Long a believer in the importance of the nascent civic technology community, I’ve been a fan of national nonprofit Code for America. So I was thrilled for the chance to support the group in producing its first ever Brigade Congress, a national unconference focused on civic tech, last month.
Continue reading I helped organize Code for America’s inaugural national Brigade Congress
I’m a first time entrepreneur, having cofounded a niche publishing company. For more than eight years, I have been among those most responsible for the organization’s longterm strategy. For most of those years, I played the role of public face, among the first to serve very nearly all the roles we now have. We have a team of more than 20 and invoiced for nearly $1.7 million in 2016, all of which I feel responsible for supporting and growing.
But only today did I take on the title of CEO.
No one had ever held the title at our organization before. In an era championing entrepreneurship and fetishizing the young and the innovative, we are quick to anoint untested first time founders as chief executives. How many one person or four person companies do you know with a first-time CEO? It’s meant to offer clarity and it’s a great resume line. I am going to tell you why I think that’s a mistake. It’s also why it took me eight years to feel comfortable calling myself an organization’s CEO.
Continue reading Why it took 8 years for me to become CEO of my own company
My friend Edwin Warfield included me in his citybizlist CEO interview series.
Watch the full interview here. Get the full transcript of my interview here.
Find a clip below.
Continue reading Watch this video interview I did on entreprenuership
The importance of artificial intelligence and the algorithms that power them is still understated.
That’s among the big themes from Weapons of Math Destruction, an important book published lat year and written by Kathy O’Neill, a computer scientist.
Proudly, Technical.ly had a small contribution, as this story of ours was cited in the book — this story informed that later reporting. There have been a few other examples of that sorta thing but I haven’t captured them. Just kinda fun to see.
I first visited the Pen and Pencil Club in January 2009, as a spunky, 23-year-old. After visiting frequently, I finally became an official member of the country’s oldest surviving open daily press club in early 2012.
Then, in 2013 I ran and was elected to the club’s board of governors, with some encouragement from then club President Chris Brennan, a celebrated politics reporter and columnist who worked hard to grow the kind of members in the club. I was growing a reputation with Technical.ly and an active local organizer of the Online News Association.
I was proud. I learned a lot, and I put a lot of effort into being a board member. Next week, rather than run for a fifth term, I am stepping down. Here I share some of what I accomplished during the last four years.
Continue reading What I accomplished as a Pen and Pencil Club governor
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After bumping into news industry veteran Mark Glaser at the national Online News Association conference in Denver and talking shop, he invited me onto his MediaShift podcast.
Listen below.
Continue reading Listen to my interview on the MediaShift Podcast with Mark Glaser
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Journalism is a strategy, not an industry.
Newsrooms should rethink their competition. Journalism organizations are in dozens of different businesses. What we share in common (journalism DNA) makes us more partners than adversaries. The many businesses that are competing for the revenue and not providing other community value, like service journalism, are the real competition.
This was the focus of a lightning pitch I gave this weekend at the national Online News Association annual conference in Denver. Below find my slides, audio and some tweet reactions I received.
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In front of an audience of 150 civil servants and economic development executives from throughout the mid-Atlantic, I interviewed last week Philadelphia Mayor Elect Jim Kenney for the second annual Rise conference on civic innovation we at Technical.ly organize.
Find the transcript and write-up here. Below listen to the audio,
Continue reading Here’s the audio from my on-stage interview of Philadelphia Mayor Elect Jim Kenney
How are so-called innovation clusters happening across the country and in Philadelphia specifically? Alongside Dilworth Paxson law firm CEO Ajay Raju, I was interviewed on the subject over drinks at Parc on Rittenhouse Park.
The interview was for Temple University law school’s blog and came in a two-part series from a Temple law professor and transcribed by a precocious law student.
Read part one here, in which we talk about Philadelphia’s own development of a tech and entrepreneurship communit
Read part two here, in which we talk about what that development can mean for the rest of Philadelphia.
Temple University Magazine, my alma mater’s alumni magazine, called @technicallyPHL one of 25 Twitter accounts with Temple ties worth following [PDF]. They used an old photo of me looking a little dumpy from this profile
