Latest news with #PhillyTechWeek
Technical.ly
13-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Philadelphia's innovation community must lead the country's 250th anniversary. Here's how.
In 2026, the United States will celebrate 250 years since its revolution. Nearly all cities and states will contribute something to the complex anniversary, but Philadelphia can lay claim to being that revolution's center. The semiquincentennial is more than a chance to remember history and celebrate the present. It's an opportunity to imagine our future. Fresh off the 15th annual Philly Tech Week, we at are kicking off our efforts to ensure this ecosystem leads that conversation — and we need your help. Below are three starting-gun ideas, and a pledge of our own. If you're a founder, a technologist, a builder, a civic leader, or someone who cares about where this city is heading, we want you in. Fill out this short form to join the coalition. Join the coalition! Idea 1: Vision for the future Over the past year, has been gathering feedback from Philadelphians on a collective, 250-word vision for what this city could look like in the year 2276. From neighborhood festivals to public salons, we've asked: What do we hope Philadelphia becomes in another 250 years? You can read and respond to the working draft now at By this fall, we'll finalize it — and next May, we plan to install this vision in permanent displays across the city, in neighborhoods and civic spaces, where it can spark conversation and pride for generations. Idea 2: Shared launch We're calling on every startup, established company, institution and organization with a stake in Philadelphia's future: Let's launch something together. We're challenging you to time a product release, announcement, campaign, report or milestone during Philly Tech Week 2026 (target May 4-8). Whether your users are local or global, tie your work to this moment. Let's demonstrate to the world that this region knows how to collaborate, celebrate and lead. This is for everyone, from the scrappiest startup to the biggest employer in the region to companies HQ'd elsewhere that have a footprint in Philadelphia. We want you to think boldly and time your announcement to PTW 2026. Let's flood the headlines. Idea 3: Giant spectacle Twelve years ago, with Drexel's Frank Lee, we helped play the world's largest video game on the side of the Cira Centre. That spectacle defines what's possible when our community blends art, technology, and guts. We're working on a return. Maybe it's Tetris again. Maybe it's something even wilder. But rest assured, we intend to go big, to remind this city (and the country) what creative innovation looks like when rooted in place. Our pledge: 50 states, one week just hosted our annual Builders Conference as the capstone of PTW. This year, we had attendees from 25 states. In 2026, we're setting our sights higher. We're pledging to bring entrepreneurs and ecosystem leaders from all 50 states to Philadelphia next May. To make all this happen, we'll need entrepreneurs, technologists, storytellers, organizers, sponsors, venues, creative minds and future thinkers. Want to help? 👉 Fill out the short form to get involved. This is the heads up. You have 12+ months to plan. Let's make Philly Tech Week 2026 a global moment, grounded in a local legacy. We started the revolution. Let's lead the future.
Technical.ly
13-05-2025
- Technical.ly
Test your knowledge: Take this quiz on the latest headlines in Philly tech
Between Philly Tech Week and SEPTA budget cuts, it's been an eventful month in the local tech ecosystem. Test how well you've been paying attention by taking this month's news trivia quiz. You'll score high if you've been keeping up with our articles and weekly newsletter. Read on to take the quiz. Enter your answers below, then submit and SCROLL UP, then hit 'View Score' to see how you did. Don't see the questions below? Take the quiz here. Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Axios
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Philly weekend: PGA Truist Championship and Mother's Day
⛳ The PGA's top talent tees off today at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in Flourtown for the Truist Championship. Tickets are still available. Runs through Sunday. 💻 Philly Tech Week runs through Friday. Events include a builders conference with hackathons, screenings at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, a happy hour and challenges. 🖼️ The Fall Fine Craft Show sets up this weekend in Rittenhouse Square. Shop more than 140 vendors. Friday and Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday, 10am-5pm. 🎉 It's Second Saturdays in Germantown. Activities include the ongoing stamp scavenger hunt for kids, a food and seeds community expo at the Wyck Historic House (11am-3pm), and a reading festival at Historic Fair Hill (noon-3pm). 🎨 Browse the Latino Art Market at North Philly's Taller Puertorriqueño from 11am-2pm on Saturday. Count on vendors, art activities and food trucks. 🐑 May Fair takes over Clark Park in West Philly on Saturday from noon-6pm. Besides local vendors, bring the kiddos for the bounce house, petting zoo and live music. 🐢 Roxborough's Spring Fest returns to Ridge Avenue on Saturday from 11am-6pm. Enjoy a day of performances, live music, vendors, food trucks and beer. 🛍️ Cherry Street Pier welcomes the Spring Art Star Craft Bazaar on Saturday and Sunday from 11am-5pm.
