Media : Innovation + Job News

If you're the politically active type, you're well aware that Philadelphia County's primary elections are being held on Tuesday, May 20.
 
But according to Ben Stango of Young Involved Philadelphia (YIP), an organization working to increase civic engagement among young people, many millenials are hearing about the primaries for the first time right now.        
 
Stango and YIP launched a Get Out the Vote-style marketing campaign on May 8, the results of which you may have seen in one of your social media streams. The concept is basic: Young voters post a selfie to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram declaring their intention to vote. Most are displaying handmade signs decorated with the #YoungPHLVotes hashtag.
 
"This is the first time we've done a voting push," explains Stango. "And for the primary, we wanted to do something that was pretty simple and straightforward."
 
Over the past year, YIP has started to focus more of its efforts on advocacy -- specifically on finding ways to connect millennials with politics and policy. And as Stango explains, "There's a lot of good research showing that if your friends are voting, and if there's peer pressure to vote, you're more likely to vote yourself."
 
While Stango describes the selfie campaign as "an important push," he's also quick to admit that it's really a practice run for a more aggressive effort YIP plans to launch prior to the upcoming general and mayoral elections. The group hopes to target the city's under-voting millennials with a series of interactive education projects this fall.
 
"We want young people voting," he insists. "We want them talking about voting. And we want them thinking about voting."
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Ben Stango, Young Involved Philadelphia 
 

Thirteen percent of Philadelphia's population is now of Hispanic or Latino descent -- that's nearly 200,000 people within the city limits alone. The organizers of the third annual Filadelfia Latin American Film Festival (FLAFF) -- the only annual festival of its sort in the Greater Philadelphia area -- have released the scheduled lineup for this three-day event, which runs April 25-27 at The University of the Arts, the Kimmel Center and International House Philadelphia. This year's films represent a diverse range of Latin countries and include full-length features, documentaries, shorts and even a family-friendly animated film from Uruguay.

Standouts include Cesar's Last Fast, a film about a one-man hunger strike held by Cesar Chavez in an effort to shine a light on the negative effects of pesticides, and Yo, Indocumentada, an exploration of the Venezuelan transgender community.    
 
According to FLAFF co-organizer Beatriz Vieira, "part of what we want to do [with FLAFF] is to make sure the audiences are being built very, very carefully." To that end, a fair amount of community engagement has been baked into the festival, she says, "to make sure [it] has a lot of relevance for the region."
 
For example, a student member of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians will discuss the struggles of learning to read and write as an adult following the screening of Las Analfabetas, a Chilean film about a middle-aged illiterate woman. FLAFF is also partnering with The Food Trust and Fair Food; representatives from both groups will discuss their work with the audience after the screening of Cesar's Last Fast.   
 
Click here to view film trailers or purchase tickets.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Beatriz Vieira, FLAFF

 

If you're the type of person who keeps a close eye on the gadget-obsessed consumer technology industry -- or if you're simply someone who feels the need to own a tricked-out television -- then there's a decent chance you've recently heard the name Stream TV Networks.

The latest trend in ultra high-definition technology, 4K, is being touted as the next big thing. But just a few years back it was 3DTV being trumpeted by every industry analyst with a magazine column. That prediction, as we now know, never came to pass. Why? The recession certainly didn't help, nor did the functionality issues surrounding those goofy 3D glasses: At upwards of $200 a pair, they were pricey. And they offered no cross-platform functionality -- only Sony's 3D glasses, for example, would work with a Sony 3DTV. To put it plainly, the technology had tons of promise, but too many roadblocks.    

Enter Stream TV Networks, a small Philadelphia-based tech firm. They've been popping up in the national press, thanks to an impressive showing at the 2014 International CES, a massive consumer electronics convention. It was there that Stream TV showed off its most promising new innovation: a fully consumer-adjustable 3D technology that doesn’t require glasses. 

