A screenshot of a draft of the License to Inspect tool, built by Azavea for PlanPhilly using the new L&I app. Click to enlarge.

A feature story covering the as-yet unreleased Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections API-based online tool ‘License to Inspect,’ its inspiration and hope was published on Technically Philly Monday, a story I reported and wrote during the last couple months.

It is the last major feature of the Transparencity grant project I’ve been leading, and one of the more detailed investigative reports I’ve done in my journalism career. The feature, which details the nearly two-year struggle to go public with a project with internal support, is meant to show the lessons learned and obstacles faced in the hopes that future city agencies can more efficiently release their data publicly for development and citizen use.

Give it a read, for lessons to be taken for any local government. and then find some of what didn’t make it into the piece below.

Below, portions of my reporting and writing that didn’t make it into the final feature:

• Focusing the effort on getting data out the right way was important for a few reasons, Burns, the L&I commissioner, said: (1) transparency, (2) reducing staff work load on freedom of information requests and (3) “We want to show that the Licenses and Inspections Department is an integral part of the community, by being able to show just how much we do with a small staff and (4) how much this department has improved in recent years, battling its reputation.
• Lessons learned: have high-level requirements, spend time on meeting them, but set deadlines and stick to them, develop that sense of urgency as it exists in every private workplace.
• “What Nutter needs to say when people ask about, say, the property tax delinquency problem is, ‘We’re going to fix that by getting all of our records straight and public and transparent,” Cheetham said. “When we do that, we’re going to realize problems we didn’t know we had. No city agencies are cross referenced. BRT data was the best the city had but it can be flawed. The way to make this real is to get this sense that the only way to truly fix problems, like property taxes, is to get all our records publicly shared in a format that can be used, like we’re finally seeing done with L&I.”
• “If this is viewed as successful, this will shine a lot of good light on taking more time to build a services API. In city government, we immediately default to do a data dump, which means we need to find the fields and each project we’ll do a new one. With five new projects, that’s five new data dumps we have to manage. If we can scale off an API, we only have to regularly maintain that one service.”

The story did well in traffic for a boring data story, featuring a few hundred hits in the first few hours and getting spread and discussed on social media, even receiving a Facebook Like from, yes, the Mayor, despite the story's tough talk.

• “Sometimes it might seem like an API is more of a challenge, but even data sets can present problems with maintenance. This was a chance to connect with Open 311 and make things easier for the future,” said Clinton Johnson.
• “But the city shuts down over the Christmas holiday. No changes to the city’s servers or services during any extended break when a lot of core staff are around to avoid any big problem. So for a good chunk of December, nothing can happen, like launching and running an API,” said Cheetham.
• By July and August 2010, Cheetham says, “everyone was asking the right questions still, from database specifications to field details to data accuracy assessments.”
• Burns and Gupta made clear immediately that they didn’t have the capacity on their own to provide a live data feed, “so they were going to release data as a daily text file export that would get emailed, received and processed to be loaded for release to the public by geo-tagging each record and standardizing them all,” he said. “Everyone involved was moving forward with great enthusiasm and support, without any adversarial in-fighting at all.”
• “By September 2010, everything was green lighted. Azavea is building the application, and we’re already planning to roll it out in the next few weeks,” Golas said. “But then we just suddenly felt the sea change at the city level.”
• “Allan [Frank] saw DOT as the natural gatekeeper for the [L&I] project, and it takes time to take something like that over,” says another developer close to a stakeholder.
• “Data has to be accurate because people will be drawing conclusions from it,” Burns said.
• “DOT said they’re into this, we could have something done by end of September. We get a specification draft in October, a word document of ‘this is what it’s going to look like,” said Cheetham. They sent a sample of the API, a single data field, and we just had to ask for more. It was just this incremental change. And then, well, in December, the city locks down changes to its systems right before elections and during major vacation time, particularly for effects to the mainframe. It’s about keeping everything secure and stable when people are away. So we get into December when they finish the next draft, but we have to wait until after the holiday lock down. We talked about January 7 as the date, and we got a data stream as planned around then. They asked for feedback, we gave it, we started using it and building the application around it. We found issues in the data and limitations in fields, including that a number of the fields agreed upon by PlanPhilly and L&I were not in there. They said ‘they weren’t in the spec,’ but they were in the spec, so DOT went back to add to that. So then a new development process starts. They’re going to redevelop this with expanded fields. L&I would check in once a week for the status, and we’d get news that the specification is 50 percent revised, now 75 revised, the application is 10 percent done, now 20 percent done. We got another version of the API in July. We turned around a response in 24 hours saying here are the eight things that are still buggy. They’ve acknowledged those problems and that’s where we are.
• The data appears to be rather accurate, which is always a concern with city records: “we aren’t ground trooping it, but it makes sense and we have faith in it,” says Cheetham, no stranger to data sources. Some batch uploads and a handful of minor inconsistencies exist but “nothing to call this project into question,” he adds.
• “We had more than a few meetings with L&I early on. Those centered on what information do we want in this application and Azavea saying this is how it would work with these data sets, who would be responsible for any liability, what could be done with the data once it was released, all those specifics,” Golas said. “The technology solution was simple early on, getting a daily data dump of all the fields we requested that were entered into the L&I database system, called Hansen.

