North Philadelphia : Innovation + Job News

All it took was a single taste of Trickling Springs Creamery's premium ice cream to convince Dan Crump he had to leave his job at FedEx and follow his passion of supporting local farms and healthy organic eating.

Shortly thereafter, he purchased the Lancaster County-based organic dairy delivery service known as Mr. Milkman.

At the time, Mr. Milkman had a limited delivery area and only a few customers -- it was really more of a hobby than a business for its previous owner.

"I knew it would mean a pay cut," recalls Crump. "But I also knew I could use my FedEx [logistics] knowledge to make [the business] work."

Almost immediately after purchasing Mr. Milkman, Crump began to wonder whether or not he should expand services to Philadelphia. Without an advertising budget or established customer base, he figured the costs would be prohibitive. Fortunately, a fruitful visit to Reading Terminal Market convinced Crump to add Philadelphia-area delivery services a few months back.

Now, thanks to the airing of a spotlight piece on Lancaster County’s WGAL last week, Mr. Milkman’s business in Philadelphia has taken off.

Due to the spike in orders, the company has added new Philly-area routes. It delivers each Saturday, and is poised to continue its growth with a hiring push. Crump is also working with a gluten-free bakery and will be offering fruit and veggie boxes this spring.

In addition to Trickling Springs Creamery dairy products, Danda Farms organic meats, artisan cheeses, raw honey and a number of other organic goodies, Mr. Milkman also delivers raw milk from Swiss Villa.

"We’re dedicated to supporting our local organic farmers and their workers," says Crump, "while ensuring that busy moms, families, and other [Philadelphia] residents have access to healthy food."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Dan Crump, Mr. Milkman
 

The annual Philadelphia Honey Festival, a celebration of the importance of bees and the honey they produce, has been in existence for just five years now. But to hear Suzanne Matlock of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild explain it, the three-day festival -- running September 5 to 7 at three historic locations throughout the city -- can trace its genesis back to Christmas Day 1810. That was the day Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was born at 106 S. Front Street.
 
Widely known as the "Father of American Beekeeping," Langstroth is the man responsible for inventing the Langstroth bee hive. Consisting of movable frames and resembling a stout wooden cabinet, the Langstroth is still considered the definitive beehive for keepers worldwide. So important was his contribution to beekeeping that on the 200th anniversary of his birth, a historical marker noting his accomplishments was raised outside his former Front Street home.  
 
The first annual Philadelphia Honey Festival was also celebrated that year, largely to honor Langstroth's memory and his significant impact on the craft. Only 500 people took part.

But in the seasons since, the event has evolved into a family-friendly educational and cultural celebration promoting urban beekeeping. It aims to "increase awareness of the importance of bees to [the] environment" and "the impact of local honey on our economy," according to a release. Last year, over 2,300 bee-curious locals showed up. 
 
Organized by the Beekeepers Guild and hosted at Bartram's Garden, the Wagner Free Institute of Science and Wyck Historic House, the festival's free events range from bee bearding presentations and open beehive viewings to a honey-themed happy hour and honey extraction demonstrations.

For a complete schedule, click here. (Don't miss the Beekeeping 100 panel on September 7.)
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Suzanne Matlock, Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild

Morgan Berman was living in West Philadelphia when she experienced what she calls her "first burst of sustainability consciousness," and began attempting to live a life that was aligned with her newfound values.

She joined a neighborhood food co-op, took a job as Grid magazine's director for community engagement, and slowly became more involved in the local sustainability scene.
 
"But there wasn't a central hub where I could go and understand what sustainability means," recalls Berman. "It didn't feel like anyone had quite created the tool that people need to answer their quick questions about [sustainable living]."
 
Berman's new app for Android and iOS, MilkCrate, aims to fill that void -- initially here in Philadelphia, and if the app takes off, nationally.
 
Described by its nine-person team as a digital hub for sustainability, MilkCrate currently exists as a database-style listings service -- not unlike Yelp -- with a collection of more than 1,600 Philly-area businesses that operate sustainably and promote economically responsible practices.

"Everything from fashion to food to furniture [to] energy," explains Berman in a video created for the app's current crowdfunding campaign. "Anything you could possibly want that fits into your local, sustainable lifestyle."   
  
At the moment, MilkCrate-approved businesses are organized in both listings and map layouts. But with the infusion of the $20,000 Berman hopes to raise through an Indiegogo campaign (launched on August 25), users will be able to write reviews, add news businesses, and search by keyword and neighborhood.      
 
Perks for campaign funders include MilkCrate T-shirts and tickets to the app's upcoming launch party. Click here to donate. 

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Morgan Berman, MilkCrate

Temple University's summertime app-developing program for underserved and minority students, the Urban Maps and Apps Studios, has been active for three seasons now.

