Find the nearest free wireless internet hotspot in Philadelphia by using Connect Philly, a new mapping and text message tool we at Technically Philly released last week.

The tool, which can also be reached by ph.ly/connect,

The tool, which is meant to be a part of the digital access conversation, was unveiled formally with an event in City Hall, featuring Mayor Nutter and a panel discussion I moderated on improving access and literacy online for low-income Philadelphians.

Conceived by my colleague Brian James Kirk, who was helped by developer Jim Smiley, Connect Philly followed coverage sponsored by JLab and was sponsored by the Knight Foundation, in addition to data partnerships with Freedom Rings, PlanPhilly, the Free Library and others.

The Inquirer, KYW and others covered the tool’s launch.

It should be added that I was particularly proud of my colleague Brian James Kirk, who conceived of the project, brought together a data set despite push back from multiple sources and put together the event. He’s a star, what a journalist should look like today.

The second annual Philly Tech Week will take place April 22-28, 2011, as we announced on Technically Philly recently.

We unveiled our media kit, made impressively by my colleague Brian James Kirk, which you can see here.

The open calendar of events was first held this past April, attracting more than 4,000 people attended at least one of 65 events held throughout the city and surrounding counties during the inaugural celebration. See my roundup of the event series impact here.

The week was officially endorsed and recognized by City Council. A major public-private partnership launched an Open Data repository for the city and Councilman Bill Green unveiled a 10-point plan for improved government transparency through technology. Startups launched during the week, video games were unveiled and educators held the first Robotics Expo in the city.

With more than 50 press hits across newspapers, radio, television and blogs, the week also became an enormous opportunity for the partners involved in making it happen. The week’s 35 sponsors and more than 50 event organizers were able to put their message and organizations in front of 30,000 unique visitors of Philly Tech Week web properties. They were included in the 5,000 print publications distributed in 50 retailers across the city. And they were able to align with the 1,000 social media messages that spanned the event.

This year, April 23-28, 2012, Philly Tech Week will be bigger year’s event, it is expected that more events will be organized with lessons learned from last year, the programming will be made stronger and its impact greater.

We hope to prove true this year’s theme: to make a better Philadelphia through technology. We hope you’ll be a part of it.

To learn more, check out the event’s media kit here bit.ly/ptw2012_mediakit to learn why Philly Tech Week is so important to the region, and get involved by either organizing an event [bit.ly/organize_ptw2012] or sponsoring the week [bit.ly/sponsor_ptw2012] to connect with the region’s growing community.

My Technically Media colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I kept running into situations where we needed headshots or team photos.

Even as a startup, for conferences and speaking engagements, we’d send out photos taken by friends or shots that had landed on Facebook and we realized we needed something a bit more formal.

So, as noted last week on our company blog, we worked with Philadelphia Photographer Colin M. Lenton, whom we know from our college newspaper days, at his rental photo studio in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia. We’re really pleased with the results. See the low resolution versions on our company Facebook page here.

(As noted here a couple months ago, we actually had a few fun shots taken by another great Philadelphia photographer, Neal Santos, but that just in preparation for another photo shoot altogether and weren’t formal headshots.)

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 I was involved with some strategy, reporting, introductions, planning and, for Broadband2035, I led the relationship with the city’s Planning Commission (more on that below), my colleague Brian James Kirk really led our roles in these two initiatives.

Abandoned City, depicted above was an investigation of vacant property in Philadelphia and its impact on communities.

• CityPaper led the reporting and devoted a cover story and other print space for reporting
• PlanPhilly offered additional reporting, editing and the web platform
• Technically Philly initiated the partnership and worked with a developer to visualize and map those findings.

Broadband2035, which is ongoing, investigated the impact access to affordable broadband has on low-income communities

• PlanPhilly offered reporting, editing and guidance
• Technically Philly led the reporting, worked with the city’s Planning Commission to incorporate broadband plans into its comprehensive Philadelphia2035 vision and hosted the series page.

Technically Media co-founders Sean Blanda, Brian James and Christopher Wink. Photo by Neal Santos

All photos by Neal Santos while preparing for a Technically Philly Technology Leaders Breakfast photo shoot back in March.

