Inventing the Future : Innovation + Job News

In a city like Philadelphia, where the startup and technology industries have become so well-established that we now have a boulevard known as NERD Street, there might not seem to be anything unusual about the announcement of yet another hackathon.    
 
But thanks to a partnership between Hackfit, a Boston company that arranges events where entrepreneurs create health and fitness technologies, and Spartan, organizers of extreme obstacle races across the country, a decidedly unusual hackathon will kick off inside Citizens Bank Park on September 19.   
 
Only 60 total spots are available for the event. Teams of developers and designers will be tasked with pitching fitness industry-relevant business ideas, prototyping them, and then demonstrating the results of 24 nonstop hours of work on the idea. (Sign up here.)
 
RFID timing sensors, Sony Smartbands and other wearable technology devices will be made available to hackers, says Hackfit founder Justin Mendelson, who adds that most former participants have focused on building mobile applications.
 
"A few of [the teams] focus on hardware-oriented devices, like wearable trackers," says Mendelson. And during past events, "Other teams have even focused on timing technology, which is very important to the [obstacle race] experience."
 
Philly is one of four locations where Spartan Hackathons are happening this summer. Some of the winning teams will be flown to Spartan headquarters in Boston, where they'll have an opportunity to pitch their business ideas to company executives, perhaps earning a partnership or investment capital.
 
Here in Philly, however, even team members who don't succeed at building the quantified self movement's next big app will still have a chance to celebrate: After the Reebok Spartan Race Stadium Sprint wraps up on Saturday, hackers will be allowed to run the obstacle course at their own pace.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Justin Mendelson, Hackfit 
 

In 2009, when Jeanne Mell took a position with the University City Science Center, a colleague and friend -- Victoria Burkhart of The Burkhart Group -- gave her a powerful piece of professional advice: "If you're going to be [working] in Philly, you have to join [the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs]."
 
Today, Mell serves as the Fellows Committee Chair for the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE), a nearly 20-year-old organization "dedicated to fostering high-growth businesses founded or led by women," according to its mission statement. It's the largest group of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic.
 
Along with a schedule of educational and networking events, AWE also runs the annual Building Bridges Fellowship Program. Each year, up to four female early-stage entrepreneurs are selected to participate. The fellowship includes extensive one-on-one business coaching and professional mentoring from an AWE mentor-liaison, who helps to integrate the fellow into the larger AWE community.
 
Nominations are now open for the 2015 Building Bridges program, which will kick off this November.   
 
"What we're really looking for is a fellow who is committed to her business -- that's No. 1," says Mell. "We want somebody who will participate in the coaching sessions, and take full advantage of the fellows program. And it's not right for everybody."

The current fellowship class of 2014 features three women who not only operate three very different companies, but are also at very different stages of their careers and lives.

Still, "it's really interesting to see that these women share a lot of the same challenges and experiences, regardless of what sector they're in," she muses. "And I think that's really the value of the AWE Fellows Program: being able to help these women entrepreneurs on that level."
 
To access nomination materials, click here.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jeanne Mell, AWE Fellows Committee
 

As Drexel research director and assistant professor Neville Vakharia points out, university-level faculty members always have their own research agendas, regardless of their fields of study. But in 2013, three faculty from Drexel's Westphal College of Media Arts & Design -- Vakharia included -- discovered a subject they could all agree on, and one they felt warranted immediate attention.
 
That was the arts-and-culture ecosystem of Mantua, Powelton Village and West Powelton -- three neighborhoods adjacent to the Drexel campus. Vakharia and his colleagues were intrigued by the reality that while their neighbor communities are home to large concentrations of artists, they've somehow failed to transform culturally.
 
In an effort to discover what might be holding back the growth of cultural opportunities in Mantua and Powelton, Drexel dispatched a nine-member research team to conduct six months of community focus groups, interviews with neighbors on the street, and brainstorming sessions with various arts-based organizations and cultural stakeholders in the area.  
 
The group has since compiled its findings into a 12-page public report, "A Fragile Ecosystem," which can be accessed here (PDF). And while much of the report explores the breadth of cultural opportunities that already exist in the neighborhoods, it also offers possible solutions that might better tie the local arts community together.
 
In late August, "A Fragile Ecosystem" was distributed throughout West Philadelphia, where it's now in the hands of many of the area's artists, arts organizations, and cultural and civic groups.
 
"There are a lot of strong [arts] players in the neighborhood," explains Vakharia. "What we're hoping is that this report will allow them to understand what the needs are when it comes to arts and culture, and to [help them] move forward on developing some solutions that can benefit the community."    
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Neville Vakharia, Drexel University

In a neighborhood as historic as Philadelphia's Germantown, the Germantown United CDC (GUCDC) is an anomaly: The organization isn't yet three years old.
 