Known as Ultra-D -- the technical term is "autostereo" -- this feature should be available on 4KTV sets sometime this summer. Ultra-D also has the capacity to work on tablets, video game consoles, even Skype. If your device has an HDMI connection, simply plug it into your Ultra-D-enabled TV, and gasp in astonishment as everything from YouTube documentaries to your live chat with grandma pops out of the screen in three surprisingly lifelike and super high-definition dimensions. 

"In the simplest terms, Ultra-D allows any content to be converted in real time into 3D without-glasses,” says Leo Riley, Stream TV's VP of Sales. “It doesn't matter what source it is. It can be internet-based, like YouTube or Netflix. It can be an iPad, an Android tablet, a set-top box, a Blu-ray player, a [Sony PlayStation] -- it doesn't matter." 

Stream TV found its footing back in 2009, after CEO Mathu Rajan purchased a small Silicon Valley-based company that had been dabbling in 3D technology. During an overseas trip, Rajan met four former Phillips technologists who were all looking for work. (Phillips had recently disbanded its own glasses-free 3D division "after dumping almost a billion dollars into it," explains Riley.) Rajan brought all four of them onboard, putting them to work at Stream TV's R&D lab SeeCubic in the Netherlands. 

Almost every member of Stream TV's Center City-based executive team is a native of the Greater Philadelphia area. And while doing more hiring locally isn’t in the immediate future, the company continues to innovate. Recently, they were was one of six Philadelphia firms to win a Marcum Innovator of the Year award, which honors "the contribution of innovation to the Philadelphia area economy." 

Perhaps most promising for the future of the company is the fact that their technology can be imbedded or integrated into anything from a mobile phone to an entire digital city wall system. 

"We have a reach into a lot of different areas of the consumer electronics channel," says Riley. "Basically, anything that has a display, we have a play."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Leo Riley, Stream TV Networks

Prolific storyteller Nathaniel Popkin has written about the city of Philadelphia in multiple mediums -- as a journalist at City Paper, an architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the author of two non-fiction books, founder and co-editor of Hidden City Daily, and script writer for the documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. Now Popkin is publishing his first work of fiction, Lion and Leopard, a historical novel set in the Philadelphian art scene in the early 19th century.

Lion and Leopard explores the developing rift between Philadelphia's established art community, led by Charles Wilson Peale, and proponents of the new Romantic and naturalistic styles. German artist John Lewis Krimmel paints subversive urban city scenes and clashes with Peale prior to his mysterious untimely death.

Popkin decided to focus his novel on the life and death of John Lewis Krimmel after seeing Krimmel's work in historian Gary Nash's book First City. 

"I commiserated with his project, as I've done a good deal of street photography," says Popkin. "Then I saw he died tragically, at 32, drowning in a mill pond in Germantown. I was intrigued. It was a mystery. It seemed apocryphal -- his death coincided with the end of nature and the beginning of the mass exploitation of the natural world with industrialization. It seemed like hidden history that I could explore through fiction."

Popkin did not hesitate to re-imagine the lives of iconic Philadelphians, such as Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts founder Peale. Rather, he found that by interpreting the "reality" of history, he was able to bring characters to life in a way that would resonate with modern readers.

Despite Popkin's prolificacy and reputation, his idea for a historical novel set in Philadelphia was not immediately well-received by publishers. Then he met Nic Esposito of The Head and The Hand, a startup press based in Fishtown. 

"I wanted a publisher who would help me get the book right, produce it and sell it in a mindful, intentional way, and that's what they have done," explains Popkin. “They're a Philly press. I happen to believe that we need more Philly presses with national vision to publish literature if we're going to become a good book city. 2013 was a tremendous start for the press."

"No one looks askance when a New York publisher publishes a novel written by a New Yorker that's set in New York," he continues. “No one wonders if that isn't a bit provincial. Philadelphia -- or any particular place well-conceived in fiction -- is enticing to publishers looking for something new. We have plenty of delicious material."

Writer: Nicole Woods
Source: Nathaniel Popkin

There are countless local organizations around the world working on issues such as hunger, environmental protection, human rights and other imperative challenges. CauseHub.com, a social platform founded by Pennsbury High School student Ashvika Dhir, helps small-scale change-makers discuss common goals and share best practices.