See the other team photos here. Below is one of the photos from the next morning’s leaders breakfast, which

Standing with my colleague Sean Blanda, City Managing Director Rich Negrin and my colleague Brian James Kirk at Signature Event. Photo by Rachel Playe.

The inaugural Philly Tech Week has passed, and I shared a roundup of the entire week, but I wanted to focus in on one of the larger events.

As I noted, my Technically Philly colleagues and fellow PTW organizers each took hold of a portion of the nine of the week’s 65 events that we organized. Among what I handled was taking the lead on our Friday night Signature Event, featuring a 150-person, catered cocktail reception at WHYY in Old City, featuring keynote speaker Rich Negrin, the City of Philadelphia Managing Director who discussed good government initiatives.

I have some take aways below, which I hope to add to, in addition to the text of the quick address I gave to kick off the evening and video, showing that I’m not very good at actually listening to what I write.

My prepared remarks:

Thank you all for coming to tonight’s Signature Event and, perhaps more importantly, thank you for participating in the inaugural Philly Tech Week.

Together, we organized 65 events with more than 50 groups across the city in a variety of industries and venues and styles. Philadelphia: can we please applaud ourselves?

My name is Christopher Wink. I am one of three co-founders of technology news site Technically Philly. Together with my colleagues Sean Blanda and Brian James Kirk, we conceived of and organized Philly Tech Week, but everyone in this room knows the technology community of Philadelphia is bigger and broader and bolder than any of us on our own. It just needed a voice.

I’ve been joking with friends recently that the real future of news is event planning. In truth, convening and creating action is a clear path, and one we’re embracing at Technically Philly. We believe one of the clearest ways to grow Philadelphia’s reputation and impact is reducing redundancy and fostering collaboration to take on our region’s challenges together.

So in March we brought together a small group of technology community leaders from diverse industries and backgrounds to meet and be the face of this year’s Philly Tech Week around collaboration. We’d like to share a short 3-minute video, produced by our colleague Steve Metzger, with you now.

COLLABORATION VIDEO FROM STEVE METZGER

Then I went on:

City Councilman Bill Green introduced a Resolution that named these six days officially Philly Tech Week, and as I said then, I’d be surprised if any vanity resolution ever had as many proper nouns as ours had. This is a community with more corners than anything in geometry, from entrepreneurs in life sciences and social gaming, to hackers, to coders, to developers, to designers, to IT professionals, to social media stars, to activists, and all the dreamers and the doers therein.

This was the first Philly Tech Week, thrown together in a few months time. Despite that, among 65 events, we saw the unveiling of OpenDataPhilly.org, a civic hacker tool built by Azavea and endorsed by the City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology. Tomorrow, during BarCamp NewsInnovation at Temple University, while 300 journalists learn about the future of their craft, a few dozen coders will build tools using that data, and the lines between those two groups will continue to blur. The Emerging Technologies for Enterprise conference from Chariot Solutions sold out and continued its reputation as one of the country’s premiere development events. Five new Philly startups were pushed out into the world, our nascent video game and robotics communities showed off what they can do, the future of music, sustainability and shelter were all discussed, with technology being the primary driver of change. WordPress, Rails and other platforms and languages that build this new world were shared with new friends and embraced by old ones.

There were 65 events. I couldn’t begin to mention them all.

I do want to thank our sponsors, WHYY for being our official headquarters, Chariot Solutions, Alteva, PHD Virtual, Morgan Lewis, Verizon, Tropo, University City Science Center, Little Giant Media, Bluewolf, Monetate, InterDigital, NPower, Open Desks, Jarvus, Reed Technology, Krispy Kreme, Vitamin Water and even more, actually.

I want to bring up former Inquirer editorial page editor and WHYY News and Civic Dialogue chief Chris Satullo to talk about this community’s power, the role public media can play and introduce our keynote speaker, but first let me leave you with this.