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, agile startups, taking an idea and bringing it to market. But as the speed of new technologies continues to quicken, the need for large businesses to help bring products to market becomes even greater. So big corporations are not only playing a remarkably underplayed role in innovation, they are also innovating in how they change the world altogether.

Give it a read and then check some of the extras from my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece.

Munir Mandviwalla

• Founding chairman of Fox’s Management InformationSystems Department
• ‘Small businesses may be the inventor or the conceiver or even who brings that innovation to the initial market, but you really need the larger firm to actually see these innovations through
• LiquidHub is also a company that is letting IT lead. Campbell’s is heavily outsourced IT, while Merck has very high internal IT, but both focused on innovation.
• “We have this herd mentality of chasing the next great startup that will save the world,” Munir says. “We just believe it’s true, but we need a network of big players to make it happen globally.”
• “In corporate culture of the 80s and 90s, you’d say, ‘if you buy IBM, you cannot get fired,’ because there was such a movement with conservatism and IBM was that safe choice that would work and was no risk and did not really show innovation.
• “Really, the largest part of success with innovation in technology has to do with standardization. When there is too much standardization, you find new innovation, but to really grow that innovation to start, a company needs distribution power that startups or other small companies just don’t have.
• “There is a fortuitous relationship between small and large firms. Large firms have these tools to create success and small firms don’t have much to lose so they will bring new products, but in technology, they usually cannot grow themselves. They have to die or be acquired or have their idea stolen altogether, for it to really succeed.”
• Using the technology of Mosaic, a University of Illinois project that is called the first popular graphical web browser, Microsoft developed Internet Explorer and began packaging it with its Windows operating system. “Without Microsoft, the Internet and the browser would not be as ubiquitous as it is today. Despite the power of that technology, it took the explosion of what became a large company to truly spread that innovation to non-technical types.”
• “Cisco really did most of its innovation through acquisition.
• “But now, innovation is a hot word for old boring corporate America, and they’re serious about it because if they think it’s just a fad, they’ll never survive.”
• “A lot of companies want to sit on their asses, and wait for good things to come around. During the financial boom, it was much easier to finance innovation acquisition.”
• “You look at the creation of the Internet and find large, somewhat bureaucratic organizations really fuel that innovation, something like HTTP protocol needed to come from a force that was something like a large company to create standardization.”

EDWARD QUINN

• “It’s always interesting to make something from nothing. The larger companies provide a platform for when that technology becomes adopted.”
• “When you look at how quickly the country adopted radio, then TV, then the internet and now social networking, you see the role for the big company to provide market acceptance or infrastructure for all of those.”
• “We’ve had products sit in our vault and now we want to just take the intellectual property and package a solution when it fits a demand.”
• “Microsoft is moving to a cloud model. If you’re a big software company, you have to wondering how do you charge. The business models of the last five years are going to change like they did before then. We have to be excited to take risk.”
• “Big companies are becoming more flexible because they have to be.

