Innovation + Job News

It started humbly enough in Northern Liberties, and in a matter of months, Fourth Wall Arts Salon has taken center stage as a new kind of traveling variety show, coupling performing and fine arts with all the best aspects of new economy thinking. Sustainable, light, distributed and organic, Fourth Wall Arts Salon is back in a big way in 2011 this Saturday, Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. at WHYY Studios in downtown Philadelphia.

Elijah Dornstreich, who founded Fourth Wall along with painter Keir Johnston and performer Ali "Brinae Ali" Bradley, says, "The year is shaping up incredibly for Fourth Wall. The level of our partnerships with city institutions in the next six months has really soared right to the top." While last year's events took place at some previously unexplored and almost secret venues like Steel Pony, a South Philadelphia clothing manufacturer, Fourth Wall has garnered the attention of the city's major cultural institutions. Events are planned for the University of the Arts, the brand new National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall, The Mural Arts Program and the University of Pennsylvania. Also, check out Fourth Wall Presents: Art at The Sporting Club, a multi-level art exhibit running now through March, with a free opening this Thursday, Jan. 27, from 6-8 p.m.

This Saturday's event, in partnership with WHYY, the Delaware Valley's premiere public broadcasting outlet, includes host and spoken word artist Nina "Lyrispect" Ball, musician Tev Smith, poet Ms. Wise, dancer Jocelyn Isaac, The Jimmy Crack Corn Experiment jazz ensemble, magician/performance artist Ran'D Shine, and DJ Supreme on the turntables, along with work from visual artists Brad Carney and Liam Dean. For more information on the event and participating artists, visit Fourth Wall Arts Salon. Advance purchase price is $15, and price at the door is $20. Advance tickets are available through TicketLeap.

Writer: Sue Spolan
Source: Elijah Dornstreich, Fourth Wall Arts Salon

You've got to give attorney David Orphanides a lot of credit. He's come up with an alternative to "artisanal," one of the more awkward-sounding terms in the English language. Jettisoning the word, but not the concept, Orphanides uses the more classic "crafted" when describing the four tenets that make up the philosophy of Fairmount's soon-to-open Fare restaurant, which also relies on local, organic and sustainable practices.

Orphanides eats organic and shops sustainably at home, so it makes total sense, he says, that Fare mirrors that lifestyle. "It's second nature for us. We couldn't see doing it any other way." Also on board are Savvas Navrosidis, who owns Fairmount Pizza, and attorney Andy Siegel.

Fare, which opens to the public in "early spring," eschews heavy creams and sauces for "food that's still very satisfying and filling." The projected 85-seat bar and restaurant located at 2028 Fairmount Avenue, across from Eastern State Penitentiary, is fit out with completely green, locally sourced furnishings. The black walnut bar comes from Pennsylvania trees. Wine, beer, and liquor served on that lovely expanse of local wood aims to be "biodynamic and organic, from local vineyards and distilleries," according to Orphanides.

Fare's menu evolved from an original concept of smaller snacks to include dishes for all appetites. Small plates and snacks range in price from $2-$8; salads are $6-$9, and main dishes range from $11-$18. Fare "started out more as a place for people to have a drink and socialize, more of a lounge" for Fairmount locals, but when chef Tim Bellew signed on, the menu expanded. Bellew's previous engagements include Fire in Cherry Hill, Black Eyed Susan in Long Beach Island, and MANNA catering in New York.

Source: David Orphanides, Fare Restaurant
Writer: Sue Spolan

Flying Bytes is a weekly roundup of innovation news nuggets:

TGIVF: Miss Rachel's Lunch Pantry announces The Downtown Lunch Club, a new uber-healthy weekly lunch delivery service for Center City. Choose from three vegan options, pay just $10 via PayPal, order by Thursday, and get delivery to home or office on Friday. Coming soon: The Navy Yard Lunch Club.

Penn Players: The University of Pennsylvania plays a significant role in the growth of Philadelphia and the region, according to an upcoming report. This week's Penn Current newsletter highlights the statewide economic impact of Penn in 2010, Philadelphia's largest private employer, which "translates into $14.1 billion, and that number reflects a 46.5 percent increase since 2005," when the last report was issued.

Back to Basecamp: Basecamp Business has released the Business Calendar Network app for Android. Joining recent mobile app releases for iPhone and iPad, the Android app allows entrepreneurs to search for upcoming networking events by location and type, and lets users know if they can get their grub on.

Nutter for the Arts: Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has long been a proud supporter of the city's art scene, with strong ties to the Mural Arts Program and Philly's music community. This week Nutter received the 2011 Public Leadership in the Arts Award, hosted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and Americans for the Arts. Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Indiana and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson also received the award.