It’s my role as a journalist to question power, and here, that means, in part, the City of Philadelphia. But there is something very powerful for which I want to credit the City’s Division of Technology, with direction from former Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. Last fall, Frank and his team shared a more detailed Digital Philadelphia vision.

Under a mess of branding and a push for more funding, there was brilliance. Technology has very little to do with iPhone apps and servers.

Technology will shape the future of Philadelphia in three profound ways, the vision said: it will help us create jobs, it will help us give better access and education to all Philadelphians regardless of income and it will make our government more transparent, effective and efficient.

It doesn’t matter anymore if our government will do these things because we can do so on our own. If you need a call to action for now and every day until next year’s Philly Tech Week, it will be to collaborate behind those three goals.

Thank you for your time and let’s go out and continue to make Philadelphia a better place for all of her residents using technology.

With colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and PlanPhilly Managing Editor Matt Golas. Photo by Rachel Playe.

TAKE AWAYS:

• No matter how many times I see myself speak, still, I want to tell myself: speak slower (I hate the idea of speaking for too long so for some reason I think I’ll solve it by speaking too quickly)
• Three speakers, five minutes each max
• More booze, less food
• Do get a caterer
• Sell tickets cheaper early and jack the prize up to incentive early buys

Kind tweets

• You had a plethora of attractive women at a geek event @christopherwink / help out @Devnuts please. @PhillyTechWeek @215tayyib
• @christopherwink is a superstar #phillytechweek @phillyphriedman
• Loved meeting so many tech savvy people in one room. @RichNegrin

Photo by Jeff Fusco for Flying Kite. Click to enlarge.

Online innovation magazine Flying Kite featured a nice overview of Philly Tech Week, including some background on Technically Philly, written by Salas Sarayia.

Photo by Jeff Fusco for Flying Kite. Click to enlarge.

If you’ve never been to a technology-related event in Philadelphia before, don’t be surprised if that changes before the end of the month. From April 25-30, there will be around 50 technology related events taking place around the city as part of the first annual Philly Tech Week. The series was envisioned by the three journalists from Temple University who are also the founders of Technically Philly. With a model similar to Philly Fringe, any group or organization could submit their event to Technically Philly for inclusion on the Tech Week calendar. The diverse nature of the individual event organizers has created a series with a wide scope and potential reach.

Freelance photographer took some nice shots of the three of us who founded TP and organize PTW, even if that light may have helped me look like a zombie.

Thanks for the coverage.

Chris Wink on Tech Week by Salas Saraiya: Interviews

Simply put, we build audiences.

At the beginning of December, I left another role and promised greater details on what I would doing. Here’s a start.

In the past few weeks, I’ve chosen a payroll services company, applied for tax status, requested a business operating license, closed an existing account and otherwise finalized the incorporation of a new business, of which I am now a full-time employee, answering early a resolution of mine.

Technically Media Inc. is a media services consultancy with three founders: Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and myself.

And, while I could get you lost in the details, all you really need to know that at its simplest form, we build audiences online.

What that means:

• We work with nonprofits, businesses, organizations and existing media companies to create workflow, review management, platform and promotion for using content to grow an audience online.
• Build an audience and turn them into supporters, donors, customers, and clients.
• This is a journalism conversation — We think the future of news and information dissemination will involve mission-orientated nonprofits and other organizations.

Examples of this work:

• Technically Philly — Technically Media publishes this technology news site that first brought the three of us together. (Previous to our recent incorporation, TM was a general partnership.)
• The National Constitution Center — Before Christmas, we launched Constitution Daily, a blog platform through which the major Philadelphia-based museum and event space will grow its reputation with meaningful content related to its mission. We will continue working with the NCC in 2011.
• Back on My Feet — In my role with this nonprofit, I created its media department, including helping to launch a platform and create workflow and content for a blog that drives audience around its members, organization and mission.
• Philadelphia Sports Daily — We launched the basic platform, workflow and technology behind the region’s fastest growing comprehensive sports news site. We are still offering services and direction.
• Circulation — On our TM website, we’re playing with content and editorial experimentation on a blog. See the landing page of the former version of this site here.

Get in touch if you want to hear more.

