Innovation + Job News

With unemployment hovering at 9 percent nationally, there have been hundreds of theories posited for how we have created the first "jobless recovery" in our history. Have you ever thought maybe people just aren't good at job hunting? A group of Chester County development professionals have. They launched HireOneCC.com, an online community where employers can pledge to hire at least one local worker in the next year and employers can find the companies who are hiring.

"There are 18,000 people currently unemployed in Chester County and a lot of them have advanced degrees and are really struggling trying to find new jobs," says project director Stan Schuck. "Our hope is that we can put the right resources together to get them the right set of skills or put them in touch with someone who is indeed hiring. I think traditional ways of getting jobs--blindly sending resumes out--just aren't working today."

Hire One was founded as an employment task force last July after Joseph's People president Cheryl Spaulding, who heads the faith-based social organization, contacted local development officials from the Chester County Economic Development Council about getting business involved in hiring. Since launching the site a week ago, eight businesses have already listed multiple available positions and pledged to not only hire one local employee but reduce worker reduction plans by 2.5 percent.

"In order to do this right, we had to be a resource for both job seekers and employers," says Schuck. "There are companies that don't have the financing they need or can't find people with the right skill sets. We want to make sure we link them up with the right resources."

Source: Stan Schuck, HireOne
Writer: John Steele

When CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp created the open source website management software in 2004, Wordpress didn't exist and blogging was not yet a way of life. He needed a simpler way of inputting content to websites, so he created one. With designers for the Shops at Liberty Place, the Philadelphia Sun and the African American Chamber of Commerce using the platform, Kulp has spread the simple around, and has been rewarded with users in 219 countries. This month, CMS Made Simple hit its biggest milestone yet, reaching one million downloads.

"After I made it, I just put the code out there to see if other people were interested and it and it has grown so large, and there are so many people who have worked on it, there is no way we could close it now, it's out there for the world to use," says Kulp. "I do things like support and custom development around it so there are a lot of different avenues for everything except the software itself. And it's worked fairly well for me."

As a partner with interactive ad agency Defined Clarity, Kulp has been building websites for years. Today, CMS Made Simple's forum message board allows customers direct access to this CMS and the professional designers who created it, allowing for a fully functional customer experience that Kulp and Defined Clarity partner Bruce Marable hope will continue to grow.

"It's time for all the people who are not using it to know about it," says Marable. "It has been growing organically for the last five or six years. We want to make the project grow and to position it as the number one content management system out there."

Source: Ted Kulp, CMS Made Simple
Writer: John Steele

At construction co-working space NextFab Studio, artists, hobbyists and inventors can work on anything they please, from building a home shelving unit to inventing a toy robot. The only thing they don't want to see is people standing around. So when the studio electronics lab got more spectators than workers, NextFab created a new addition to its class rotation. Enlisting the services of Drexel University co-op student Ryan Barnes as technical supervisor, NextFab's electrical course teaches the science behind electricity and rudimentary skills for building an LED circuit. The second level course teaches soldering and other early projects to turn the watchers into doers.

"From the get-go, NextFab has had an electronics lab and people would always walk by who knew next to nothing about electronics but you could just see them thinking "what could I do in here?" says Barnes.

Opened in January as an extension of the University City Science Center, NextFab offers Philadelphia's innovators, craftsmen and entrepreneurs a workshop complete with hand tools, 3D printers, computer controlled machine tools, software, and electronics workbenches all in a 3,600-sq-ft studio. Since its inception, it has become a popular spot for artists and craftsmen to create profitable home businesses. The classes are geared both towards practical skills and functional assistance, tailoring instruction to each worker's projects.

"Electronics is such a huge field that it is tough to teach everything that we need to know so the way this class is taught is definitely on a craft level," says Barnes. "We have a lot of artists that work here and this is a way to explain electronics and show how they can be used on different projects."

Source: Ryan Barnes, NextFab Studio
Writer: John Steele

From a few tomato plants in a rooftop garden to acre-sized community farms, profitable plants are sprouting up all over Philadelphia. With the end of the harvest season upon us, Penn State University comes to the Enterprise Center in West Philly this week, pulling farmers out of the fields and into the classroom in the name of good agribusiness.