The university-wide initiative kicked off in 2012 as part of the school's bitS (Building Information Technology Skills) program, which aims to "engage high school students to examine the communities where they live," according to its website, and to teach those students technology skills that can be applied to problems in their own neighborhoods.
 
Inside the Urban Apps and Maps Studios, students spend six weeks studying digital design and software application development. The ultimate goal? Design apps that will help tackle community challenges.
 
One team of 11 students involved in the 2014 summer program has created such an application. Known as Gotcha, the mobile crime-watch app allows users to anonymously post the details of petty neighborhood crimes such as shoplifting, without involving authorities.

Thanks to funding from the Knight Foundation, which will bring a portion of the Gotcha team back during the upcoming academic year to continue its work, the app may eventually become available in the iTunes and Google Play stores.

"There's a big gap of content that's related to -- and designed by -- the very youth that [Urban Apps and Maps] engages," says Temple's Michele Masucci. "And so part of what we're trying to do is to take one of the largest blocks of digital content consumers and turn them into digital content producers." 

"[Apps & Maps] is something the kids really love," she adds. "It's a technology they can carry with them into their futures, whether they decide to go to school, or to take more of an entrepreneurial turn. We're trying to address the interest and need that the students have."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Michele Masucci, Temple University
 

It's hard to believe, but Philadelphia's First Person Arts Festival -- a twelve-day-long theater gala known as "the only festival in the world dedicated to memoir and documentary art" -- is about to enter its thirteenth year.
 
The festival will run November 4 through 15 at four separate venues throughout the city; a portion of the schedule was released last week. The true-life stories shared onstage will come not just from prominent local performers, but also from a number of bold-name celebrities.
 
Actor Kathryn Erbe of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, for instance, will take part in an onstage reading of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day’s Journey into Night," culminating in a frank audience discussion of themes germane to the play's content. Yowei Shaw, who produces the year-old FPA podcast, will present a live performance. The Obie Award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith will stage a reading of her recent memoir, and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson will host a dinner featuring recipes from his latest cookbook.

In short, as FPA executive director Jamie Brunson puts it, "There’s no other festival out there quite like it."
 
When Vicki Solot founded FPA in 2000, "she saw the rising interest in memoir and documentary art as a way to foster appreciation among diverse communities for our shared experiences," explains Brunson. Throughout FPA's history, "the festival has always had [a sense of] consciousness about it," she adds.
 
Visit the FPA website for scheduling updates -- Brunson promises a few surprises as the festival date draws nearer -- and to purchase tickets once they become available.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jamie J. Brunson, First Person Arts

In the riverward districts of Fishtown and Kensington, Frankford Avenue First Friday events have been showcasing the area's increasingly extensive creative output for some years. And it's not just the boulevard's art galleries, but also its cafes, eateries and boutiques.
 
According to Joanna Winchester of the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), that creative and economic energy has been steadily inching its way northward along Frankford Avenue over the past few years.

"We've been wanting to put a highlight on some of the newer businesses that are coming in on the northern side of avenue," she says.
 
At the same time, NKCDC has been keen for local artists to become more involved with the avenue's monthly First Friday events. In an effort to satisfy both those goals, a new-and-improved event was born: the Frankford Avenue First Friday Fracas, which Winchester describes as a fairly typical "art stroll-style event, but with a really energetic twist to it."
 
On September 5 from 6 to 10 p.m., Frankford Avenue between Susquehanna and Cumberland will be closed to traffic for the street party. "We're hoping to have performers, and food trucks, and artists selling their wares," adds Winchester.
 
NKCDC is currently soliciting applications from artists who may want to perform or sell their work at the Fracas. And while priority will be given to those from the 19125 and 19134 ZIP codes, anyone is welcome to apply, as long as they meet the August 20 submission deadline.

Applications can be found online at NKCDC.org and FrankfordAveArts.org. 

Source: Joanna Winchester, NKCDC
Writer: Dan Eldridge

The nominees for the fourth annual Philadelphia Geek Awards have officially been announced -- there are 38 of them, spread across more than a dozen categories.
 
And at precisely 8 p.m. on the evening of August 16, the show will commence at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. Roughly 400 audience members will be introduced to some of the city's most inspirational and unusual passion projects, many of the extremely geeky sort: comic books, mobile video games, YouTube videos, and odd art and science projects, to name a few.
 
Come evening's end, one of three nominees will be crowned Philadelphia's Geek of the Year, an honor that in 2013 went to Dan Ueda, who ran the robotics program at Central High School .
 
All told, the upcoming 2014 Geek Awards are shaping up to be the ultimate celebration of an obsessive subculture that has grown exponentially.

"It isn't really a subculture anymore," says Drexel's Jill Sybesma, the event's organizer. "It's just culture."
 
