Sometimes you need that kick in the pants from an outsider. There is a new Philadelphia chapter of the Online News Association, something of a trade organization founded in 1999 for journalism innovation that hosts a popular annual national conference I attended last year and regional events across the country. (I’ll be attending the national [...]

The first ever Philly Geek Awards show, organized by my friends at Geekadelphia, was held last Friday at the Academy of Natural Sciences. As mentioned here in June, I was proudly involved in three nominations. My Technically Philly colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I were honored to have Philly Tech Week named Philadelphia’s [...]

While I was at Back on My Feet, something I was proud of completing was, with the great help of a colleague, a company style guide. A style guide should be a fundamental piece of documentation that goes a long way to creating an institutional memory. If everything imploded, a style guide would help you [...]

I have a friend who went to college where he did for, really, one leading reason: the accent. Sure, he found a nice campus at a respected university with a good reputation and a big price tag, but, ultimately, he sought colleges in and around Boston because he loved that accent. Boston, most might say, [...]

Two more collaborative Philadelphia reporting projects in which I was involved have finished recently. Part of the JLab-funded Enterprise Reporting Fund that paid for the NEast Philly District 172 project I shared recently, Abandoned City was a partnership between Technically Philly, PlanPhilly and CityPaper and Broadband2035 was a partnership between Technically Philly and PlanPhilly. While [...]

One of seven White House Urban Entrepreneurship forums across the country was hosted at Temple University in Philadelphia Monday, and, in addition to Technically Philly being a media sponsor, I served on one of a dozen panels. Find the Livestream and Technically Philly coverage of Philadelphia Mayor Nutter’s address here. I was on a panel [...]

Remember: I am an individual who is a technology reporter. These are my opinions and should not reflect those of my company Technically Media, nor its technology news site Technically Philly. Online auction giant eBay bought for $2.4 billion King of Prussia-based e-commerce powerhouse GSI Commerce in March, and I spoke briefly about the deal [...]

How large technology companies still lead innovation in the world is the focus of a freelance story I wrote for Temple Review, the alumni magazine of Temple University. Read the story here or download the PDF here, on page 24. An earlier nut graf: Innovation has been seen as strictly in the purview of tiny, [...]

Academic Clay Shirky tossed down another great post ahead of an undergraduate course he’s teaching at NYU. In the end, he calls for more chaos — more competitive approaches to creating meaning news for citizens, beyond news for consumers. You ought to read the whole piece, but here are a couple of my favorite parts: [...]

Though I took part in three of 14 JLab-funded Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Fund projects, first announced here last fall, I led one of them. For Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, I helped lead the editorial direction of a project called District 172: the politics of change after state Rep. John Perzel. http://neastphilly.com/john-perzel/ Following the indicted [...]