With open-enrollment extension course "Income Opportunities in Agriculture," students will learn successful business practices for urban farmers interested in taking their crops to market. How do you set prices? How do you market yourself? Who can you partner with to become more profitable? Enlisting professors from PSU's College of Agriculture, many with corporate farming backgrounds, this course will make sure you always have a plentiful harvest. 

"The people we are attracting are people following their passions and hopefully building it into something bigger," says Penn State extension director John Byrnes. "Philadelphia has some larger urban ag institutions--Greensgrow and the Weavers Way farm. These are places where people can hold down jobs and make a living. This is giving people the opportunity to learn about business and give them a shot at augmenting their income."

The course is part of a series of Penn State urban agriculture offerings delivered annually around the end of the market season. Penn State's agricultural extension program partners with local learning professionals to bring course offerings to people off campus as well. The College of Agriculture first presented "Exploring Your Small Farm Dream" for beginning farmers looking for an idea. "Income Opportunities in Agriculture" starts Tuesday, Nov. 9 from 6-8 pm at the Enterprise Center. Registration is $20 and can be taken care of here.

Source: John Byrnes, Penn State University
Writer: John Steele

University of Pennsylvania's educational and research internet 2 network MAGPI wants to take Philly's teachers on a trip around the world. From Mexican dance teams to Canadian biology experts to shark researchers in Florida, its hard to believe all these educational programs will fit under one tent. Luckily for attendees of MAGPI's first Content Provider Carnival on Wednesday, these exhibits are all online, streaming and coming live to teachers, students and researchers looking to bring long-distance learning to Philadelphia's classrooms.

"This carnival comes at a unique junction where school budgets are constrained and a lot of the things that are being cut for students are those extracurricular activities or those field trip opportunities and a virtual field trip is a cost-effective way of providing those experiences to students," says MAGPI Manager of Educational Services Heather Weisse Walsh. "Now I am by no means suggesting that it takes the place of a student actually visiting a museum but if that is not a possibility, especially if you have a rural school district that can't get to a metropolitan area very quickly, it's a wonderful alternative."

By bringing 22 webstreams online at the same time, the Content Provider Carnival allows virtual field trip organizers the chance to present to teachers who may not otherwise have time to seek out these educational portals. Besides showcasing unique experiences like swimming with sharks or working as a lumberjack, students will be able to ask questions to presenters and engage with these experiences in real time, bringing them a worldly perspective to students no matter where they live.

"We are going to actually simulcast not just the field trip but a class engaging with it," says Weisse Walsh. "That is so important because teachers have so many different competing priorities right now that doing something new can be scary. This is a way for them to see it in action."

Source: Heather Weisse Walsh, MAGPI
Writer: John Steele

Being at an awards dinner with cable giants like Showtime and Starz was a thrill for the self-professed TV junkies at Cherry Hill's t-commerce solution company icueTV. But standing next to them on the podium as finalists for the same award took this gratification to a new level.

At the New Orleans, LA banquet this week, icueTV was announced as a finalist for Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM)'s "Get Interactive" Awards. icueTV creates a sales portal for advertisers to connect directly with TV viewers as they watch. Watching Shark Week on Discovery? You can buy the DVDs right from your remote. icueTV has been steadily expanding, now represented within the six largest cable providers in the nation. But even with great traction, this is still a new technology and icue hopes this award signals recognition from the cable television industry that it's time to make a move.

"For years, people have thought about using the TV remote to buy products," says icueTV VP of Business Development Ralph Nieves. "We feel that this award signals that t-commerce is an idea who's time has come."

Starting out in political polling and other on-screen data tracking applications, icueTV developed a platform that expedites the purchase process, integrating a PayPal account, e-mail connectivity and one-touch purchasing. And while this is still an emerging technology, no one told icueTV. They have already begun hiring engineers tasked with finding new applications and clients as if this platform was old news. The company hopes this award will cement them as an industry leader as its technology becomes standard in digital sales and marketing.

"Our customers know who we are but to become certified and vetted took us four years," says Nieves. "We are not arrogant enough to think competition doesn't exist already but we are confident that no cable labs are examining commerce applications in the way we are."

Source: Ralph Nieves, icueTV
Writer: John Steele

When geek-themed slideshow franchise Ignite came to Philly in 2008, the event could have taken many forms. As only the second city to host an Ignite event, founder Geoff DiMasi (of P'unk Avenue fame) was unsure how to play it at first. So he went to the originators for guidance. Started in Seattle by O'Reilly Media Technology Evangelist Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis of Makerbot.com, Ignite was designed to introduce Seattle to its own tech and entrepreneurial scene, allowing presenters five minutes to talk about, well, pretty much anything.

