Today is the most accessible moment in the history if mankind. We are new enough with tools that they are still used personally by many leaders but advanced enough that adoption is rampant.
Continue reading This is the most accessible moment in history
News has broken of the new CEO of the multi-million dollar journalism initiative housed at Temple, a project I’ve written about before here, but I hadn’t seen any confirmation posted yet, so I thought I’d share the press release from Temple that was sent my way.
PRESS RELEASE:
PHILADELPHIA – The Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University’s School of Communications and Theater (www.cpijournalism) has named Neil Budde as the founding CEO of the Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network (PPIIN).
Budde (pronounced buddy) will lead the development of PPIIN (a placeholder name until the organization is founded and branded), a collaborative organization intended to help increase the amount and quality of news and information in the Greater Philadelphia region. It is funded through a $2.4 million grant to the School of Communications and Theater from the William Penn Foundation.
Budde was hired for his demonstrated management skills in enterprises involving journalism and technology, and his experience in anticipating and successfully accommodating for innovations and trends. Budde was most recently executive vice president at ePals and president of DailyMe, a start-up focused on delivering personalized news and information. Prior to this, Budde served as editor in chief of Yahoo News and founding editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online (WSJ.com). Budde was also involved nationally in the Online News Association, serving on its board for five years, and The News Literacy Project.
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A newly funded ‘apps and maps’ studio at Temple University could be another part of the ‘connective tissue’ between early stage ideas from novice entrepreneurs and sales worthy or impact-driven ideas, I told WHYY reporter Maiken Scott last week for her story on the news.
I reported on the funding for Technically Philly. Read her story here.
In the world of radio, there were a few versions, and I don’t have the full version with my audio included, but below hear two of the audio pieces: one from Maiken and my audio clip that was played following the host’s intro.
Two hundred fifty students from the largely troubled neighborhoods of North Philadelphia will receive full, four-year scholarships to neighobring Temple University, my alma mater, during the next decade, as the Inquirer reported.
It’s a generous effort from a major urban research university often called on for more outreach in its surrounding communities. Good things, warm stories and, surely, great public relations will come as a result. Of a student population numbering nearly 30,000, 250 may seem small, but it’s always worth valuing.
All that said, a friend summed up my exact reaction to the situation. This is a kind, relatively easy, relatively small move. It ignores the reality that the biggest impact on the development of young people happens long before they are applying for college.
“[Temple] should have given full-day preschool from birth and full-day kindergarten to 250 neighboring kids and intensive parental training to 250 neighborhood new parents 18 years ago. That would have been more effective and ultimately cheaper.” – Dan Pohlig
Temple, of course, is a university, so offering those scholarships have precedence there. This is a fine act, but there are bigger issues and more interesting approaches to take on.
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.
Continue reading Temple Review: why big companies still lead innovation and how that’s changing
When re-purposing technology tools as solutions, the core problem and end user are often ignored and so little will be accomplished.
Back in March, I was on a panel of judges for Temple University’s Center for Design and Innovation NorthBroadband DesignWeek competition.
In short, nearly 100 Temple students from six different schools were broken into cross-disciplinary teams and given a week to conceive of plans to grow opportunity along the beleaguered North Broad Street corridor in Philadelphia. Community members, leaders and other thinkers on the subject were brought in, student teams were encouraged to take to the streets and employ what they already knew.
Continue reading Technologies are more often tools than solutions (and no, that’s not the same)
Do news organizations have responsibility for their outcome?
That became the final and, I think, as yet unanswered close to a discussion I led during the final session of the third national BarCamp NewsInnovation, held Saturday April 30 at Temple University and rounding out the inaugural Philly Tech Week. [See past BCNI write ups here.]
Overall I felt this BCNI, with some 150 attendees from startup shops and some serious brands, featured more sessions that embodied that unconference spirit in being less presentation and more dialogue, something I don’t think I felt in the past. I was also interested to see the true step forward past social media and other tools and into sustainability, which I find to be a far more important place to be.
To that end and coming off Philly Tech Week, without preparation, I proposed a session in the day’s final hour: “A conversation on news as a convener.”
Here’s something completely unoriginal: you’re going to get flat-ass rejected, crushing whatever self-indulgent perspective you have on yourself, and then you will go some place magical and it will change you.
Here’s my submission to the #jcarn FAIL blog ring.
In 2003, I was an involved and eager high school senior who struggled to focus and was a lot more interested in creative side projects than studying or school work. I thought it made me unique and valuable. Turns out, it just made me a shitty student.
I grew up in rural northwest New Jersey, where the population was made up mostly of either generational residents or the extended foam of the New York City white flight wave. My parents were the latter and my family all lived in or around the 67th ward.
I wanted to go to college in a big city, without following the footsteps of my classmates or returning to ancestral roots, so I applied to colleges and universities throughout the Eastern Seaboard. I am wildly involved, have decent grades and, come on, I’m a total hoot, I thought, these freakin’ schools are going to be fighting over me.
Until the very thin envelopes from universities started to come in.
I have a flask (and a typewriter) on my desk . That desk is in new office space, as announced today.
In conjunction with the Technically Philly open data grant project, our Technically Media Inc. parent company has moved into a working office space at Temple University Center City at 1515 Market Street in Philadelphia.
It’s important to note that this office space is specifically for the six-month Technically Philly grant project, and so the office is used for those purposes and is only leased for that time.
It’s also important to note that we at TP take great interest in respecting, honoring and, in some ways, continuing the traditions of the past.
Continue reading Technically Media office space, or why I have a flask on my desk
In this month’s Philadelphia magazine, former CityPaper news editor Jeff Billman covers the forthcoming William Penn Foundation-funded news institute at Temple University and notes its roots in Technically Philly’s News Inkubator pitch:
It’s seen as a great compliment that News Inkubator in any way influenced.