Technical.ly
07-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
15 years in, Philly Tech Week still brings the city's tech scene together
2025 marks 15 years of the Philly tech ecosystem coming together for Philly Tech Week — and a lot has changed since that first scrappy conference was announced in 2010. The 15th annual Philly Tech Week (PTW) started on Monday, kicking off over 40 tech and innovation-themed events throughout the city. Today, the celebration is presented by Comcast and hosted by 1Philadelphia, and has turned into a citywide collaborative effort. But it began under as a way for orgs from different sectors and sizes to get to know each other, cofounder and CEO, Chris Wink said. While it'll continue to change, Wink said, the ethos of community gathering that brought innovators and technologists together from the start should remain at the heart of it. So far, it's met that goal, but what that looks like going forward will have to keep evolving to meet the needs of the participants, according to its leaders. 'Philadelphia needed the last 15 years of Philly Tech Week,' Wink said. 'I'm not sure if Philadelphia needs another 15 years of the same, but Philadelphia absolutely needs a place where its entrepreneurship, tech and innovation community comes together.' People across sectors and throughout the region come out to engage with the ecosystem, and 2025 is no exception. Events like the Department of Commerce's Level Up Your Pitch workshop, Out in Tech Philly's PTW Mixer and Builders Conference are happening throughout the city until May 10. kicked it off, but PTW belongs to the entire ecosystem founders, Wink, Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda, hosted the first PTW in 2011, taking inspiration from the annual beer festival Philly Beer Week and joining the 2010s trend of cities hosting startup weeks. They found through their early reporting that traditional institutions like the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations were not connected to tech meetup groups and the startup community, Wink said. These groups were all relevant to the ecosystem, but they weren't connected, he said. The idea was that the city would be more powerful as a collective than as individuals. 'It was more about people who liked each other, coming from very different jobs,' Wink said. 'It's not an industry at that point. It's a community.' It wasn't until 2013 that PTW started to hit its stride. Event attendance doubled, people recognized the format, and they started to lean into the 'spectacle' of the week, Wink said. That year, Drexel University professor Frank Lee organized 'Pong on the Cira Center,' setting a world record for the largest architectural video game display. The goal of having many different organizations host a variety of events across the city was coming to fruition and the community calendar of events was keeping existing stakeholders engaged while also bringing in new people, Wink said. 'Philly Tech Week mattered because we established the format,' Wink said. 'The idea of having a week of events related at all to this topic is ours first.' From a wider lens, PTW puts a spotlight on the potential of Philly's tech and innovation community, Danae Mobley, executive director of 1Philadelphia and CEO of Coded By, said. The legacy of PTW is the collaboration among the community and the people who still care about coming together under a shared vision, she said. 'We've seen the evolution of [PTW],' Mobley said. 'While the people may have changed, I don't think the energy or the sentiment behind wanting Philly to succeed as a tech market has changed.' Bringing the city together and catching the mayor's attention Many memorable and impactful tech moments happened at PTW over its first 10 years. Local data project OpenDataPhilly launched at the very first Philly Tech Week's opening event, providing a resource for Philadelphians to access publicly available data. 'It was a great rollout of an open data catalog for and by a community,' Robert Cheetham, founder of software company Azavea, told The following year, Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order to establish an Open Data Policy for the City of Philadelphia. The city's open data program went on to see a lot of progress over the last decade, but the project has lost momentum over the last few years. PTW has also broken more than one world record, once again for the largest architectural video game display. Drexel's Lee returned in 2014 to organize games of Tetris on the Cira Center that year. This event is a favorite PTW memory for Mobley. Now that 1Philadelphia runs PTW, the memory feels like a full circle moment, she said. 'I thought that that was just so amazing, that there were people that just had that spirit of ingenuity and playfulness and fun around something that brought the city together,' she said. 1Philadelphia takes over to make PTW part of its mission Last year, began the process of handing PTW off to 1Philadelphia, and the org is fully hosting this year's lineup of events. 