Back in March, Dhir was the first high school student to present at IgnitePhilly. Since then, she has crowdsourced $4000 through LuckyAnt, added over 10 partner non-government organizations (NGOs) to the site and become one of the youngest innovators (and one of only fifty in the United States) to win this year's Global Startup Youth Scholarship.

Dhir developed the concept for CauseHub while volunteering at Mother Teresa, an orphanage in India.

"I realized these small ideas in India had no way of contacting people across the world," she says. "With Causehub, people can share in one specific location all having to do with causes."

To help these organizations publicize their work, CauseHup offers NGOs, collectives and individuals their own networking page. The site draws content from contributors in Columbia, Kenya, India and Philadelphia.

"I wanted the user to be in charge," says Dhir. "There are other blogs that talk about content and inform people, but I wanted to create a space where people could honestly discuss any cause they’re interested in."

Dhir continues to grow CauseHub's user base by tapping family members in India, drawing on international contacts and using word of mouth. She hopes the site will develop into a media outlet for charities, helping individuals find local opportunities for volunteering and educational events.

Source: Ashvika Dihr, CauseHub
Writer: Dana Henry

With construction of the FringeArts Lab well underway, the Race Street Pier is set to become Philly’s next creative hotspot. To draw attention to its revival, The Mural and the Mint’s Michael Kiley chose the site for his second sound installation.
 
Animina: A Race Street Pier Sound Walk -- created in partnership with South Philly web development company P'Unk Ave -- is a GPS-enabled musical piece; users can download the app via iTunes starting October 1. 

Kiley used a similar process with his first installation, Empty Air: A Rittenhouse Square Sound Walk. He began with an unaltered sound recording of the Race Street Pier, then layered in originally composed music. Unlike RIttenhouse Square with its concentric layout of walkways, the Race Street Peir is linear. Kiley had to adapt the musical installation -- which changes according to location instead of time -- to fit the structure.
 
"I couldn't just leave people at the end of the pier," he says. "I tried to write something that would work forwards as well as backwards."
 
While creating Empty Air, Kiley became familiar with how the app's technology affects sound; he created Animina with those subtleties in mind. The piece aims to embody the theme of "lost relationships and healing," and contains music and lyrics inspired by new activity along the river.
 
"I wanted to personify what the city is doing," says Kiley. "Philadelphia is where it is because of the Delaware River. We deserve a preeminent waterfront."
 
The project was created in partnership with FringeArts and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, and is sponsored by grants from Pew Cultural Center for Arts & Heritage and the Painted Bride Art Center through the Wyncote Foundation.
 
Source: Michael Kiley, Mural and the Mint
Writer: Dana Henry

Philadelphia might still be "the workshop of the world" -- only instead of manufacturing wool suits and steam engine parts, the city is producing up-cycled handbags, artisanal cheeses and smartphone apps.

PHLMade, an effort spearheaded by Discover PHL, wants to celebrate those products. They are currently offering a newsletter and plan to launch an online magazine and branding campaign around all the stuff made in Philly.
 
PHLMade has three main goals: To market Philadelphia as a "city of makers"; to appeal to outside and emerging companies who might want to make products here; and to help locavores and tourists buy products that are locally-made. Over the next year, PHLMade will create an original logo for products made in Philly and expects to hold conventions and pop-up shops for local wares.  
 
“It’s really to connect the marketing piece with the business piece and help to support the products that are coming out of Philadelphia," says Daniel Cohn, Founder of PHLMade and VP of marketing and communications at Discover PHL. “We’re really discovering stories in the city."
 
The online magazine -- featuring original content in addition to aggregated stories from local media outlets -- will focus exclusively on makers. It’s being developed by Brandon Davis, a native of Olney who publishes the national entrepreneurship magazine American Dreaming.
 
