Because it has the infrastructure of a major market with mission-orientated for-profit and nonprofit groups and because it has all the big problems that other cities face, Philadelphia should be the country’s hub of social entrepreneurship.

Defined as ventures that put impact over profit, I again spoke about this cause, this time at an event with the Knight Foundation, the Delaware Valley Grantmakers and 30 other industry leaders at the University City Science Center last week. See the presentation I gave here.

See the Technically Philly coverage of the event here.

It was a variation of this presentation, which built off this post on why Philadelphia’s regional distinction should be social enterprise.

“Every problem is an opportunity to build ventures for solutions, scale them and export them to other cities,” as Generocity quoted me as saying. I followed a stirring 20-minute review of the 30-year development of social entrepreneurship, as given by Cheryl Dorsey, the president of the noted New York City-based Echoing Green.

To move the effort forward, we’ll be working on broadening the regional stakeholders who see this as a sensible distinction for Philadelphia and working to build in and build up the mission in organization’s based in and around this city.

After presentations, there was a large group discussion, led by the Knight Foundation’s Donna Frisby-Greenwood, on ways to move forward the effort, concepts that were drilled down in more specific ways in smaller groups. See notes from the discussions here [PDF].

In organizing the event, I came across new organization I hadn’t known had roots in Philadelphia, including an annual sustainability-focused social entrepreneurship event and Halloran Philanthropies, which focuses on social ventures.

It occurred to me that it was more than a year ago that I was beginning to really think about the need for a stronger sense of regional entrepreneurial identity. We needed hungry entrepreneurs and if Philly already has some of them, we need them to be hungrier, bolder and sell the region’s assets more.

When pitching your venture or product, send a business or technology reporter a three sentence email, explaining in super simple language (a) what your project is, (b) why it matters and (b) who you are.

That was one of the better received recommendations I made while presenting for the Lean Startup seminar held at the Venturef0rth incubator in Callowhill, Philadelphia this weekend.

See my presentation slides above or find it here. My colleague Sean Blanda has a post giving broad advice here, which includes a great list of questions to be prepated for, though I was a bit more specific to the 30 entrepreneurs in the room on starting the conversation. Details on my slide below.

1. Understand the pipeline: (1) niche news that will offer early users and support, (2) regional legacy news that will offer broader users, (3) national media that will offer scaled users and branding
2. Nobody cares about what you do as much as you do: so don’t act like anyone should and keep it simple when explaining or talking about it.
3. What is your nut?: have a short 10 words to describe your business in language that a 10-year-old can understand.
4. Design matters: Reporters first judge your project by what your website or application looks like.
5. Know the publication: take a few minutes to understand what coverage they do. Have an example of the specific type of coverage you want to have, so you know they do it.
6. Get an intro: Though it’s not necessary, an intro by a respected PR executive or someone else who has a relationship with the journalist is an enormous help.
7. Do not pun in your subject line: Don’t be cutesy, don’t try to entertain the reporter, just give information he or she would need. In truth, the subject line should be fully explanatory: “Company name: 3-5-word explanation, 3-5-word reason why it’s cool”
8. Send a three sentence email: what is it, why it matters, who are you?
9. Have a demo ready: so we can see or experience whatever you’re selling before we write about it.
10. Reporters are weird about ethics: so understand they appreciate transparency, will question the legitimacy of your claims and should challenge your assumptions.
11. What is next?: to get new coverage, have a new angle or a time hook, which is something that makes a story timely.
12. Reporters want your thing to be cool: Otherwise you’re wasting they’re time, so, in fact, reporters are mostly your friends. They want your thing to be the coolest ever, but they’re going to ask tough questions and be hard on you because their byline goes next to the story.
13. Have sweet video and photos: Your story will get a larger audience if you help the reporter with a better looking story.
14. Your press release is to inform, not acquire coverage: No longer is your press release the way to sell a reporter on a story. Instead, they’re a repository of all the relevant details. At best, it’s something to link to in your email.
15. Have product codes for readers: Try to acquire users and get as much attention out of the story.
16. Other coverage: good. Same coverage (in same market): bad: You need new market coverage, new angles to get new coverage. Same story with competitors will kill stories.
17. No, you can’t read the story before it publishes: So don’t even ask. That’s the independent, ethical streak of any good journalism outfit.
18. If your venture succeeds, they’ll come to you: Never forget that you need a good product to ultimately succeed, no matter the marketing.