LEONARDO MATTIAZZI

• Mattiazzi, who relocated to King of Prussia in 2006 to launch Ci&T’s North American headquarters,
• Leonardo Mattiazzi, ’09, VP of International Business at Ci&T, helped oversee the product get to market. 37 [Feb. 8, 1974], 14 years with Ci&T, moved from Brazil in 2006. summer 2009 MBA graduate
• Ci&T has 1,100 employees but now 35 percent of revenue comes from North America. It’s a progressive, young company that relies mostly on a client basis of big corporations. It’s core business is developing tools and applications for large companies, like Johnson and Johnson and Coca Cola.
• “People focus on smaller startups because it’s sexier. It’s that simple. People love the idea of an entrepreneur taking an idea and creating something new. It’s a story worth telling. Everyone wants that person to be successful, we can relate to that as an individual.”
• Also, when you’re a smaller company, you’re usually identified with one product, so it’s easier for people to identify with your innovation. Walk into a supermarket and you’ll find Johnson and Johnson products everywhere, with innovation behind many of them, but it doesn’t feel innovative.
• “In order to really disrupt the market, an established company needs to take precautions because it’s often not beneficial to their core business. Their resources are assigned to their primary businesses, not creating new ones. Something new needing investment and resources is very tricky.”
• It’s somewhat slower pace of things because these big companies need to get their returns.
• These companies can also create things that are disruptive, but it’s difficult because it’s dangerous to what they have established.
• Big companies have more resources, more experiences and they have a process in place to get to market. You may be very bright but some things require a lot of equipment or expertise or direction. One thing is for sure, innovating requires a lot of trial and error and a smaller company or individual may not be able to experiment in the way a bigger partner can.”
• “A technology startup today is very inexpensive, creating an online product or a mobile app is very cheap today. There is the cloud, open source software, not much need for infrastructure.
  It can happen very quick, but not everything is online or a mobile device. When you look at physical products, like GE or Johnson and Johnson, things that need to be manufctured involves cost. Bigger companies are better prepared than some.
• “I think we’ll see a lot more small companies coming up in new places. There will always be big companies doing innovation, one way or another. Today it’s really expensive technology startup and this happens cheaper and cheaper. The barriers are lower, and they will be even lower in the future. that helps us as individuals.
• “Innovation has been centered in particular places, like the United States, a center of technology and other innovation, particularly in Silicon Valley and happening in other places, like Boston, D.C. and Philly. Now that other countries are becoming more and more important in the world economy, you’ll see this huge population that will have access to what they didn’t have in the past.
• Other countries that are becoming more important in the world economy, well, historically, they had a lack of capital, so people came to the U.S. Now these other countries are developing their own capital markets. It’s a huge opportunity for investors in the U.S., Europe and Japan to work with new places. It’ll be more decentralized.
• I don’t think that means that China will be the center of innovation. I think it’ll be across the world in lots of different places, and large companies have global experience. If a big company can apply ideas across borders, be a ‘cross-pollinator of innovation,’ well, they’ll do well.
• P&G has created products for rural China and India. Who else can do that? Not many smaller companies, when it comes to research, design and distribution.
• It’s one thing to distribute your new improved detergent in the U.S. through Wal-Mart and Target when they are a few blocks apart, but someplace in China, there not might be a paved road. What do you do then?
• How did Fox prepare you for your work? Other than the beer Happy Hours?
• “I had a lot of practical learning, but I needed the theoretical foundation for my work. Fox offers a lot of both.”
• Below check the preview of the Runens mobile app from Ci&T I mentioned in my lede and read from one of the developers or the TechCrunch coverage.

