it was education first and broadband access later, that played the most important role in solving issues of poverty.

The crowd was not shy in taking the opportunity to challenge and question policymakers.

Read more about Digital Philadelphia in our multimedia package on its impact on the future of Philadelphia's technology ecosystem.

“Education is being transformed by technology,” one audience member said to Green, leaning over the chair in front of him. “There needs to be a better connection between what actually happens with community groups and with the [anecdotal] conversation going on here.”

Pew was candid about his participation in Wireless Philadelphia as Chairman of the initiative. He discussed his original recommendation to former Mayor John Street to wire the city utilizing already installed city infrastructure, much like the city’s current broadband stimulus applications. Instead, Street decided on building a new wireless network.

Pew explained his involvement in acquiring Earthlink’s infrastructure after the company pulled out of its contract, calling it a waste for it to be dismantled. He said that the chance of a network of such magnitude being built again, in these economic times, is minuscule.

One audience member questioned – to laughter from the crowd – if commercial networks like Comcast and AT&T had a hand in influencing broadband policy, like the city not becoming an anchor tenant in Wireless Philadelphia.

Pew said that the city had no biases toward carriers when it made that deal with Earthlink because it had to issue a public request for proposal, and that the contract, which he negotiated, never intended for the City to become an anchor tenant.

Green – who was instrumental in the Network Acquisition deal – pointed to Wireless Philadelphia’s success since it was acquired by Network Acquisition. The free WiFi network has exploded from 10,000 unique users to 170,000, making what Green says is the largest WiFi hotspot in the U.S.

Though the City is in talks with Network Acquisition to purchase wireless assets should federal stimulus money be awarded here, Frank reiterated that the city was not in a position to provide universal access to 50 percent of households in Philadelphia that are not connected with broadband. Instead, he hopes to “chip away” at the problem by connecting community resources like schools, libraries and recreation centers.

Pew agreed that universal access is not the answer for municipal governments.

“The city may decide to build a well,” he said. “But it’s the community’s responsibility to figure out how to get there to fill their buckets.”

Modeled after Earth Day, One Web is an international event meant to raise the public’s awareness of Web issues. No, not the Facebook redesign. We’re talking issues like estimates that 50 percent Philadelphia does not have access to the Internet.

This year, organizer Gwen Shaffer is helping bring the event to Philly for the first time. “It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the positive impact broadband can have on people’s lives,” Shaffer says. She hopes to have a week of service built around the main event, a day filled with speakers, multimedia and stories about the Net’s impact.

“We will probably collect testimonials from either people who don’t have Internet and talk about how it would change their lives, and then get stories from people about how their lives were different before they had broadband,” she says. “Put a human face on what many of us take for granted.”

The organizers need your help. Shaffer says she is confident that the City will participate with the event, but the search for volunteers, corporate sponsors and additional partners has only begun. After the jump, it’s hard not to be persuaded into lending a hand.

What’s your personal stake in One Web Day?

It’s an issue I care about. I’m about to finish my PhD and I studied telecommunications policy. The majority of research I’ve done is on digital inclusion and online civic engagement.

Were you studying Philadelphia’s digital inclusion or looking at broader issues?

A few years ago when Wireless Philadelphia existed I did a study on it and on municipal wireless networks in general, I have done multiple studies on alternative broadband models and my dissertation is on peer-to-peer networking; wireless network sharing. The idea is to get more people online, especially in low income neighborhoods, where somebody can’t afford $45 a month, why not share the bandwidth?

Because Comcast says you can’t, right?

Right, exactly. One of the things I proposed in my dissertation, there’s E-Rate, where schools and libraries are subsidized for up to 90 percent of their Internet connections. So, for instance, the Free Library only pays a small amount for the monthly subscription and the Federal government reimburses the rest. If those centrally located places can open up their signal, then all those neighbors can get free Internet access. It’s all about policy. Deciding that we want to prioritize this.

Do you have any potential partners for One Web Day?