"Everyone in America is talking about American-made products and the importance of buying local," says Cohn. "PHLMade gives us additional opportunities to showcase Philadelphia as a city of innovation and of people who are still making things after all these years."
 
PHL-Made is looking to hear from makers, maker-enthusiasts and interested sponsors. They are launching a Kickstarter campaign this month to support the upcoming magazine launch.
 
Source: Daniel Cohn, Discover PHL
Writer: Dana Henry

Technology often advances at a dizzying pace. Special-needs students, and other vulnerable and underserved populations, can be left behind.
 
Michele McKeone, founder of Autism Expressed, is changing that reality for individuals who struggle with autism. Her company's flagship product, which launched publically in late July, breaks digital literacy into granular bits, making it easier for people with learning challenges.
 
"We live in a technology-driven society and economy," she says. "These are the life skills that they will need to pursue their independence."
 
While working as a special-needs teacher, McKeone developed a method for teaching students with autism practical internet skills. Sure, they knew how to look up YouTube videos and play video games, but McKeone taught them to create LinkedIn profiles and communicate virtually. After gaining significant interest from parents and fellow educators, she recreated her instructions digitally.
 
With Autism Expressed, users work through four levels of instruction (instead of individual lessons) and progress into fluency. The process plays out like a game and a badge is awarded for each level a student masters.
 
Once they "graduate," the student has a portfolio of projects that demonstrate their abilities to potential employers. Along the way, their performance is tracked, allowing educators and parents to generate progress reports.
 
"As a teacher, I'm charged with getting my students ready for what happens after high school," says McKeone. "A big part of that is planning your transition and really having data."
 
Autism Expressed has already gained clients throughout the northeast corridor. The company is a graduate of the Corzo Center's Creative Incubator and recently won the Educational Services of America Award, a $20,000 prize from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

The University City Science Center has partnered with Flying Kite to showcase innovation in Greater Philadelphia through the "Inventing the Future" series.
 
Source: Michele McKeone, Autism Expressed
Writer: Dana Henry

Google Glass is coming to market this winter, ushering in an era in which users augment reality by strapping the internet to their faces. Not quite, says Det Ansinn, founder and president of Doylestown-based BrickSimple. The company is busy creating apps for users who truly need to keep their hands free.
 
With BrickSimple's Glass apps, critical care doctors can save invaluable time by virtually accessing medical records while they treat the patient. Construction crews can receive instructions from remote managers while they build. Drivers can anticipate directions without looking down at a GPS screen. The company has even developed GlassBattle, the first game made for Google's new platform.
 
"There are a lot of things that you do that don’t work well while holding a smartphone or tablet," says Ansinn. "We realized we could build a whole new class of apps."
 
The company's ambition is no surprise. In 2002, BrickSimple launched Foundation Suite, one of the first successful app development platforms. In 2008, they were among the first to release products for Apple's app store. This year, they were among the few companies in the world invited to Google Glass Foundry, a top-secret hackathon that first unveiled Glass to developers. Soon after, Google provided BrickSimple with pre-released devices.
 
Since its 2001 inception, the company has been developing apps for a slate of industries, from entertainment to finance. They currently employ 25 people, and plan to hire two more developers this month.
 
With six glass apps ready for release and six more in development, BrickSimple has been spending a lot of their time investigating new needs for a world not yet realized. DrivingGlass for example, will allow drivers to monitor performance and fuel economy as they drive -- and their eyes will never leave the road.

"I'm very excited where mainstream wearable computing will take us in the industry," says Ansinn.
 
Source: Det Ansinn, BrickSimple
Writer: Dana Henry

LinkedIn might have been created for talent-matching, but Center City-based PeopleLinx is turning the networking site into a marketing goldmine. Their flagship software, Social Business Optimization (SBO), helps companies build bigger brands through employee profiles.

PeopleLinx realized that a company's personel -- and their social media presence -- can function as free advertising. Marketing departments use their product to help employees curate a LinkedIn profile that represents the brand and connects effectively with clients, ultimately generating more sales leads. SBO software is just over a year old, but it's already luring big name brands such as Prudential, Audi and Experian.