After meeting Ignite's inner circle at South By Southwest, DiMasi decided he wanted to start Ignite in his hometown and decided that a traditional conference vibe was so not Philly. So he brought it to Fishtown rock club Johnny Brendas, charged five bucks and set the speakers loose. Five sold out events later, Ignite is going strong and No. 6 is set to be the largest event yet.

"Some people run it like a business and have it in an auditorium and people sit very demurely and listen very carefully to everything," says DiMasi. "We have taken the punk rock approach where you pay your five bucks, it's at Johnny Brendas, it's meant to be really fun and spirited so that the speakers feel like rock stars."

The event used to be free but as attendance increased, DiMasi began charging to donate the profits to worthy causes. Philadelphia Food Trust received money as well as all-girl rock summer camp Girls Rock Philly. With the $1,250 they received, Girls Rock Philly was able to offer scholarships to girls who couldn't afford the camp.

"That culture of giving back to the scene in Philadelphia is what inspires me," says DiMasi. "Someone came up, they shared their idea, and we try to find something that will have a real impact on the city. Coming up with that mechanism is something we are really proud of."

Source: Geoff DiMasi, P'unk Avenue
Writer: John Steele

Everyone is familiar with Black Friday. The frenzied dash of hungry holiday consumers to price-slashed stores the day after Thanksgiving has become an American tradition as timeless as the Christmas tree. But have you heard of Cyber Monday? Between 2008 and 2009, website retailers showed a 43 percent traffic increase on the Monday following Black Friday where online retailers begin their holiday sales.

This year, Conshohocken website optimization firm Monetate.com broke some records of its own, doubling in size over the last six months. From Dicks Sporting Goods to Urban Outfitters, Monetate offers a revolving door of keywords targeting the changing tastes of consumers without calling the IT department. As the holiday season gets underway, the quick turnaround of this solution has new clients joining up.

"If it's raining outside, the store owner pushes the umbrellas up front and adds 30 percent to the price and makes a lot of money that day," says Monetate VP of Marketing Blair Lyon. "Large retail sites have a hard time doing that because of all this overlapping technology that is in place, requiring the IT departments to get involved, preventing retailers from trying things."

With a year of record growth under its belt, Monetate isn't waiting for the holidays to make some purchases. With five open positions listed on its website, Monetate looks to hire 10 new employees in the next six months to handle the demands of an ever-expanding client list. With a veritable whos-who of Philadelphia retailers, Monetate looks to expand its footprint and hopes Cyber Monday can be its coming out party.

"We can have this implemented in minutes, giving it about two weeks to be effective," says Lyon. "That's why we are excited about attacking Cyber Monday. A lot of customers don't think there is enough time before the holidays. We can have them up and running for the holiday season right now."

Source: Blair Lyon, Monetate
Writer: John Steele

As document sharing has transitioned from walking a manila envelope down the hall to e-mailing a digital image, document viewing has become a complicated task. With hundreds of file types and varying security measures, it's hard to be sure your document will get where it's going and will be read when it gets there. Manayunk software firm Vuzit designed the DocuPub platform to simplify the process, allowing companies to view documents of all file types safely and securely, over a cloud-based server system that can even be read on mobile devices.

Founded by former Traffic.com employees Chris Cera and Brent Matzelle, Vuzit has drawn recent investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Robin Hood Ventures, allowing Vuzit to make some upgrades. This month, the company announced it will be using the investment to add advanced search capabilities over the whole cloud or within document files. The company also plans to add search engine optimization.

"Chris and Brent saw that, as people wanted to send more and more files over the internet, they were going to want to do more than just send PDF files around, without having any idea what people were doing with the files," says Board Advisor Coley Brown.

With investment in place, Vuzit hopes not only to upgrade its software but its staff as well, looking to hire three to five new engineers and development professionals over the next sixty days. With these investments, Vuzit hopes to expand DocuPub's versatility, adding more file types (it allows 40 already) and allowing an ease of use not yet available.

"Most people turn everything into PDFs but in many cases, it's a pain or there are conversion problems," says Brown. "What most people would rather do is say 'here is my Visio file and even though you never paid for Visio, don't have a license for it, you can see it as if you did."