Cultural Cash Flow: The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance announced 40 winners of Project Stream seed grants, totaling more than $95,000. Local nonprofit arts groups and performers include Crossroads Music, Delaware County Community College and The Youth Orchestra of Bucks County. Recipients receive up to $3,000 each, and the initiative is funded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts' (PCA) Partners in the Arts program, with additional support from PECO.

Writer: Sue Spolan

In addition to its catchy name, Philadelphia's SUMO Heavy Industries also has a catchy concept: Select just one vital piece of web development and turn that expertise into a whole company. Bart Mroz and associates Robert Brodie and John Suder focus strictly on digital commerce. In just eight months, SUMO is doing brisk business, marketing through word of mouth, relying on social networks, skype and blogging instead of office furniture and overhead.

There's a little bit of bad boy in the ring, as evidenced by a recent blog post titled "Why We Choose Not to Be a Certified Magento Partner," giving the company a line in the sand quality reminiscent of a certain local jeweler's hateful billboard ads.

Chat with Bart Mroz, founder and partner of SUMO Heavy, and find that indeed Magento, boasting $25 billion in transactions, is SUMO's primary eCommerce platform. The line of independence is drawn like this: "Magento is a framework. If you become a partner, you are obligated to sell a certain number of licenses," says Mroz. "Sometimes we don't use Magento."

SUMO Heavy wants the flexibility of customizing client solutions via service providers including Rackspace, hosting.com, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). That way, says Mroz, "If a framework or technology changes, we can change with it."

To sell the full service eCommerce package, the trio provides branding, design, development and marketing. Their latest projects include a total redesign for Robinson Luggage, and they've just signed with a "huge automotive products distributor;" details of the deal to be divulged upon launch.

Source: Bart Mroz, SUMO Heavy Industries
Writer: Sue Spolan

Go ahead. Drop that yogurt container into the recycling bucket. You know you want to. The City of Philadelphia has made recycling far more worthwhile with the Recycling Rewards Program. If a vague sense of helping the environment doesn't pull you in, discounts at local businesses will. In an effort to increase residents' compliance with the recycling program, Philadelphia has partnered with RecycleBank to create the Rewards Program, which is now available to residents citywide. But there are questions.  Christine Knapp of the local office of the state's leading environmental advocacy organization, PennFuture, says every time she talks to communities about the city's recycling program, someone asks about yet another item. Yes, says Knapp, all plastics with numbers 1-7 are now eligible. But not plastic bags. "They jam up the sorting system."

So many questions coupled with so little compliance: only 18 percent of all Philly's trash is diverted into recycling. Colleen Meehan is a program organizer for Clean Water Action of Pennsylvania, one of the groups involved with RecycleNOW Philadelphia, a coalition of individuals and organizations working to promote recycling. She says one of the barriers is that the Recycling Rewards Program is primarily online. Additionally, the program can be somewhat confusing. What is eligible for recycling, and how does a whole neighborhood benefit from the used soda cans of an individual household? The way the program is structured, an entire community shares in the benefits of individual families' recycling efforts. Each family gets its own rewards, which can be any of thousands of options, from supermarket discounts to minor league baseball tickets.

RecycleNOW hopes a series of four community activist workshops will spark interest in the program that was originally piloted in West Oak Lane and Chestnut Hill before citywide rollout. The gatherings are billed as training sessions for those who want to spread the good word in their communities, but, says Knapp, anyone with questions about the process can attend. Experts will answer commonly asked questions, and provide information and materials residents need to help sign up others in their communities. The first session is scheduled for this evening at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Center City. Workshops will follow in South Philadelphia, the near northeast, including Kensington, Fishtown and Northern Liberties, and the greater northeast.

Source: Christine Knapp, PennFuture; Colleen Meehan, Clean Water Action
Writer: Sue Spolan

Party people need party places and PhillySpaceFinder hits the spot. With 163 venues in its database, PhillySpaceFinder is a powerful, free, and flexible tool to help groups, meetings, weddings, and performance events locate the perfect room.

The service began as a paperback guide called The Space Directory back in the early 1990s, published by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. Bringing the listing online creates a searchable database. According to Karim Olaechea, Public Relations Manager for the Cultural Alliance, the quest for a venue starts by narrowing down by type and specific neighborhood or radius around a zip code. "There's a lot of really key information about each space, including dimensions, cost, capacity, and permitted uses. Once you find a place, you can see what activities are allowed, if there are restrictions, hours of operation and overall policies." Each listing provides direct contact information.

PhillySpaceFinder is a joint effort co-sponsored by GPCA, the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, Philadelphia Music Project and Dance USA Philadelphia. The effort grew out of NYC Performing Arts Spaces, a similar initiative pioneered by the nonprofit umbrella group FracturedAtlas, but the Philadelphia version adds venue photos, interactive maps, and the ability to mark favorites and save searches.