The annual national Online News Association conference, to be held this fall in Boston, has launched its 2011 panel picker, in which those interested can vote to support their favorites of a couple hundred suggested sessions.

I am somewhat involved in three. To vote, users just need to sign up with an email. If you’re interested give love to any of these three:

1. Data Sets You Free — Informed by my Transparencity work, I proposed to lead a session with Robert Cheetham of Azavea and Chris Satullo of WHYY that would focus on the following: “In Philadelphia, a GIS shop, an NPR affiliate, a foundation, an indie news site and a technology community are coming together to organize, catalog, share and use city government data to create applications, stories and coverage that boosts transparency and efficiency. This presentation focuses on what was done, why collaboration was important and lessons on doing the same elsewhere.” Questions: 1. Why is government data so important? 2. What are challenges, obstacles and lessons from an actual example? 3. What can other journalists learn from such a project?
2. This isn’t a panel: 10 lessons from Technically Philly — “10 actionable lessons derived from what we’ve learned building Technically Philly, a profitable blog that covers technology in Philadelphia. No panel discussion, just 10 takeaways that you can use at your job tomorrow including sources of revenue and editorial philosophies that you didn’t learn in journalism school.”
3. Making it work with a small staff – Organized by colleague Sean Blanda, “How can you keep the lights on and the posts coming when you have a staff of ten or less? Join us as we discuss the workflow hacks and editorial jujitsu necessary for a first-rate news site.”

View from the 45th floor of the Comcast Center, before the start of Refresh Philly

I rounded up the rear with a presentation on volunteering with Back on My Feet as part of a four-part event on ‘Fitness for Geeks’ on Monday.

It was another installment of Refresh Philly, the monthly speaker series for the region’s technologists and creative community members. I graced the podium after Randy Schmidt, co-creator of Lose It or Lose It, Robert Jolly, a triathlete and creative director at web development firm Happy Cog and Kristen Faughnan, Philly’s Dailymile ambassador.

More than a year ago, I was on hand for Philadelphia CTO Allan Frank’s unveiling of a ‘Digital Philadelphia’ plan at Refresh and last November, I led a panel there on the future of local politics and the web.

My third visit to Refresh was as much a treat as the rest.

On Monday, I was there on behalf of the homeless advocacy nonprofit for which I handle media and our web presence, pitching the idea that our creative approach to homelessness and community of running is perfect for a group of creative web people looking for a physical outlet.

Nearly 50 people were on hand at the 45th floor of the Comcast Center, with its beautiful northerly views. I think my presentation went well, especially the telling of some member stories. See my presentation and notes below.

Notes:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. What is Back on My Feet?
4. Why is this relevant?
5. What are some member stories?
6. How can you get involved?

In addition to sharing all the failures we’ve had at Technically Philly, I spoke with founder and editor Shannon McDonald about the progress we’ve had with Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, including most prominently the breakdown of where our content was coming from.

See here the notes from our 2009 BarCamp presentation on being an online news startup in a print-heavy community.

Below find the notes and slides from this year’s BarCamp presentation entitled: Twitter is stupid…and other foundations of our content strategy.

Our notes:

Twitter is stupid…and other foundations of our content strategy.

I. Community vs. Niche: there is a difference — We’re not here just to report news, we’re here for interaction and support in the community.

II. Leave the journalism to the journalists — It’s OK to run press releases, as long you’re transparent about doing so and let the readers do the feel-good stuff. People seem most interested in the content breakdown, which I first shared in a post here.

III. “What is this Twitter thing?” — Our Twitter followers consist mostly of other news orgs, politicians and teenage girls, so go to where your readers are, not where you think you should be.

IV. Make yourself (physically) present — You better be out at as many community events as possible

V. Where it’s gotten us and Where we hope to go — Content partnerships, branding, known in communities, hoping to grow advertising (education!), merchandise and hosting more events.

Find the presentation online here or see it below.

Brian James Kirk (L) and Sean Blanda speaking at Rowan University on Sept. 16, 2009.

Making mistakes since 1983 | Sept. 16, 2009 | Rowan University

On Sept. 16, 2009, the three Technically Philly founders spoke to Rowan University journalism faculty and students about the necessity of entrepreneurship for young, aspiring journalists. The cheeky presentation was stuffed with insight from their young experiences. Below see our presentation notes.

Banner advertisement design by Brian James Kirk for TechnicallyPhilly.com

Here’s introducing one of the first regionally-focused community news portal in Philadelphia: NEastPhilly.com, home to anything and everything that happens in Northeast Philadelphia.