When it formed in late 2011, the community was still reeling from allegations of severe mismanagement on the part of Germantown Settlement, a social services agency. During its formative months, Germantown United's main goal involved becoming known as a trusted and transparent community partner.
 
To a large degree, that goal has been accomplished. GUCDC regularly hosts well-attended events and forums, and recently undertook a business district tree-planting campaign.
 
Now, according to Executive Director Andrew Trackman, the organization is hiring its first commercial corridor manager. The position's first-year salary will be covered as part of a reimbursable $75,000 grant from the Commerce Department.
 
The corridor manager's responsibilities will mainly involve working as a liaison to the business and property owners of the Germantown and Chelten Avenue business districts. They might listen to retailers' complaints, for instance, or help them apply for development grants such as the Commerce Department's Storefront Improvement Program (SIP).    
 
"We're looking for this corridor manager to be kind of a defacto business association head," explains Trackman. The new employee will also be heavily involved in business corridor cleanup efforts in coordination with the Germantown Special Services District.
 
"[Local businesses] need help with capacity and technical assistance," he adds. "We're just trying to improve the overall business climate of the district."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Andrew Trackman, Germantown United CDC
 

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
 

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

For the second time in two years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been honored with a Silver Shovel Award from Area Development magazine, a site selection trade publication that annually recognizes the most economically significantly industrial development projects in the nation.
 
Two of the 10 Pennsylvania-based projects recognized this year are located in the state's southeastern corner.
 
Included in the magazine's 2014 list was the upcoming expansion of Urban Outfitters' corporate headquarters in South Philadelphia's Navy Yard and the direct-to-consumer fulfillment center the company is developing in the Lancaster County town of Gap.
 
Along with the 2,500 jobs those two projects will create -- 2,000 of them in Philadelphia -- the capital investment outlay from Urban Outfitters is expected to exceed $200,000,000.     
 
Also recognized were two new development projects from Axalta, a liquid and powder coatings enterprise. The company broke ground on a new manufacturing facility in Glen Mills and recently moved into a new global headquarters building in Center City. An investment of approximately $11,000,000 and 332 new jobs are the expected results of those projects.
  
According to Steven Kratz of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Governor Corbett's office is especially pleased that a total of 11 different counties are represented in the 10 industrial and commercial development projects that led to the state's Silver Shovel Award.

"That shows that it's not just one area of Pennsylvania that's seeing growth," he says. "But really, at the end of the day, this means our economy is growing and it means new jobs are being created. And that's more significant than any award."
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Steven Kratz, Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development
 

ArtWell, a relatively unknown but extremely high-impact arts education organization, has been awarded a $100,000 grant to expand its Art of Growing Leaders curriculum, which will be offered in dozens of Philadelphia-area public schools. The grant came from Impact100, a charitable group that funds programs reaching underserved populations.    
 
Founded in 2001 by executive director and ordained minister Susan Teegen-Case, ArtWell was launched in an effort to battle chronic community violence in the city through arts-oriented educational programs. The organization’s highly-regarded Art of Growing Up curriculum was created eight years ago by program director Julia Terry, who had studied rites of passage traditions in Ghana when she was a study-abroad student.   
 
During her research, Terry became intrigued by the fact that so many of the world’s cultures have traditions meant to guide young people through the transition from childhood to young adulthood. After joining Artwell, she created The Art of Growing Up as a means to expose Philadelphia’s students to the lessons a rite of passage tradition teaches. The semester-long program includes anti-violence curriculum, poetry and drama workshops, and visual arts classes.  
 
"We've had the experience of schools wanting us to stay longer, and students wanting to do [the program] again," explains Terry. "But we've never had the funding to extend our relationships and deepen our impact."
 
Thanks to the Impact100 grant, the program will evolve into a year-long experience known as the Art of Growing Leaders. The expanded curriculum will give students an expansive definition of what it means to be a leader, "so that kids can identify all the possibilities for themselves to be leaders," says Terry.
 
According to Teegen-Case, community leaders in Chester and in Camden, N.J., have also expressed interest in bringing the program to schools in their areas.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Susan Teegen-Case and Julia Terry, ArtWell

When Conshohocken entrepreneur and former IT consultant Shiva Srinivasan founded the mobile-based technology company Zuppler back in 2009, the practice of ordering food from restaurants online was still in its infancy.
 