Our plan is to partner with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and I met with them last week and I have a tentative commitment. If we can get corporate sponsors, we’re going to try to get some companies to donate computers that they no longer use to PHA. In San Francisco, one of the things Digital Inclusion program did was get some local legislation passed where there’s a tax break or some kind of incentive for companies to give away computers to be refurbished rather than recycle them [See our coverage of the school district's e-waste problem]. Maybe they’d even have employees who’d want to volunteer.

What kind of things to do you expect to happen during the week of service?

One of the things I’ve talked about doing is having volunteers come in and do basic computer training with PHA residents. Then, doing some really targeted stuff like possibly going to some of the high rises that are designated for senior citizens, for example, and teaching people just how to use e-mail. And maybe another workshop that’s targeted for job seekers in public housing. With high school kids, we could do a college resource workshop.

This would certainly raise awareness but where would you like to see it go after the week of service?

Hopefully it will be a catalyst for some policy changes that will help mobilize people that are interested in this issue to keep putting pressure on lawmakers to expand Internet access for residents. Depending on where the city is on Digital Philadelphia come September 22, maybe this could be a good platform to talk about Allan Frank’s plans.

How can folks get in contact with you?

There’s a Philly Web page setup at One Web Day. Anyone can e-mail me directly, too. I’m hoping to have our first organizing meeting soon.

Anything else you want to say to convince folks to volunteer?

I interviewed librarians at branches around the city and it was routine to talk to people who said that patrons wait 2 hours to use a computer at the Philadelphia Free Library branches for 30 minutes. The demand is there and we need to address it. Computers in public spaces are great but they’re not the solution. People need connectivity at home. That’s where the conversation needs to shift.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia�s technology community. See others here.

Look, this is down right embarrassing.

Earlier this month we tweeted:

So, it’s become something of shorthand for the importance of a subject, person or organization. But, as we found, Philadelphia generally and its technology and innovation communities specifically are dismally represented in the Web 2.0 powerhouse.

When someone answered Sandie’s call to create a Viddler Wikipedia page, it was deleted because, as one Wiki editor wrote, the article was “about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that didn’t assert the importance or significance of its subject.”

Sounds like a call to make clear the Philadelphia technology scene is significant. Below, we share our list of 10 members of our community that don’t have Wikipedia entries, but should, including Viddler.

We respect the mission of Wikipedia, so don’t consider this spam posting. Rather, we think our community is very underserved by the online encyclopedia. This, my friends, is basic stuff we need to get down. Who’s stepping up?

1. Viddler — How about 800k unique monthly visitors and growing fast? While they have virtual offices throughout the world, Sandie is a proud fixture of the Philadelphia technology community.
2. University City Science Center — The oldest and largest urban incubator and research park in the world has earned itself a graf in the University City Wikipedia entry.
3. Independents Hall — Co-working has an entry, but few, if any, of the major players in the co-working movement are there. Time magazine recently asserted telecommuting and freelancing will become an increasingly larger part of work in the future.
4. Philebrity — Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Joey Sweeney has become something of the voice of a portion of the city. 20k monthly uniques isn’t anything to sniff at, but perhaps more importantly, Philadelphia magazine has called Sweeney and what he represents the city’s future.
5. EvolveIP — Evolve burst on to the scene in 2007, raising an unheard of $15.4 million in financing from private entities. According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, it was the largest information technology investment in Philadelphia since 2001.
6. BioAdvance — Philly is among the best regions for life sciences in the country. So how come one of the prouder parts of that innovation scene doesn’t have a page? Where is Philly’s biotech presence on Wikipedia?
7. USA Technologies — If you were wondering who is the industry-leader in wireless vending machine payments, it just so happens to be a Malvern-based firm and they ain’t on Wikipedia.
8. Avencia — Talk about an urban company doing innovative work. They own legislative data and are fast growing, so why don’t they get any love?
Individuals who need a Wikipedia page
• Jim MacMillan — Dude has a Pulitzer Prize, so we forgive him his relentless tweets to 45,000 Twitter followers.
• Maria Rodale — The Lehigh County woman behind health and environment news site, Rodale.com.
• Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi — The godfathers of IndyHall probably deserve the nod.
• Arthur Kade — OK, this just makes us giggle, but, if only briefly, he did catch the attention of segments of our city.
9. The Skorpion Show– The DIY talk show from North Philly brings in more than 4,000 views per episode. Two of the duo�s videos have broken the one-million viewer mark. They have a following, so why aren’t they on the Wik-Wik?
10. Wireless Philadelphia — The group and the initiative, which admittedly fizzled, brought national attention to Philly for innovation in fighting the digital divide.