In a true testament to its rapid growth in its first few months of existence, tonight it is partnering with WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, to host the third and final primary debate for Democratic city controller candidates. If you’re in the Philly area, I welcome you to come see a down and dirty triumph of a small media venture.

This could be the future of news coverage.

Last fall, Shannon McDonald, who is now on the tail end of a media firestorm, began plans to launch a quarterly print publication called NEast magazine, covering Northeast Philadelphia. I pushed her to think of beginning online — even if her core demographic was a working class community not heavily entrenched online. I thought it was an opportunity to begin a brand for cheap, making her known to what potential advertisers, readers and sources she could.

She’s now the founder and editor of NEastPhilly.com, an online news portal for her native Northeast Philadelphia and hopeful one day home of NEast magazine, aimed to begin quarterly production in spring 2010. I’ve served as Web editor — launching and maintaining the minimalist and simple site — and an occasional contributor.

The results aren’t in yet. While NEastPhilly.com has clearly developed a small reputation, partnering with WHYY, collecting a small but loyal readership and adding three other regular columnists, we haven’t yet moved to monetization, nor have we made a bold step toward Ms. McDonald’s dual goal of a robust Web presence and print reality for her print-leaning community.

Still, I think a formal introduction of the site here is overdue, particularly after presenting with Ms. McDonald on the possible fiscal viability of the NEast brand at BarCamp NewsInnovation, a journalism “un-conference” held at Temple University two weeks ago.

I already wrote about my thoughts on the BarCamp and shared the speaking notes I used with fellow co-founders of Technically Philly for my first presentation of the day.

But Ms. McDonald and I thought NEast could offer its own conversation. So in the spirit of spontaneous presenting, we threw together some notes and spoke to a small group of ten about the lessons we’ve found in the early stages of our work.

Those notes below.

Branding online in a Print-Heavy Community: NEastPhilly.com
National BarCamp NewsInnovation Philadelphia
April 25, 2009

1. Site Preview

• Basic, cheap WordPress.com template
• Neighborhood-centric
• Breaking/latest news focused interface for those unfamiliar with blog format

2. Northeast Philadelphia

• Authenticity in living/background
• Demographics
• Its place in the city and relationship with big media

3. Why Online, Why Now

• Loss of community news coverage, serve that community we love
• Print-heavy readership, but brand-trusting
• Develop relationships with those online
• Introduce to broader city, which is online
• Find contributors (free now, pay later)
• Cost ($10.19 plus time)

4. Profitability

• Conversation cannot be on advertising alone
  o But, opportunity to develop ad relationships
  o Northeast advertisers not trusting of online
• Creating trusted brand to find community support
  o Regular presence
  o Broader media recognition
  o Events and promotion (beef & beers and political forums)
• Longterm alternative revenues
  o Niche sites look to fill all niches
  o Northeast swag (books, business partnerships, T-shirts even)
  o Common Northeast purchases (school uniforms, little league trophies)

5. Take Aways

• Little to no cost to begin brand
• Small town hybrid model brought to cities
• Advertising cannot be king
• Easy to launch, agile
• Impartial, but involved

I’ll be interested to see what progress we can make, if only for learning for the future. I’ll keep you posted when fitting. If you live in the region, have ties to the Northeast or just want to see what we’re doing, feel free to check out the site or subscribe.

Read about other cool things my peers are doing.

This is NEastPhilly.com founder Shannon McDonald and me in Annenberg Hall at Temple University after the BarCamp for NewsInnovation April 25, 2009.

Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and me on Saturday, April 25, 2009 in the atrium of Annenberg Hall at Temple University after discussing at the BarCamp for NewsInnovation at TechnicallyPhilly.com, which we co-founded.

Two Saturdays ago, friends Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I presented at the BarCamp NewsInnovation — which Blanda organized and Brian and I helped run — on TechnicallyPhilly.com, which we co-founded in February.

Read my thoughts on the event here. Read Twitter coverage of our presentation by looking through #BCNI304, which relates to the room in which we presented.

Below see the notes from and video of the presentation we gave.

I presented twice at BarCamp, first on TP, then later for NEastPhilly.com, which I’ll share on later this week. Harrisburg-based Roxbury News taped portions of a series of the presentations, including ours: part one, part two, part three and, Hell, part four. Or peep a bit grainier, rougher and shorter clip of me speaking on TP’s use of social media to develop our brand.