• I put roughly an hour and half for email, nearly that long for interviews, three hours for notes and a first draft and a bit more than an hour for finalizing, with another hour for filling new paperwork.

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 former state Speaker of the House, whose corruption trial has been postponed until the fall, we covered what the impact the loss of a 30-year state leader would be on his district, particularly a small swath that had served as his political base.

Find all the coverage here.

I had the following roles:

• Reported two feature stories, including the final piece on how community building in Mayfair and elsewhere may be undergoing a sea change, and a second piece on the touchy subject of redistricting and Perzel, in addition to some smaller items.
• I interviewed Perzel’s replacement, Democrat Kevin Boyle, his staff and had Perzel fail to respond to comment following repeated attempts through his attorney.
• I spoke to more than a half dozen neighborhood leaders and others with perspective on the matter.
• With NEast Philly founder Shannon McDonald, I helped carve out the editorial direction and direct the Temple University Philadelphia Neighborhoods interns, who were our partnering organization.
• I designed the District 172 branding.
• I developed a layout for the District 172 landing page and worked with Frankford Gazette co-founder Jimmy Smiley to publish it.
• I gave copy and content to Smiley for our Players and Timeline section, two more interactive tools on the page.

The interview was due to run in the Metro but never did. With a year passed and its hook gone, I run it here for all you grammar geeks because there just might be interest in hearing the thoughts of someone who told me: “I also love the semicolon, but that’s just my personal preference.”

Find what I submitted below.

The 125th annual convention of the Modern Language Association [came] to the Pennsylvania Convention Center from Dec. 27 to 30 [2009]. Metro speaks to Rosemary Feal, the executive director of the 30,000-member association for scholars of language and literature.

What can we expect out of an MLA conference?
A lot of professors speaking about literature, psalm, poems, TV shows and all the things that our professors teach in class.  We have sessions on the literary history of Philadelphia, sessions on the future of education. We’ll also have film showings and authors reading from their work. You can also expect eight or 9,000 of us invading all the the wonderful restaurants in Philadelphia.

Why have the MLA conference in Philly?
We ask for bids, but we’re a very big convention, so we need a convention center and the hotels that can support us. Philadelphia is one of those cities that can do it. In the past decade, we’ve been there three times. It’s located right on the northeast corridor, by New York and D.C. Plus, people like to bring their families along, and Philadelphia offers great culture. Everybody finds the city easy to get around, exciting, safe, fascinating, and near to enough of our members that people can come from a lot of nearby cities.

What are you most excited about?
I’m most excited about the convention’s focus on translation. Maybe it doesn’t excite you, but it excites me. Think of all the stuff you read from other languages. You can only do that because of the work from bright people everywhere. We’re bringing in experts from around the world to talk about that impact. That’s exciting to me.

Anyone who has done an academic paper knows MLA works cited style. What do you like most about MLA over competitor Chicago style?
MLA style uses parenthetical references, and I love parenthetical references. If I’m quoting the Declaration of Independence, I don’t have to use footnotes. No footnotes. Parentheses are the way to go.

Phil Pappas, of West Frankford Town Watch, investigating an alarm near Comly and Bustleton on early Saturday morning July 10. Click to enlarge. It's my photo.

Earlier this month, I went on a ride-along with the West Frankford Town Watch in lower Northeast Philadelphia. For the love of hyperlocal journalism and community coverage, I put together a 2,500 word profile of the organization, with a handful of photos of mine. It was good to remember that I got into this whole scene for a love of writing. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

Mike Mawson smells something.

It’s past midnight on Comly Street near Bustleton in Mayfair. The sun went down hours ago, but forgot to take this sticky July heat with it. Mawson is riding shotgun in the sensible four-door sedan that his partner Phil Pappas drives. The West Frankford Town Watch patrol was circling around to head back south of Cheltenham Avenue to drive the streets of its namesake neighborhood when Mawson caught a whiff of something off in the still nighttime air.