Nevertheless, Zuppler's service, which allows restaurants to customize their online ordering menus, was a fast success. It wasn't long, in fact, before the company was servicing some 4,500 restaurants worldwide, and thousands of hotels in the United States began using the Zuppler platform to expedite room service ordering.
 
But in the all-mobile, all-the-time retail environment of 2014, tech-savvy restaurateurs want something more than just a customizable and fully-integrated online ordering solution. They also want a way for their customers to pay online, preferably through a mobile interface.
 
So Zuppler recently joined forces with LevelUp, a Boston-based tech firm. The self-described "largest mobile payment network in the nation" offers extensively trackable marketing campaigns along with its payment-processing system.
 
Now restaurants using the Zuppler interface can access extensive customer reporting analytics, "so it's a way for them to take control of their online business, and to take advantage of it," explains Srinivasan.
 
Zuppler's analytics interface even provides users with a heat map showing exactly where its customer base is grouped. And along with 24-7 customer service and support, Zuppler's beefed-up system can offer coupons and loyalty rewards, which customers can redeem while paying for food on a restaurant's website, all of which are mobile responsive.
 
Together, Zuppler and LevelUp now service "more than 18,000 restaurants and over 2 million customers combined," according to a release.
 
"But the most important fact," says Srinivasan, "is that for restaurants that use our service, they own their customers."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Shiva Srinivasan, Zuppler 

Here's a little-known fact about Philadelphia's history as an urban innovator: The Percent for Art program, in which developers building on municipally-acquired land are required to spend at least 1 percent of their construction costs on public art, was pioneered by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority back in 1959.
 
In the years since, nearly every major U.S. city has adopted a similar policy.    
 
Philly has become home to roughly 400 public art projects since the program's inception, and one more -- the six-month residency of a Dutch artist duo known as PolakVanBekkum -- is currently underway.

Thanks to the construction of two new University City Science Center structures and a $168,000 grant, PolakVanBekkum will be working throughout the summer and into the fall to create an audio-enhanced Google Earth documentary and an interactive online map, both of which will attempt to explore the spatial and sensory experience of traveling through the city.
 
The project, which may also have a physical component, will be built with data collected from volunteers outfitted with GPS transponders and digital audio devices. Those volunteers -- who are currently being identified by the artists -- will wander for weeks in the urban environment, their every movement and sound simultaneously geo-located in space.

Come November, when the final interactive and online results are unveiled, the artists hope to share an entirely new story -- a mix of anthropology, place-making and technology -- about the various ways in which Philadelphians interact with their surroundings.
 
"I think the artists laid out a very good plan for what they want to do," says David Clayton of the Science Center's STEAM Initiative, which is spearheading the residency. "And we want to have them use the project as a process to engage communities. We liked that this type of thing has never really been done before."
 
To stay up-to-date on the project's evolution, visit 250miles.net.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: David Clayton, University City Science Center

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 
 

If you're a regular subway commuter, you've probably spotted one of the poster-sized Comcast advertisements touting Internet Essentials, the company's heavily discounted broadband Internet service for low-income Philadelphians.
 
From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 26, as part of Comcast's 13th annual day of employee community service, the multimedia juggernaut will attempt to take its broadband-for-all philosophy one step further by hosting an entirely free computer education event, the Digital Resources Fair, in a temporary pop-up location at 3846 Lancaster Avenue in West Philly's Mantua neighborhood. 
 
According to Bob Smith, Comcast's VP of Community Investment, the company has been hosting digital literacy classes for low-income locals throughout the city for years now. The upcoming Digital Resource Fair is an opportunity for Comcast, along with volunteers from the People's Emergency Center (PEC), which is co-hosting the event, to bundle together a series of basic computer and Internet education workshops with one-on-one assistance from specially-trained volunteers.  
 
"The backbone of the day," explains Smith, will involve a number of "short, very easy to succeed at workshops" on topics that include search engines and email, and finding and applying for jobs online. Attendees will also learn where low-cost computers are available for purchase, and how to access free and low-cost Internet service throughout the city.  
 
Smith points out that the Digital Resources Fair is a no-strings-attached event. No appointments are required and participants need not be Comcast customers.

"Relevancy has been a big barrier to Internet connections for a lot of low-income families," he says. "What we're trying to do is help people understand that there's something in it for them when they sign up for the Internet."  
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Bob Smith, Comcast; Tan Vu, People's Emergency Center

The independent workforce in Philadelphia certainly isn't hurting for shared workspaces. In fact, during the TEDxPhiladelphia conference in late-March, a speaker shared a PowerPoint slide featuring the logos of roughly a dozen local co-working spots, a number of which have opened over the last two years.
 