"Everything an employee does online is a reflection of that employee's professional life and ultimately the company they work for," says Micheal Idinopulos, chief marketing officer for PeopleLinx. "We're giving companies and marketing departments the tools to enable employees to do good for the company while doing good for themselves."

PeopleLinx, which was founded by former LinkedIn employees Nathan Egan and Patrick Baynes, recently closed their first round of funding with $3.2 million in investment capital from Osage Venture Partners, Greycroft Partners and MissionOG. Their monthly revenues tripled in May, and then again in June. The team has grown to 30 employees and is hiring for positions in sales and marketing, product development and software engineering.

On the heels of this impressive growth, PeopleLinx has also been getting more involved with the local tech scene. They hold regular "fireside chats," inviting startup leaders from throughout the region to share their wisdom with the staff. They are also organizing an upcoming hackathon, tentatively scheduled for September.

Source: Micheal Idinopulos, PeopleLinx
Writer: Dana Henry

DuckDuckGo isn't as ubiquitous as Google, but it's getting there. Just weeks after the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal made headlines, traffic to this alternate search engine has skyrocketed from 1.8 million to 3 million searches per day.

DuckDuckGo launched in 2008 in response to mounting concerns over online search privacy. The engine uses the old-fashioned ad-based revenue model -- meaning they don’t track Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or use cookies to record search histories.
 
Amid the spike, the Paoli-based company released their first mobile search app, available on iOS and Android. Unlike its desktop counterpart, searches field a user's questions and deliver relevant content from trusted sources instead of a list of links. The product also displays the day's top-shared "stories" -- which includes articles, videos, images and infographics -- by aggregating content-sharing sites like Reddit and Popcore.
 
"We wanted to make something that addressed the flaws of mobile search," says Gabe Weinberg, founder and CEO. "You're on the go, you want the answers."
  
Weiner attributes the company's growth to their open-source user community -- they provide source recommendations, new team members and even customer acquisition. Because the company rarely advertises, recommendations from their users are largely responsible for redirecting those additional 1.2 million daily searches to DuckDuckGo.
 
Source: Gabe Weinberg, DuckDuckGo
Writer: Dana Henry

With explosive growth in recent years, Philly’s tech and innovation scene gets plenty of local coverage. Nonetheless, Developing Philly, a weekly web series, has found a new angle. Rather than update viewers on what's happening now in the startup world, the series explores where our tech community came from and where it's headed.
 
Created by filmmaker David Dylan Thomas and web developer Maurice Gaston, the project was inspired by mutual observation. When the co-producers and longtime South by Southwest participants met in 2009, people with different skill sets were starting to connect at local events such as BarCamp and CreativeCamp. The tech culture, it seemed, was becoming more energetic and creative.
  
Now in its first season, the seven-episode series explores the scene's origins. Topics have included tech in the '90s, groundwork efforts (including BarCamp, IgnitePhilly, Philly Startup Leaders and Philadelphia Area New Media Association) and the coworking trend. Episodes are released every Friday.

Initially, Gaston and Thomas weren’t sure if the subjects would be fictional, technical or entrepreneurial. Early conversations with Alex Hillman of Indy Hall and Sean Blanda of Technically Philly led them to more and more under-the-radar leaders, and the focus became clear.
 
"I started out expecting to tell a technology story," says Thomas. "It became more of a business story, but then it grew into a story about community in general. What’s unique about the Philly tech and innovation scene is how collaborative and supportive it is."
 
Source: David Dylan Thomas and Maurice Gaston, Developing Philly
Writer: Dana Henry

Working with clients can be a challenge. For example, every time DMi Partners, a Center City-based internet marketing firm, launched a new campaign, they had to rely on the client to provide a decent landing page -- the final juncture in converting a surfer into a customer. Prism, the company's new content management system, lets DMi handle that critical component internally.