Community News Startups: Technically Philly
National BarCamp NewsInnovation Philadelphia
April 25, 2009

1. INTRODUCTION
   • Technically Philly: a blog covering the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia
   • February 2009, WordPress based template
   • three young, media and tech-interested freelancers reporters who also are a Web designer, graphic designer and business managing
   • Two niches: industry (tech) and geography (Philadelphia)
   • Today we’ll discuss: How we started, how we’re building, and how we plan to pay for it all
2. HOW TO START
   • Freelancing with time
     • Expect to see more freelancers as news orgs shed staff
     • Subsidizing through freelance
     • Normal workday and then TP
     • pick up beat freelancing
     • Get off ass off and do it
   • Use free technology
     • Use social media, but really use it: interact on Twitter, brand on Facebook.
     • Don’t just show up for the game, but actually play it.
     • Develop brand – the best thing newspapers have are their brand, if you don’t, develop it online by being consistently right, interesting and involved.
     • New media is interaction (not fancy buzz words)
   • Know your place
     • We aren’t providing breaking corporate news, but we’re adding value
     • Right now there are largely Content Creators (news orgs) and content aggregators (blogs, Google, Digg, etc.)
     • We’re trying to marry the two: creating content, but synthesizing it in a way particular to our audience.
     • Aggregation in our voice to our readers
   • Be honest in who you are
     • Disclosures, honest and genuine.
     • If you really want to be part of a community, it will support you.
3. HOW WE’RE BUILDING A BRAND, AUDIENCE AND COVERAGE
   • If you’re small, cover small.
     • How quickly you can affect that small community
     • Gives you agility, lessons from the dotcom burst, smaller is often better, and now that is coming to news
     • Dinosaur larger media, not seen as authentic in covering a community
   • Social media attack
     • 15 percent hits from Twitter, nearly a third from social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, many more from other blogs
     • Interacting with audience, that is the good of social media
   • Introducing an audience
     • We still say we’re just introducing everyone and haven’t even begun to really report
     • We’re helping to create, cobbling together Philadelphia’s broad innovation and tech communities
     • Often seen as far smaller than you might expect of one of the largest cities in the country, but we’re uncovering new fields
   • Niche, niche, niche
     • neighborhood-centric to be seen as authentic
     • Why shouldn’t we? Our audience is male, affluent, educated readers not being covered as enthusastically or consistently by mainstream media.
     • Find an audience and cover the Hell out of it
   • Involved community
     • Don’t be afriad to be part of your community; be impartial, but the heart of a journalist is someone a part of a community, you know it better, you affect it better
     • If one part of newspapers is still respected and done well, it’s the sports beat. They are often people who admit they love the home team.
     • We are covering the Philadelphia tech community and we love the home team.
   • Branding
     • Want to be seen as the only resource for Philadelphia tech news
     • Want to be respected, as journalists and as a source
     • That’s local, but Comcast, RedLasso and others are national in scope, so that can build brand in wider communities (even the smallest of communities have reasons to be appreciated elsewhere, or at least they should be)
     • Being consistent
4. MONETIZATION
   • Free model – a big conversation we don’t want to get into, but points to make
     • You’re giving away the connection to the community, who will then support you in return
     • A new model in the future could be the community network: all the news and all the purchases from that community
     • Become a store of everything related to your market, become a hub and sell around the hub
     • Phillies blog: selling tickets, merchandise, creating merchandise, write an e-book
     • Support a community and it will support your trusted, respected brand
   • Rethink traditional monetizations
     • How to wrangle “Classifieds” back – general interest newspapers lost, but specified niche organizations don’t have to
     • Advertisements can no longer exclusively sustain a model, but far more specific, interactive campaigns will come closer
     • Collecting data on users to better know them (also helps to be involved in community)
   • Find new models particular to your product
     • Whenever we try a new product, we ask ourselves what beyond advertising can we sell because it can’t be it
   • Local works best when it’s authentically local
     • TechFlash, a product purhcased by Puget Sound Business Journal but remains on separate site with separate sales
     • Don’t brand them as single entity or risk losing the appeal
     • Philadelphia flea market versus Fairmount flea market,
   • Being cognizant of news as business
     • We write, report, edit, design, plan, sell, buy, create and disseminate: reporters need to know this now
     • The reporters know what would sell to the people they cover, but those reporters aren’t making business decisions
5. TAKE AWAYS
   • Be a member of the community, but be impartial
   • Brand is everything, hub to sell around hub
   • Don’t be afraid to go small, independently branded and sold
     • The collection of niches: Washington Post as national, the NY Times as international, the Inquirer as regional
   • Buzz words are more than buzz
     • social media is friendly; new media is interaction; old media is a lecture
   • Smaller isn’t worse
     • Scale of what we cover might not change, the scale of how we cover maybe so

The Courier Post summarized our presentation, the notes of which can be seen here. Roxbury News kindly caught video of most our session:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Party Three
• Part Four

You missed the national BarCamp for NewsInnovation conference this past Saturday, held at Temple University in North Philadelphia — even though I encouraged you to come.

