BY MICHAEL BRADLEY
PHILLY TECH WEEK
Vincent Better
10 TURNS
TEN When Philly Tech Week launched 10 years ago, its mission was to bring people together. “We wanted to convene and connect,” Vincent Better says. A decade later, there is plenty of that going on, so much so that the series of events has ballooned into a city-wide phenomenon that has brought together so many different constituencies that it seems to be “convening and connecting” the whole darn region. “It has grown a lot,” Better says. That’s an understatement. Thanks to the desires of many different organizations to be 30
part of Philly Tech Week, there are now more than 100 separate components to the nineday “week,” and the menu goes well beyond technology to include the arts, gaming and professional development across a variety of professions. For the past five years, Better has been the VP of Technical.ly Media in Philadelphia, which covers the local tech community and stages the event. Technical.ly has offices in Philly, Baltimore, D.C. and Delaware and covers the tech community “from a lot of different angles,” according to Better. “We look at who is emerging, who is getting funding, who is merging and who is clos-
ing,” Better says. “We run the full gamut in the start-up space, but it’s not all tech-related.” That’s true. There is some basic job-search information, as well as tips for small companies looking to hire and retain talent. Local entrepreneurs are highlighted, as are broader business stories, such as the appointing of larger company CEOs, like DuPont’s Ed Breen. Technical.ly was founded in 2009 by a pair of Temple University grads with backgrounds in journalism. Although Better wasn’t present for the genesis of the week, he has seen it grow considerably, to the point where people from all over the country want to benefit from what has become a signature part of the Philadelphia calendar. Although Technical.ly only sponsors four keystones of the week, others