“It smells like something is burning,” confirms soft-featured Pappas, 53, sitting upright with two hands on the steering wheel and dressed with purpose in matching earthtones. “I’ll pull over.” MORE

Read the rest of it here.

Two pieces I wrote for NEast Philly made their way into yesterday’s Metro Northeast Philadelphia edition.

First, as depicted above, a piece on Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’s presentation at the Northwood Civic Association meeting during which he again outlined the four main objectives of his nascent administration.

Second, as depicted below, my coverage of the second meeting of Northeast Philadelphia Now, a fledgling attempt to coalesce various neighborhood groups to fight back against quality of life crimes plauging that part of the city.

In both cases, I was due a byline but something want awry in the production — which also resulted in the wrong NEast branding. But then, I suppose it’s still the beginning of the partnership between the hyperlocal news site and the city’s most circulated daily newspaper.

I certainly hope the paper is giving the niche site the respect it deserves, a fear others have recently had with other papers.

Check yesterday’s issue here, from pages 15-22. The issue runs every other Wednesday.

Madeline Albright, at left sipping a drink, alongside Vaclav Havel, with his back to the camera, at the Wilma Theater on May 26, 2010.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seemed to enjoy the production just fine.

That was the lede I submitted to Philadelphia events blog uwishunu in my review of last month’s U.S. premiere of ‘Leaving,’ the first piece in a generation from acclaimed playwright and former Czech President Vaclav Havel, at the Wilma Theater on the Avenue of the Arts in Center City Philadelphia.

Both after leaving the bathroom before the show and sitting in my third-row seat as the curtain opened, I eyed the tiny, graying lady sitting to the right and chatting with Havel, the revolutionary who was on hand to watch the premiere. Both times I gave second glances. The first time, I just thought I recognized her and dismissed it as some Philadelphia notable.

The second time, my guess was clear: that woman was the first female Secretary of State and President Bill Clinton top adviser. I dismissed it again — no security, no commotion, no press. Turns out I was right, and, boy, that has to mean something for the future of news, doesn’t it?

A friend handles some of the promotional work for the theater and confirmed my guess, aside from her, my next best assurance was another journalist there to review the opening — from online-only startup Broad Street Review.

Turns out the premiere was indeed covered by The Wall Street Journal and the Prague Daily Monitor, and NPR’s All Things Considered rushed down to get in front of Havel. The eminent Inquirer Worldview columnist Trudy Rubin was on hand to interview Havel and filed something the following Sunday and something ran a week later ran in the local paper’s social column.

That’s heavy coverage from legacy media, but it just seemed to smack of the type of exclusionary journalism that the web has started to break. By my count, the first (remotely) official report that a major head of state was chatting with a former lead liaison on U.S. foreign policy was an unsure tweet of mine (with an admitted misspelling of Albright’s first name).

It’s important to note here just what a big deal Havel is considered in many circles –an internationally-acclaimed playwright, a revolutionary, dissident Liberty Medal Award winner and former head of state.

This was a major U.S. premiere of his latest play at a glitzy Center City theater and the only established local game in town there was a foreign columnist.

Both of the city’s largest alternative-weeklies, CityPaper and Philly Weekly, checked their reviews in early.

The rest came from two online sources — one self-funded and the other, for which I was there, a project of the region’s tourism board.

We continue to be the media.

[My 'Leaving' Review]

Below, watch Havel talk in 2007 about the Communist regime in Cuba.

The cover of a regional edition of the highest circulated daily newspaper in Philadelphia featured a news story of my own yesterday.

Rumors on the possible sale of an alleged drug-infested nuisance property veiled as a recovery home in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood that came out of last week’s Frankford Civic Association meeting was enough to warrant front page coverage of Metro. The property has been seen as something of a rallying call on the issue of illegal ‘recovery homes.’

I attended the meeting as a former resident and occasional contributor to NEast Philly, the Northeast hyperlocal, that started last month a content partnership with the Philadelphia edition of the international free daily newspaper franchise.

