Philadelphia: Techadelphia?

We may be biased, but it’s a great time to be a creative, techy type in Philly. Especially a small and hungry one, as Philly Mag dishes about the growing popularity of IndyHall.

Last month we attended BarCampPhilly for another inspiring year of unconference learnings. Throughout the day we attended sessions on game development (a big thing in Philly right now), crowdsourcing, redefining the public computer space, Internet art, and even gender issues in our industry. The few times we were interested in overlapping sessions, we could follow along with the lively event hashtag. 

As BarCamp wound down, we were refreshed and invigorated, ready to do great work for our clients and for ourselves. Then along came this week’s TedXPhilly, the second year the Ted speaker’s series that describes itself as “a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading” has come to Philly.  

But here’s the thing – we couldn’t attend TedxPhilly. Didn’t get tickets, and though we’d have loved to go, we didn’t sweat it too much, because we knew we could follow along via hashtag. And wow, were we glad we did. The speaker lineup featured an impressive array of (young!) people representing an array of backgrounds and interests. Poets, a transportation technologist, an architecture critic, canning enthusiast, physician, movie makers and mural painters, amongst others – all with one thing in common: an interest in improving our local community. Hours before he would win re-election, Mayor Nutter stopped by TedxPhilly to kick things off. And after all the inspiring talks we heard and followed via Twitter hashtag, we hope he was listening as he begins his next term. 

Because if we have theses great people and great ideas working for Phil

For more details, and to glean some of the presentations and words of inspiration, follow the TedxPhilly hashtag here.