I sure didn’t. As I posted about the week prior, I was in Annenberg Hall on April 25.

It seemed to be a personification of online communities and conversations I’ve been following only online — like the value of personal branding, which was the focus of the first hour-long session  I attended, how valuable journalism school really is (why it might not be) and why news organizations and journalists need to add value.

I made it to four sessions, spoke at two and helped divvy out the sponsored food during the long day which officially went from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., though I was out of the house before eight a.m. and not home before 11 p.m. (after a bumping after part).

These conferences are structured around creating dialogues and allowing anyone to speak on something important to him, so nobodies like me led sessions next door to ones held by executives, editors and reporters from places like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, GateHouse Media, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly.com, McClatchy News and, likely more than I don’t know about. I mean, gees, the whole growing crew at Publish2, which develops tools for what it calls collaborative journalism, showed up.

See the complete schedule here.

I learned some things, and I’d like to share them.

I was really proud of Sean Blanda, a good friend of mine who organized a major national event. There aren’t a lot of 22-year-olds who could do that, but the state of news industry requires more like him. He also did Philadelphia a great service — getting help from the GPTMC and having all BarCamp volunteers, myself included, wear Phillies hats to show some pride to those visiting outsiders.

That said, here are some broad take aways I had:

• Advertising cannot be king — This was a major point in both of my presentations (for Technically Philly and for NEast Philly) and something I’ve come to strongly believe, but BarCamp was the first time I shared the tenet with such a powerful and knowledgeable crew. The conversations surrounding the future of news organizations seem stuck on recapturing lost advertising revenue. We’re talking about the same amount of advertising dollars in the world, but the Web has brought on a glut of new, more targeted sources to take those advertising dollars. We need to talk about alternative revenue opportunities. This is something I’ll post more about in the future.
• Everyone has valid Web ideas –  We talk a lot about how the Web is democratic, but it was interesting to see the dynamic at BarCamp. Reporters and editors with titles, citizens with blogs, students and communication directors all were engaged in the dialogue on what is good, what is right, what is important for news. The BarCamp format was perfect for this stage of news, where suddenly the most senior news executives have as good a sense of the future as your  neighborhood Twit-head… well at least as near as any industry could be at this point.
• Major news organizations are still important — There was a very real divide between corporate and anti-corporate news heads. Despite some very notable exceptions, the couple hundred attendees were mostly revolutionary anti-establishment types. I believe the future will be full of tiny, community-specific for-profit news sites, but I also think there will be a couple dozen or less larger international, national or broad regional news companies. I think at least some will need to be nonprofits, but the point to be made is that we can’t cast away all the old brands. That’s something  I picked up from a presentation from Steven King, an editor for Web innovation at the Washington Post who had a memorable trip visiting BarCamp outside of the Annenberg building.

Below see what organizer Blanda speak to Jason Kristufek — who deserves credit for really spearheading the news-based BarCamp platform — about the success of the natonal news BarCamp.

Read some thoughts from other people who are smarter than I am:

• BCNIPhilly rocked by Sean Blanda
  
• SwineFlu and the Changing News Ecology by Daniel Bachuber
• News Innovation viewed from Twitter by Amy Gahran
• Why beatblog and why news should be social by Pat Thornton
• Yesterday’s BCNI by Karl Martino
• BCNI Philly ranks #3; brings me “tweeps” by Whitney Rhodes
• Linglestown Gazette: Around lower Paxton with b2 by Bill Bostic
• Summer Plans, UWIRE 100 and BarCamp Philly by Emily Kostic
• BarCamp suggests our situation isnt beyond repair by Howard Weaver
• The Future of News at BCNI Philly by Jean Marie Evelly

An audio component was included in that above piece for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism blog. Someone managed to edit my rambling answers into a brief clip:

Check out all the other coverage people made for BarCamp, or follow the enormous coverage on Twitter by combing through #BCNIPhilly — because even Poynter did.