Oh, and when you’re done with all of these, you ought to spruce up RedLasso and First Round Capital and make sure our community gets whatever credit you think it deserves.

We’re a mature yet still growing technology scene, so it sure seems like we ought to be represented in the Wiki behemoth.

Yes, there is WikiPhilly.com, which needs some beefing up itself, but we need to start where the world’s eyeballs go, so why not put our best foot forward on Wikipedia?

Is this a stupid idea? Who’s going to do it? Did we leave anyone out? Or is some group listed here not deserving?

This just might be a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming.

Staff writers Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda contributed to this report.

Media Mobilizing Project founding member Todd Wolfson is interested in the role that media and communications can play in helping build movements to end poverty.

He hasn’t been the only one.

In 2007, MMP was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Knight News Foundation. With that money, the media organization has been helping other organizations use journalism to further their cause.

Since then, Wolfson and his team have helped create a network of 10 groups, like the Philadelphia Student Union, Pennsylvania Head Start Association, Casino-Free Philadelphia, Taxi Workers Alliance of PA and other service sector unions.

MMP’s aim is straight forward enough: teach the basics of new media concepts in order to help those groups get the good word out.

The grant helped MMP maintain a staff, create six six-week workshops to train organization leaders in Web, video and basic computer skills and purchase equipment and computers for each group’s respective community.

Now, Media Mobilizing is shifting gears.

Since its grant ended in March, it is trying to develop a business plan to generate revenue by creating video for nonprofits not in its current network. It’s also working with other groups, like the Philadelphia Department of Technology, to see what kind of opportunities can come through collaboration.

The future of Media Mobilzing seems uncertain, but strong. The organization just moved into a new office in West Philadelphia, and it seems that Wolfson has learned more than a media mogul about the future of journalism.

Still, Wolfson would probably be the first to tell you that sometimes, things just aren’t as they seem.

Rewind to 2005 when the city first unveiled its Wireless Philadelphia plan, when it hoped to provide Internet for every city resident.

It was a perfect opportunity for Media Mobilizing. Wolfson said that several aspects of its original grant application made reference to the possibilities that a wireless network could provide for a project like MMP.

Which is exactly why when Wireless Philadelphia began folding in 2008, it was a serious detriment to MMP, Wolfson says. So he took action.

“We were so excited about the technology and what it was promising. When the hopes and expectations didn’t come through and no one was holding Earthlink, the city and Wireless Philadelphia to account, we felt we needed to,” he says.

Wolfson helps organize the Philadelphia Digital Justice Coalition, a group of 30 organizations that put pressure on the city to save the Wireless Philadelphia and is currently helping shape Philadelphia’s Department of Technology’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia vision, which we reported on in May.

“We’re trying to think how the broadband stimulus package could be a part of this plan and how we need to marshall it in, in [Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank]‘s terms, to create an information technology economy,” Wolfson says.

“But also, we need to think about digital human capital: how to make sure that all of Philadelphia has the skill sets to utilize and take advantage of the Internet.”

Wolfson thinks that 50 percent of the city’s population isn’t online, but says that the research is incomplete, and he hopes that the Department of Technology will compile a study to have a better idea.

“We have no idea what the digital divide in the city looks like,” he says. It’s something that Wolfson has devoted himself to fixing for the past 5 years.

“Watching a bunch of students in high school doing interviews with taxi drivers suffering because of a [limitation the Philadelphia Parking Authority has maintained], and watching the students grow by doing the research and journalism to understand this story is really beautiful,” he says.

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly�s tech scene, but aren�t necessarily technology focused. See others here.