I’ll be writing plenty more on this site about the content strategy movement happening across the country and our particular interest in editorial strategy.

Today, Technically Philly has announced its directory.

Directories are normally pretty boring. We think ours won’t be.

It’s certainly a small step, but, leveraging WordPress custom taxonomies with some incredible thinking power of Sean Blanda and plenty of sweat equity from myself and Brian James Kirk, we have launched pages for the nearly 1,000 companies and almost as many individuals we’ve covered at Technically Philly in the past two years.

[I can't overstate complimenting Sean on his leadership and creativity in launching this long plotted perspective. It helped to hear people excited about the idea at our Philly Startup Leaders Fishbowl back in March]

Let it be clear that this is a start, not a finish, as this directory has a lot of growth to come. Chief among future announcements will be its role in a membership and sponsorship platform. We just wanted to hear from people. Whatcha think?

Why we’re doing it:

• Revenue — As said above, the difference between a page looking like, say, this one and this one will be a membership/sponsorship cap to our revenue build. This is a long time in coming.
• Community — There is truly a value in creating landing pages for our content (and others). This is another big step in helping to connect this region’s technology community.

Why this matters:

• Its locality — For the same reason, that Cityfile and Crunchbase work despite the powers of Wikipedia, newspaperdotcom directories and others in the crowded market, locality in a community wins. We’ll rank well in search for many of those in our directory. We have some unique features to come too, so this is a distinctly Philadelphia product.
• Its connective spirit — you just might see this being the fabric of a bigger push to connect independent publishers in Philadelphia.

What’s to come?

• Sustainability — We roll out a membership platform for individuals and sponsorship model for businesses to update and have greater control of their pages.
• More Content — We still have lots of holes in the logos, headshots and descriptions to start. We also will try to tie in feeds to Wikipedia for the bigger names in the directory to keep this project alive.
• Process transparency — Sean Blanda speaks at Wordcamp Philly this Saturday to talk about the process and will surely write up the details on that blog of his.

A year after focusing strictly on business, the three of us at Technically Philly took a softer approach at BarCamp NewsInnovation 2.0, which we again sponsored and organized [Notes here].

The event was held today, April 24, 2010, again at Temple University.

Find video, our slides and presentation notes from our talk below.

Failure is not an option (it’s a necessity)

Five Stories about Failure

1. Ad Sales — “Until you have the right person, you are the right person.”

FAILURE: Wasted time, energy and resources. [Tried a half dozen commission-based sales people]

LESSON: We should have been selling ads ourselves.

2. Business Roadmap — “Don’t hang out with Brian. It’s depressing.”

FAILURE: We thought we’d be making money by month three.

LESSON: Double or triple the time your business plan will take.

3. Business Criticism — “To be honest, we’re not always sure what [Technically Philly is] trying to accomplish.”

FAILURE: Uh, we were criticized in a best-of issue.

LESSON: If you’re noticed, your work will be scrutinized.

4. Potential Partners — “I don’t see the point of meeting.”

FAILURE: Turned down an opportunity to meet with a key business leader.

5. Investment (sappy anecdote) — “Well, that wasn’t THAT depressing.”

FAILURE: We started Technically Philly (and said some silly things in front of important people).

LESSON: We’ve learned much, met many people and improved what we know in the space of journalism.

The presentation is also available here. See and hear the presentation from Samurai Tours here.

When we were asked for more embarrassing stories, we realized we should have also shared the story of our speaking engagement with the Women’s Press Association of Pennsylvania, in which no one showed except the organizer and former Philadelphia mayoral candidate Queena Bass. Or we could have told one of the half dozen times Sean has been under dressed when going to cover events.

It was a fun session with a few practical takeaways, we hope. If nothing else, it seemed well-received.

Some Tweets

• Anthony Ruiz of Samurai Virtual Tours quotes me about being stupid
• Freelancer Amy Z Quinn agrees on the concept
• Freelancer Morgan Zalot picks up on our swearing working in threes is the best
• Newspaper company digital chief Jason Krustifek noted our take that everyone can be a partner.