NEast Philly Editor Shannon McDonald says she entered the agreement, which features repackaged NEast content every other Wednesday, for the branding and larger distribution. Metro, which currently only pays McDonald for a feature Northeast freelance piece that usually leads the package, gets cheap content for a niche geographic readership for whom it can sell more direct advertising.

But it’s part of a growing direction for the scrappy free daily, which is likely more respected in Philadelphia than in its other U.S. markets of Boston and New York City but still takes heat for its short form, image and graphic driven product.

Since announcing the deal on April 29, Metro also has a partnership with noted cityblog Philebrity.com, which offers highlighted nightlife listings for the coming weekend, and has an agreement with election news blog pa2010 and the Philadelphia Business Journal.

It goes beyond Philadelphia.

As eMedia Vitals reported, like the Northeast for Philadelphia, the New York paper rolled out a Queens edition and uses Mashable content on Thursdays. The Canadian arm partnered with FourSquare.

The free daily is leveraging independent publishers who want to grow their reach and hit print readers to get free or low cost content and those communities and niches. It’s an angle that print isn’t dead — it just needs some cost cutting and realignment.

It seems like a brilliant strategy in my estimation.

As part of a push for a broader readership, back in March Technically Philly announced a content partnership with Philadelphia magazine and its new daily blog.

Fellow co-founder Brian James Kirk has been writing most of the weekly posts, as he’s still freelancing. But last week, I filled in, penning a short feature on five City of Philadelphia departments that could use a touch of Web openness.

The use of technology to transform government has been a growing municipal interest in city halls across the country.

Here, the City of Philadelphia has announced intentions to release a service-orientated 311 iPhone application, it’s applying for ultra high-speed broadband from Google and it’s in hot pursuit of a funded team of developers and technologists which may someday make our every government transparency dreams come true.

The overtures are there, even if the substance hasn’t yet hit the pavement.

Read the rest here.

Mayor Nutter Press Aide Katherine Martin addresses the April Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting.

A few times a month, I go out to civic and town watch meetings in a variety of neighborhoods. Yes, I actually find most of them to be fun — local politics on the smallest of scale.

Since moving to Fishtown, I’ve begun going to monthly Fishtown Action and Fishtown Neighbors Meetings and filing reports for the Fishtown Spirit. It’s all within a few blocks of my house and endearing to be sure. Each month, I’ll probably share those two and any other pieces I might have had in the Spirit.

As I wrote after my first piece for my small, local community news weekly, it’s my way of getting to know new people and the issues facing them in a new neighborhood.

I have one on two controversial proposals in today’s issue:

City officials defended two controversial proposals to close a $150 million shortfall in the city’s 2011 budget at last week’s Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting.

During the 90 minute session that saw raised voices and broad criticism of city spending, Deputy Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams addressed a proposed $300 trash collection fee and Mayoral Press Aide Katharine Martin talked about the two-cent-per-ounce sweetened beverage excise tax. Both proposals need City Council approval and remain executive branch proposals that are vying against ongoing deliberations, including suggestions to raise property taxes and tax smokeless tobacco products.

Read the rest here, or below find other pieces I’ve done in the past few months below.

FACT introduces new SugarHouse General Manager

APR 14 — Wendy Hamilton says she has two main priorities weighing on her mind.

The new general manager of the SugarHouse Casino on Delaware Avenue, which is currently under construction, needs to get the embattled slots parlor opened by mid-September and she wants to give Fishtown residents and others who live near the casino the first crack at the 700 jobs that will be created.

Read the rest here.

Girard Avenue to See Summer Facelift

MAR 31 — This summer looks to be very kind to Girard Avenue through Fishtown.

Updates on two major projects aimed at improving the beauty and functionality of the corridor were discussed at a recent Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting. Both are due to make major strides as the weather warms up.

Read the rest here.

Meet the Neighbors: FNA introduces new board and RecycleBank program

FEB 24 — Dragging those familiar blue recycling tubs to your curb each week can start to earn savings at area retailers for residents who join a new city program.

Read the rest here.