1Philadelphia, an initiative of tech education nonprofit Coded by, launched in 2020. Coded by had always participated in PTW and the org saw how it brought the community together, according to Mobley. It made sense to get more involved with Philly Tech Week because of 1Philadelphia's mission to bring stakeholders together and create a more equitable tech ecosystem in Philly, she said. 'Because of the work that we were doing as a convener with some of our signature events,' Mobley said. 'We really wanted to see how we could come in and support and bolster this long-standing tradition of a great innovation festival that happens in Philadelphia.' For 1Philadelphia's takeover made sense, too. Wink said he's been thinking about handing the reins to someone else since 2019, but the pivot to online celebrations for its 10th anniversary stalled the process of searching for the next leader. Last year was a transition period. 1Philadelphia cohosted Philly Tech Week alongside helping to organize the community calendar, contributing to the marketing and hosting its own events. This year, the org is ready to fully take over coordinating PTW. As for what's next, it's up to the community that rallies around PTW each year. 'Philly Tech Week is for everyone,' Mobley said. 'It is not the ownership of one entity.' Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Technical.ly
06-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Why every city has a ‘startup week' now — and whether they should
When first launched Philly Tech Week 15 years ago, the logic was straightforward: gather scattered entrepreneurs and technologists together, put the city on the map, and throw a few great parties along the way. A decade and a half later, nearly every US city with entrepreneurial aspirations seems to host a version of a 'startup week.' But as economic conditions, work habits and generational preferences shift, some are reevaluating whether the week-long event model is still effective — or necessary. 'The 'week' was proof that a city had arrived,' said Brian Brackeen, general partner at Lightship Capital and co-organizer of Black Tech Week, a national conference hosted since 2014. 'You had enough happening to fill multiple days.' The model flourished because it allowed cities to showcase a critical mass of entrepreneurial activity while providing flexible attendance options. 'If someone couldn't make Thursday or Friday, they could still attend events earlier in the week,' said Maria Underwood, a veteran ecosystem builder based in Birmingham, Alabama, which hosts the multi-day founded in 2015. Victor Hwang, founder of entrepreneur advocacy network Right to Start, believes a full week's slate of events encourages more local partnerships. Multiple groups could host their own gatherings under the larger banner, he said, relieving pressure from a single organizer and fostering greater community participation. Yet some old-school supporters — including CEO Chris Wink, who was instrumental in creating the original Philadelphia model — are skeptical the format still fits. 'Funding isn't there anymore to sponsor beer-soaked warehouse parties,' Wink said. He described the era of 'throwing 300-person parties subsidized by private equity firms' as 'insane by today's standards.' Instead, Wink said, founders now emphasize business value, intentional connections and efficiency in events — priorities that seem to clash with sprawling multi-day schedules. 'Happy hours are a dime a dozen' Brackeen, of Lightship Capital, echoed this shift toward intentionality. Black Tech Week, for example, has evolved to include highly structured investor-founder matchmaking sessions and corporate 'biz-dev days,'maximizing direct business outcomes rather than casual networking. Birmingham's Underwood agreed. 'Happy hours are a dime a dozen,' She said. 'The events that will sustain are ones creating intentional, strategic connections for founders.' Economic realities have also changed. CEO Wink cited the post-pandemic reevaluation of work-life balance and tighter capital environments as reasons why the sprawling event model might no longer be economically sustainable — or desirable. Still, 'weeks' remain valuable to emerging ecosystems. 'There's still a 26-year-old who was 12 when you first threw those parties,' Brackeen reminded Wink. 'They deserve their chance to experience it, too.' Though some places are still launching 'week'-themed editions — DC Tech Week was new on the scene last year, offering two dozen events across several days in the nation's capital — a rising trend is the startup 'weekend' instead. That's the branding for a program offered by Techstars, which partners on the three-day events in cities from Pittsburgh to New Orleans to Rome and Sao Paulo.. Ultimately, ecosystem leaders agree that while the week model once signaled vibrancy and ambition, its future might lie in hybrid, focused programming emphasizing specific business outcomes over sheer volume of activity. 'The vibe has shifted from 'cool and fun' to practical resilience,' Hwang said. 'People still care, but they care differently.'