Olaechea adds that "it's also a great resource for the venues themselves, because they can use the directory to get real revenues." There is no charge to list a space on the directory.

Source: Karim Olaechea, GPCA

Writer: Sue Spolan

SEPTA has a cure for the bus stop blues. "We're very close to rolling out our full-scale program for real-time bus information," according to SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch. SEPTA's BusView will revolutionize rider experience, using GPS tracking and online maps to provide detailed data on the current whereabouts of street level public transit. The BusView beta version is now live, with just two routes, 33 and 109. The system recognizes the position of buses every three minutes, and then BusView refreshes location information. The full scale version is just weeks away from rollout. Busch says, "Getting this type of real-time online feature for buses is a big undertaking. We have approximately 120 bus routes and 15,000 bus stops throughout the system, so it's a lot of data to process and get organized into something that is both reliable and user-friendly." 

SEPTA already offers a Regional Rail tracking function called TrainView, but it's a basic list of trains and status, not the enhanced map BusView promises. There's a mobile version of TrainView -- no word at this time whether BusView will provide info on the go as well. The big difference between the two modes of transit, and the reason BusView offers such great value to riders, is traffic variability. Buses, unlike their rail-bound counterparts, are subject to countless delays due to congestion, construction and accidents.

To use the prototype version of BusView, a rider calls up the master map, selects the bus route from a pull down menu at the top of the page, and clicks on a bus icon to see the actual number of the bus en route, the direction the bus is traveling, and the time the bus reported being at a specific location. Busch says BusView aims to be "a comprehensive, regular resource for our riders covering all bus routes."

Source: Andrew Busch, SEPTA
Writer: Sue Spolan

When technology and art get it on, virtual sparks fly. Breadboard/EKG at the University City Science Center is calling for artists to participate in two public art projects that integrate mobile devices. The first, called DIS*LOCATIONS, "uses art to spiff up abandoned, vacated storefronts," says Dan Schimmel, Director of Breadboard. The second, Virtual Art @PIFA, is billed as "a series of site-specific virtual artworks throughout the city of Philadelphia," to be viewed via The Virtual Public Art Project's free Layar App for most iPhone and Android smart phone devices.

DIS*LOCATIONS is part of the City of Philadelphia's ReStore Corridors through Art program and is sponsored by The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University, in partnership with Breadboard and Drexel's Center for Mobilities Research. According to Schimmel, each DIS*LOCATIONS artist will be assigned an empty storefront, and will either create an installation inside the shop window or design a scrim to overlay the exterior surface of the building. Here's where technology comes into play: a QR code, which is a version of the bar code that smart phones can read, will accompany each artwork. Schimmel says passers by will use their phones to take a picture of the code and direct them to a website, as well as point to other projects in a walking path. DIS*LOCATIONS becomes a technology driven street art exhibit that's also a walking tour, meant to engage existing businesses and create new foot traffic.

Virtual Art @ PIFA is part of the upcoming citywide Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts which begins in April. Artists are asked to create virtual installations connected to real places in the city. "In Augmented Reality," says Schimmel, an artwork "could be floating over the South Street Bridge, or sitting in Rittenhouse Square." A smart phone running the Layar app recognizes GPS coordinates, and a 3D image appears on the screen. Schimmel has been deep into Augmented Reality, or AR, since Breadboard and the Virtual Public Art Project (VPAP) collaborated on a pilot project last November. "AR seems to be on the verge of changing our lives in terms of commercial and social activity." For example, says Schimmel, "If you go to a museum with a smart phone and view a mummy in a glass case, AR provides immersive enhancement to the exhibit. An animated mummy could walk out, and proceed to do things that would be customary for that time period." Or imagine walking into a shopping mall where you are identified as a potential customer. Retailers will send images and messages tailored to your profile and location.

Deadline for both applications is mid-February.

Source: Dan Schimmel, Breadboard

Writer: Sue Spolan

Job prospects for Philadelphia's professional temps are on the way up, suggesting that the larger employment market is gaining strength. The Q4 Yoh Index of Technology Wages was just released, and Joel Capperella, Yoh's Vice President of Client Solutions, is optimistic about the future of Delaware Valley wage earners. He reports that the Philadelphia market is on an even more positive upswing compared to the U.S. data; the number of jobs filled "ended up the year at 5 percent higher," and in technical professional wages, the December 2010 wage rate was five percent higher than in December of 2009. Capperella, who writes The Seamless Workforce blog for Yoh, the global Center City-based staffing firm, terms it a record year for temporary placements.

Having a temporary instead of full-time assignment can feel somewhat unstable, although Capperella asserts that the stigma is being lifted as job seekers find that short term assignments allow them to try out a job without the long term commitment.