The Geek Awards began back in 2011 when Geekadelphia co-founders Eric Smith and Tim Quirino approached Sybesma with the idea to create an award that would match their geeky site. 

"The city really didn't have anything that encompassed all its geeky projects," she recalls.

Indeed, many of this year's nominees are not bold-faced names from the science or tech scenes. The creators of an enormous Rube Goldberg machine, for instance, are up for a 2014 award, as is an artist who creates and installs fake street signs.  
 
"We say that it doesn't matter what you're geeky about," Sybesma explains. "Just that there's more people doing this now."
 
Tickets go on sale August 1 at phillygeekawards.com.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jill Sybesma, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Many low-income Philadelphia neighborhood are spotted with Latin- and Asian-owned corner stores; often, they can feel disconnected from the surrounding community. An upcoming collaboration between the Asian Arts Initiative and Amber Art and Design seeks to address that divide.
 
Titled "Corner Store (Take-Out Stories)," the multi-disciplinary art project takes an up-close-and-personal look at this racially and culturally charged aspect of urban living -- namely, the ubiquitous immigrant-owned corner store and its prevalence in largely black communities.  
 
"We use art to look in a deeper manner at a lot of social issues," says Amber Art's Keir Johnston, who adds that because immigrant-owned corner stores are the reality of commerce in many marginalized communities, there's an extreme social dynamic that takes place within them daily.
 
And yet, as Amber Art's Ernel Martinez explains, due to "an underlying tension that's been building for many decades" between black communities and the immigrants who serve them, the opportunity for social interaction between cultural groups is often an afterthought.      
 
Running June 6 through August 22 at Asian Arts Initiative (1219 Vine Street), "Corner Store" is a multimedia exhibition featuring video interviews with corner-store owners, still photos and mixed-media work. Pop-up performances will take place in mock corner-store structures where handmade currency and merchandise will trade hands. And ultimately, the artists hope, a dialogue will begin to emerge within the city's real-life corner stores.  

"One of the major points of this project is to collect the stories from one community and share them with another," explains Johnston.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Keir Johnston and Ernel Martinez, Amber Art and Design
  

Thanks to the efforts of Indy Hall's Alex Hillman and the local tech firm Jarvus Innovations, the expanse of North 3rd Street between Market and Girard is celebrating a transformational moment. As a nod to the growing number of tech operations and innovative companies located in the area, the stretch has been officially dubbed N3rd ("Nerd") Street.
 
According to Hillman, during a casual conversation some three or four years ago, Jarvus founders John Fazio and Chris Alfano pointed out that the corridor's street signs -- which are written as "N. 3rd St." -- could very easily be interpreted as "N3rd St."
 
"We all sort of slapped ourselves on the forehead for not having realized it earlier," recalls Hillman. And while the phrase was initially nothing more than an inside joke, "before we knew it," he adds, "it was being used in circles outside of our own."
 
Both the city's Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid and Mayor Michael Nutter have referenced N3rd Street during discussions on the city's tech community. The group is careful to point out in its N3RD St. Manifesto that the street's renaming applies not only to "technology nerds," but also to the entrepreneurs and creatives from any number of fields who are doing important work in the area.   
 
"The long-term, large-scale vision for N3rd Street is for us to create a community that makes the area better to work and live in," says Danny Harvith, the Jarvus employee responsible for the majority of the project's outreach work. "And that attracts great people doing great things."
 
A N3rd Street BBQ will take place at Liberty Lands Park on April 11 (2 p.m. - 6 p.m.), with an official naming ceremony scheduled for 4 p.m. 

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Alex Hillman, Indy Hall; Danny Harvith, Jarvus Innovations

Here's a bit of good news for those who missed out on tickets to this year's sold out TEDxPhiladelphia event, which will be held at the Temple Performing Arts Center on Friday, March 28: You can still experience the entire show, and without paying a dime.
 
A live video webcast of the event -- specifically the individual speaker talks -- will be "available to anyone with an internet connection," according to a blog post on the TEDxPhiladelphia website. (Full disclosure: Flying Kite publisher Michelle Freeman is involved with TEDx Philly's event production.) And while the live stream address hadn't officially been released at the time of writing (past TEDx live streams are archived here), four separate webcast parties, all of them free, have been announced.
 
Likeminded fans of "big ideas worth spreading," as the TED organization refers to its mission, will be gathering throughout the day to watch the event live. Register here to reserve your space at one of the venues, which include Impact Hub Philly and the Philadelphia Center for Architecture.
 
According to co-organizer Emaleigh Doley, the development of additional programming beyond the annual conference is a major goal of the local TEDx team. Post-conference events expanding on the 2014 theme, "The New Workshop of the World," will run March 26 through 30. Eventually, local TEDx organizers hope to offer programming year-round.  
 