Source: Coley Brown, Vuzit
Writer: John Steele

Less than two months since $122 million was announced to create an Energy Innovation Hub at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the project is already taking shape. United Kingdom-based Mark Group, a European home energy efficiency leader, was welcomed on Friday by Gov. Ed Rendell to its new home at the Navy Yard, where it will hire up to 320 workers over the next three years.

Mark Group was founded in 1974 and boasts of improving the energy efficiency of more than 2 million homes, installing more than 6,000 measures every week that help consumers save. The company is in growth mode, having recently established an Australian base of operations.

Led by a Penn State University-headed team, the Clean Energy campus at the Navy Yard is one of three regional clusters nationally that are designed to bring together leading researchers and the private sector to develop energy efficient building designs. Buildings accounty for nearly 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption.

"The creation of alternative energy sources is key to America's economic future," says Mark Group CEO Jeff Bartos. "We are excited to launch our business from Philadelphia and to deliver energy efficiency upgrades to homes throughout the nation."

As part of the move, Mark Group received a $3.28 million financing package from the Governor's Action Team. Bringing the company across the pond was truly a collaborative effort: The state Department of Community and Economic Development's international trade off, the City of Philadelphia, Select Greater Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. and the TeamPA Foundation were all credited.

Source: Jeff Bartos, Mark Group
Writer: Joe Petrucci

Philly Startup Leaders' lecture series Entrepreneurs Unplugged can always be counted on for a great bootstraping, one-man-against-the-world story. But for Mike Rappaport, founder of tech consulting firm Chariot Solutions, going it alone was not an option. Founded in 2002, Chariot has become a million-dollar application consultant company with over 50 employees and has been voted the best place to work amongst small businesses in Philadelphia. So what advice will he have for the struggling entrepreneur when he hits the EU stage on October 20th? There's no I in TEAM.

"The title [of the lecture] is 'Philosophy-Driven Business Growth,' but if I had it to do over again, the title might be better as something like 'The Power of True Team Management,' says Rappaport. "This is not the story of an entrepreneur or a CEO that led his company to greatness, its about a team. Its about how I relied on so many people and really spent my time picking the right people."

Not only is Rappaport a firm believer in a team environment in the workplace, he credits his very existence to delegating, finding quality partners and getting the most out of your business relationships. Once the funding was in place, he chose a team, created a philosophy and was careful to pick people who could share his philosophy. But it all started with those first relationships to get the business off the ground.

"We started with a small level of funding and we go to a point about six months in where we thought we might run out of money," says Rappaport. "Even though the business was going according to plan, we were undercapatolized. One of my mentors really helped us and let us in on other ways to raise money that I was completely unaware of. It was so helpful to know all the resources that were out there."

Source: Mike Rappaport, Chariot Solutions
Writer: John Steele

When software developer Andrew Kortina was living in New York, friend and former University of Pennsylvania roommate Iqram Magdon-Ismail often visited him. But when Magdon-Ismail forgot his wallet one weekend, he borrowed a few bucks from Kortina. Magdon-Ismail promptly repaid using a check but with normal banking delays, it took Kortina a week to get his money back. That's when the pair decided there had to be a better way.

They created Venmo, a bill-pay service where users can link a credit card or bank account to make instant payments to friends from the comfort of their mobile device. The service is free and, Kortina says, it will remain free. The company will charge merchants--like several coffee shops in Philadelphia and restaurants in New York--to accept the service. Founded in 2009, Venmo has already put its founders in Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30. But its creators admit it's still a work in progress, adding features and refining the platform for iPhone and Android markets. The company looks to add three new positions in the next six months to help make Venmo a household name.

"We are always looking to make the site work better," says Kortina. "Any time we meet someone who is really smart and excited about Venmo, we want to hire them."

More than just a bill-pay service, Kortina and Magdon-Ismail see Venmo as a social network; a way to show friends where you have been and what you've been up to. By targeting merchants instead of consumers, Venmo hopes to increase publicity both for their service and for the merchants who use it through Facebook and Twitter connectivity. Forgetting your wallet has never been so much fun.

"We encourage users to make their payments public," says Kortina. "Most of the time, when you are exchanging money with a friend, you are doing something fun like going to a bar or restaurant, going on a ski trip, going to a baseball game, usually something your friends might want to know about."