"If you're a degreed professional, temporary employment gives you the flexibility to test the waters, gain new experience, and develop skills on the side." Yoh provides its temps with benefits and full time employee tax status, rather than the more common 1099 independent contractor status, thereby alleviating some of the stress of short term placement. Says Capperella: "In this region, you have to be the steward of your own opportunity."

The Q4 Yoh Index is a broad, nationwide assessment of employer demand for highly skilled workers. At the end of 2010, figures "turned positive after retreating for all three months in the third quarter, with hourly wages jumping 4.31 percent from November 2010 to December 2010."  Yoh has been tracking the wage movements of professional level temporary employees since 2001. Yoh, which is a Day and Zimmermann Company, places professionals in engineering, life sciences and technology jobs.

Financial services developer and Main Line resident Bipin Shah has big plans for the future of the industry. Shah is raising $72 million as outlined in a preliminary prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the very end of 2010. Shah's Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisitions Corporation (UBPS) of Radnor is now awaiting SEC response to the filing of a public offering of 12 million shares. The proposed blank check corporation has a stated mission, according to the prospectus, of "acquiring one or more 'platform' companies in the payment processing industry," although no specific company has been identified for takeover.

Shah, Chairman and CEO of UBPS, has been an innovator in the financial services sector. He spent his entire career in the financial transaction business. At CoreStates Financial Corporation in the 1980s, he was the architect of the Money Access Center (MAC) ATM system. Other technologies to his credit include PIN-protected point-of-sale technology, pay-at-the-pump for gas stations, and a surcharge-free ATM network.

Now, Shah and partner Peter Davidson have turned their industry experience to the acquisition and combination of three subdivisions of financial services companies: payroll processing; debit and credit card transaction processing; and prepaid plastic. According to the UBPS prospectus, while three major companies control 85 percent of the payroll market, the remainder is comprised of 1,800 small companies with an aggregate market capitalization in excess of $39 billion. Shah and Davidson "believe that these 1,800 smaller payroll companies are primed for consolidation." Next, Shah et al turn the high beam on the "approximately 1,000 different organizations that sell and service the credit and debit card needs" of merchants, of which "the smaller processors are primed for consolidation," as well. Finally, UBPS aims to capture some of the profit associated with a projected $200 billion in purchases by prepaid debit, gift, payroll and government benefit cards. Davidson, reached by phone, says, "We have quite a bit of interest from what we call the initial investors, but we cannot start to raise funds until the SEC approves UBPS." While Davidson agrees that UBPS is a speculative investment, he cites his 30 years and Shah's 40 years in the payment space.

Shah and Davidson met while both were at CoreStates; Davidson joined Shah at Genpass until its acquisition in 2005, and currently serves as Chief Financial Officer of Brooks FI Solutions, LLC, in addition to his post as Chief Administrative Officer for UPBS. EarlyBird Capital, Inc. is UBPS Acquisitions Corporation's underwriter, and is hoping to sell the anticipated 12 million share offering to raise first-stage money for this startup.

Source: Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisitions Corp. Prospectus
Writer: Sue Spolan

Drexel University's rollout of its next-generation mobile portal, DrexelOne Mobile, which provides secure access to time-sensitive information for students, faculty, and staff, encompasses six native apps available in all of the major app stores; a richer GPS-enabled native mobile application is due in the spring.

DrexelOne Mobile leads the higher education smartphone app world on several fronts. It's the only university portal that works on all current smartphone platforms, including iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm webOS, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7. Dr. John Bielec, Vice President and CIO at Drexel University says that "in today's fast-changing mobile technology landscape, students demand choice and flexibility in platform, vendor, and carrier selection. Mobile technology is consumer driven and no longer able to be dictated by an institution or a single vendor." Even more compelling than the multi-platform approach are DrexelOne Mobile's personalized capabilities, which will only get richer with the launch of the next version. The end user now has access to an incredibly detailed view of campus life, from real time updates on grades, to the next arriving shuttle bus. Drexel students can check course schedules, assignments and due dates, current DragonCard balances, and Dining Center menu. All have access to critical university alerts, a campus directory and map, athletic scores, school news, and the popular Candid Campus photo project.

Kenneth S. Blackney, Associate Vice President of Core Technology Infrastructure at Drexel University, explains that DrexelOne goes beyond what's currently out there for higher education, since typical mobile offerings target just one or two mobile platforms and provide a fixed set of campus facts geared toward the general public rather than individualized feeds to each account holder. Blackney also provided a sneak peak at the impressive, graphically rich version of DrexelOne Mobile to be launched in spring 2011, which includes upgrades for faculty like picture enhanced class lists and a clicker to allow real time classroom interaction between teachers and students; access to employee leave balances,and interview schedules for student co-op jobs.

Source: John Bielec, Ken Blackney, Drexel University
Writer: Sue Spolan