Referred to as "adventures," the post-conference events are intended to "unpack the larger conversation we hope to have at the conference," but in the form of talks, walks and tours for smaller groups. More information about the programs, which range in price from free to $10, can be found here. 

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Emaleigh Doley, TEDxPhiladelphia

The Public Workshop is finishing construction on Philly's first GreenBuild Legacy Project. In the coming years, this play structure, located in Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, is expected to engage hundreds of thousands of local users.

The concept was selected by Delaware Valley Green Building Council. This November, they are hosting the international GreenBuild Expo in partnership with the City of Philadelphia. Previous legacy projects in other cities have largely focused on urban agriculture.

Alex Gilliam, founder of Public Workshop, announced plans for the project back in March. Since then, the organization's "Building Heroes" -- young adult and teenage project leaders -- have created an "adventure playground" using salvaged wood and fallen trees.

"We got excited about the potential of leaving a lasting project at Smith playground, but also engaging youth," says Fern Gookin, director of sustainability at Revolution Recovery and chair of the Legacy Project Committee.

The group's work transforms the natural landscape through designated play areas -- "The Jungle" has bendable beams that can be woven into caves, tunnels and huts; "The Forest" offers reclaimed materials for building temporary structures; and "The Whirlpool" is a shifting deck wrapped around a large tree, begging the user to look up at the canopy.

During the design-build process, the Public Workshop engaged local community groups and citywide organizations, including Urban Blazers and Mural Arts. Final workdays and upcoming Legacy Project events are open to the public.

"During the GreenBuild Expo, the spotlight on a national and international level will be on Philadelphia," says Gookin. "The Legacy Project will live on after the conference packs up and moves away."

Source: Fern Gookin, Legacy Project Comittee; Alex Gilliam, Public Workshop
Writer: Dana Henry
 

In the journey from farm to table, the role of the processor -- the baker, the fermenter, the cheesemaker -- is often overlooked. Common Market is in a unique position to change that. The regional foods distributor recently bought a 70,000-square-foot industrial building in North Philly, and they're using it to launch Philly Good Food Lab, a partnership program that helps food entrepreneurs scale up their operations.
 
The new building boasts 6,000 square feet of cooler storage, vast warehouse space and several offices. Lab partners can rent any of these resources. In addition, tenants (as well as off-site food entrepreneurs) can access the organization's comprehensive transport system, which covers an area bound by Lancaster, Baltimore and mid-New Jersey.
 
This month, Mycopolitan Company, local mushroom cultivators, became the Food Lab's first partners.

"There’s definitely some great kitchen incubators in the area for people who are just starting out," says Leah Pillsbury, director of development at Common Market. "We're looking for the next level and ready to increase their production."
 
Before purchasing their new building, Common Market was operating from a 3,000-square-foot incubator space at Share Foods inc. The move is a testament to their rapid growth -- this year, they’ve gone from 13 to 16 employees and created $2 million in local foods sales -- and their evolving role in the regional food economy.
 
"We want to help the local foods infrastructure," says Pillsbury. "Part of that means helping other local foods companies to develop products that can reach the market."
 
Common Market is currently hiring a procurement manager and a customer outreach manager.
 
Source: Leah Pillsbury, Common Market
Writer: Dana Henry

Justin Shi, a computer science professor at Temple University, wants to create up to 300 farming jobs in two years. If that weren’t ambitious enough, he plans to do so on Philadelphia's 40,000 vacant lots.

According to Shi, many university students have the will and passion for urban farming, but not the resources and information. GrowShare.net, an online resource he created with four Temple students, helps build the local urban farming economy by providing the essential data.
 
The project was funded by the Knight Foundation and earned runner-up status in Google's international Place API Developer Challenge in Feburary. The site recently launched in alpha and the team plans to incorporate as a nonprofit this summer.
 
By logging onto Growshare.net, users can locate urban farming projects in Google Maps, view crime statistics and assess resources in the surrounding area. They can also log into an auction platform and bid on gardening supplies, equipment and plants from other local farmers.
 
"What can public data do to help solve a problem?" asks Shi. "The Growshare project puts private and public data together in one place."
 
Assets like volunteer labor and knowledge -- which Shi calls "intangible resources" -- are advertised and claimed on the site. He expects to launch a separate currency called "Universal Resource Exchange" to facilitate the trade of volunteer hours.
 
"Those intangible resources have no place for trade," he says. "Growshare allows those intangible resources to be fairly traded on a platform that includes tangible resources."
 
GrowShare was developed through Temple's Computer and Information Systems Department (Shi is associate chair), and received support from the City, The National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates and Code for America of Philadelphia.
 
 "If we quantify the volunteer work and use social networking power and people's goodwill, those vacant lots will be much more effectively utilized," says Shi.
 
Source: Justin Shi, Temple University
Writer: Dana Henry