Now the University City Science Center and Drexel University have announced the launch of the city's latest flexible workspace, known as the Innovation Center @3401. In order to differentiate themselves, they've crafted a specific mission.

"We don't think of the Innovation Center strictly as a co-working space," explains the Science Center's Christopher Liang. "It was designed very purposely to house a mix of residents."
 
The Center was also designed to fill a gap in the University City incubation and startup spectrum. The Science Center's Quorum, for instance, is a social gathering place for local entrepreneurs, while its Port incubator is home to offices and labs.
 
"We've been talking for some time about how we can broaden our offerings to include companies that maybe don't need wet labs," says Liang. "So, the Innovation Center is related to a desire to be more inclusive of the entrepreneurial community -- particularly the tech companies that are starting to become so important to the city."
 
The Center is currently accepting applications from potential residents, which will include a mix of investors, entrepreneurs, startups and stand-alone professionals.

"We're less concerned about the structural format of the residents," adds Liang. "[We're] more concerned with their ability to fit within the general theme of [being] tech and digital creatives."
 
The Innovation Center @3401 plans to open its doors in early June.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Christopher Liang, University City Science Center

The local entrepreneurial initiative known as Startup PHL has announced the 2014 winners of its second Call for Ideas grant round. This particular round focused specifically on the matter of student engagement with Philadelphia’s tech community.
 
Five micro-grants have been awarded to local internship programs, business incubators and boot camps that plan to hold seminars, workshops and various other programs aimed at area students.
 
Here is a complete list of the winners and their ideas:
 
PennApps Fellows Internship Program received up to $25,000 to fund 10 internships. The program will connect student interns from across the nation to Philadelphia-based companies for a 10-week internship during summer 2014.

Philadelphia Fashion Incubator received $25,000 to create a series of monthly seminars, panels and interactive workshops focused on the business of fashion.

Zivtech Developer Boot Camp was awarded $24,000 to support a six-week developer bootcamp for a class of 30 participants.

NextFab Fellows Co-op Program received $25,000 to support four co-op fellowships. Students will receive training and materials while gaining experience working with NextFab companies in need of talent.

Technical.ly and Philly Startup Leaders were awarded $25,000 to create and execute a series of eight workshops to better connect the PHL tech community to students and universities.

The $500,000 Call for Ideas grant program -- one of two initial measures supported by Startup PHL -- was specifically designed to fund innovative projects that support Philadelphia entrepreneurs and startups, regardless of which industries they work in.
 
According to Rebecca Lopez Kriss, a Department of Commerce entrepreneurial investment manager, Startup PHL has plans to announce two more rounds of Call for Ideas. One of those will likely happen later this year.
 
If you or your organization is hoping to claim one of the micro-grants, take heed: "Essentially, we're looking for ideas that will improve the startup community in either growing companies or improving talent," says Lopez Kriss. "Or maybe create some sort of network that helps people work better together."
 
For more information about the specific ideas Startup PHL is hoping to fund in the future and the collaboration they hope to encourage between entrepreneurs, mentors and investors, visit their FAQ page.   

Source: Rebecca Lopez Kriss, Philadelphia Department of Commerce
Writer: Dan Eldridge

Three craft-beer enthusiasts who work for Bresslergroup, a local product design consultancy, have developed a consumer home-brewing appliance that may one day turn the growing home-brewing industry on its head. The Bresslergroup Brewery, as the team calls its new venture, has created an Arduino-powered automated system that brews computer-assisted beer.

The idea for the appliance was the result of an informal conversation between a small group of employees, all of them home-brewing hobbyists. "One of our partners thought, 'Hey, it'd be pretty cool if we could do this here,'" recalls Todd Sack, a Bresslergroup product design engineer. "Sort of leverage the expertise and talent we have at Bresslergroup to take [home brewing] to the next level.'"
 
And that is exactly what they did.
 
The team's "yearlong quest to innovate … and automate the typical home brew process" -- as it's explained in a company blog post -- has resulted in a setup that still requires a decent level of computer literacy to operate. Should the kit ever make its way to market, however, it would likely include a kettle, a heating element and a thermocouple, as well as an Arduino-operated control box with a user-friendly interface, and an app that could be controlled from a laptop or mobile device. The product would probably come with a retail price-point in the $500 to $600 range. (Similar commercially available units capable of brewing beer are generally priced in the $1,200 to $2,000 range.)
  
As part of this year's upcoming Philly Tech Week, a presentation of the automated system, complete with a beer tasting, will take place at the Bresslergroup offices (6 - 8 p.m. April 9). Reserve your seat here.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Todd Sack, Bresslergroup