DMi mainly serves large corporations in consumer packaged goods, insurance and continuing education who are looking to add thousands to tens of thousands of new customers per month. With Prism, they can seamlessly integrate preconfigured forms into any of their webpages, turning a static advertisement into customer engagement.

"When we configure a new offer or a new campaign in our system, it's very easy for us to turn that campaign into a landing page," says James Delaney, COO of DMi Partners.

DMi is ten years old and has 80 employees. They are currently hiring marketing specialists, junior developers and business development reps. As the company expanded, they moved from a 8,000-square-foot space on South Broad Street to 16,000 square feet closer to City Hall.

Ultimately, Prism is expected to get more customers onto landing pages, which translates into greater likelihood for success. "It helps the speed that the end consumer perceives when they arrive at one of the sites," says Delaney. "The faster you can serve those pages to the consumer, the more likely you are to get a conversion, because they’re not waiting around."

Source: James Delaney, DMi Partners
Writer: Dana Henry

Like so many accidental entrepreneurs, Will Stallwood launched Cipher Prime -- an independent mobile game development company -- while trying to get a job. Auditorium, the game Stallwood first created with music composer Dain Saint as an example of his capabilities, won him no job, but earned millions of downloads. In 2009, shortly after that unexpected success, Cipher Prime was born.

Now based in Old City, the company has since released four games on seven platforms, earning countless awards from the likes of Google, Apple, the Indie Games Festival and Pocket Gamer.

Splice, their most recent product, gained international attention after debuting on the iPad as Google's "Feature Launch of the Week." The game was named runner-up for Game of the Year by Apple's App Store -- and it was developed on a $120,000 budget, compared to a $1 million budget for the winner.

The company builds games in the "instructionless play" genre. Players solve abstract layered puzzles with no rules and no text. Cipher Prime incorporates work by local musicians and original art. The format starts simple but has a plethora of variables, making the games hard to master. Stallwood says this formula has helped solidify their international success.

"Basically, you're dragging and dropping these little nodes to try to form and outline," he says of Splice. "By the time you’re done the game, it's like a petri dish. You’re pulling cells around all over the place and they’re multiplying and you’re bending time back and forth. It really gets involved."

The company has raised $71,000 on Kickstarter for their next game, Auditorium II, and is hiring a marketer.

Cipher Prime is dedicated to building a local community of unconventional gamemakers. They host weekly development nights (regularly attended by 20 to 30 gamers), organize game-making challenges, hold public book clubs and host Skype conferences with industry leaders.

"We're really trying our damnedest to make sure there are more game developers here in Philadelphia," says Stallwood. "Everyone here loves what we do, and we want to share with other people."

Source: Will Stallwood, Cipher Prime
Writer: Dana Henry

If the fact-check frenzy of 2012 presidential campaign proved anything, it's that political statements will never again go unscrutinized.
               
Jumping ahead of the content-data curve, ElectNext is launching the Political Baseball Card. The "card" -- a widget that appears at the bottom of online political news articles -- offers three types of information on relevant politicians: biographical facts, legislative record and data on who's financing their campaign. The company has developed relationships with forty of the top national news outlets, including the Economist, the Washington Post, Comcast and NBC. They recently launched the Political Baseball Card on Philly.com, PoliticsPA and PolicyMic.
 
"Data's really become an important part of news coverage," says ElectNext's Dave Zega. "We're leveraging data as a content component -- as a way to really get people data that's relevant and engaging right at the moment they need it."
 
Since launching in 2011, ElectNext has built the country’s largest political data repository by partnering with watchdog organizations including the Sunlight Foundation, the Center for Responsive Politics, GovTrack and Follow the Money.

While these organizations give vital insights into federal policy makers, local politics can be more abstruse. According to Zega, ElectNext works with individual municipalities to gather records on city council members and other politicians. They started in Philly and are in the process of establishing partnerships in New York City. In the coming years, they hope to represent the one hundred largest U.S. cities.
 
ElectNext closed their latest funding round with $1.3 million in investment and seeks a Rails developer. 
 
Source: Dave Zega, ElectNext
Writer: Dana Henry