Source: Andrew Kortina, Venmo
Writer: John Steele

Susan Ng and her team at Villanova's Real Time Tomography have made a living at perfecting the science of mammogram imaging. Their software products have made traditional film-screen images obsolete, allowing faster mammogram results and more accurate imaging. With a new $275,000 match grant from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, RTT begins the commercialization process this month, bringing their software to the giants at Seimens and GE and, hopefully, saving lives.

"With digital imaging, the image that is produced is not what the radiologist sees, it is processed and enhanced so that lesions are more visible," says Ng. "As the industry moves from film screen to digital, we can process images six times faster, reducing patient wait-time and making images clearer for doctors."

After introducing their 2-D imaging software, Adara, in 2009, Ng and her team have created a 3-D platform to give radiologists an even better view of critically affected breasts. Ng hopes commercialization goes smoothly as RTT has gone to great lengths making compatible software, not just for large companies but for small and mid-sized manufacturers as well. Because everyone deserves a great picture.

"There are a lot of mid-sized companies in Europe and a very big market opening up in Asia," says Ng. "These mid-sized companies have smaller R&D groups and often purchase their software from third parties like us."

Source: Susan Ng, Real Time Tomography
Writer: John Steele  

It's a CEO's worst nightmare: your company's most valuable data suddenly disappears. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft sounded the alarm in 2004, when he estimated that intellectual property theft accounted for losses of $250 billion a year. Numerous case studies from Coca-Cola and Forbes have shown the effects as well. From trade secrets to client lists, document security may feel like paranoia but that is no consolation when it happens to you.

Center City cyber security designers DDC (formerly Document Depository Corp) created RADAR, a full-service critical data management system that recently added two new features. The first is a contract tracker that allows companies to share contracts and get digital signatures remotely. The second is a secured online chat room with document-sharing capabilities that DDC calls a Virtual Data Room. With these new products, DDC goes beyond just document sharing solutions to the protection of a company's most critical documents. 

"Most companies store data in filing cabinets, on CD's in e-mail so pulling that all together is a very painful process," says DDC Executive Vice President of Business Development Cristina Greysman. "Not to mention, the fact that, what if your CFO who has all that data stored on their laptop gets hit by a beer truck? What then? Can you get to all that data and if not, how much will it cost to recover it?"

As the company transitions from document sharing to a more security-focused firm, it has drawn private funding for recent additions like the Silicon Valley facility it opened in August or the European facility opened in Dublin, Ireland in September. As the rollout continues for RADAR, DDC will be adding staff as it tries to expand marketing efforts and online product offerings.

"We want to build out our customer support staff," says Greysman of new hires. "We will do consulting with clients to help them determine best practices for putting information into RADAR. It is possible that we will hire some additional sales staff as well."

Source: Cristina Greysman, DDC
Writer: John Steele

From mud thatch to clay tile, roofing materials are about as varied as the houses underneath them. But with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, St. Joseph's University students will test the limits of green roofing materials, trying out everything from gravel to plastic-based fabric to recycled sneaker rubber. By building an expansive green roof on the deck of the University's Science Center, St. Joes associate dean of Natural Science, Math and Computer Science Mike McCann will monitor the drainage of four different green roof sections to see which performs best.

"A big goal with the green roof project is public dissemination," says McCann. "What we want to do is be able to tell anyone who is looking to do a green roof in this area of the country 'here is some performance data that might help guide your design.' "

This grant will also fund a study of switchgrass cultivation. Widely thought to be an excellent source of biofuels, switchgrass growth may be impacted by climate change. Through university study and field research at National Science Foundation Long Term Ecological Research site Konza Prairie, near Manhattan, Kan. students will examine the effects of changes in precipitation, temperature, and carbon dioxide on the growth of switchgrass to see if it may one day become a sustainable fuel source. McCann and the St. Joe's brass hope these projects will help formally establish their proposed Institute for Environmental Stewardship.

"We expect development communities to be very interested as well as people looking at global climate change impacts," says McCann. "But this grant is going to support undergraduate and graduate students engaged in these projects. We are not doing this to train switchgrass researchers. We are doing this to train sustainable researchers to do all sorts of jobs."

Source: Mike McCann, St. Joseph's University
Writer: John Steele