Tourism : Innovation + Job News

If you've ever spent any time inside an art or natural history museum, there's a chance you've encountered the ubiquitous hand-held audio wand. Attached to a museum wall alongside an exhibit and stored in a charging station, audio wands share pre-recorded information about adjacent objects and displays.    
 
Now, with a bit of business development assistance from Neville Vakharia of Drexel's Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, local tech entrepreneur Cliff Stevens has created a game-changing audio-tour tool that is both less expensive and more convenient than the traditional museum wand solution.
 
Known as CultureSpots, the product exists as a free web-based mobile tool -- not an app -- that users can easily access on smartphones or tablets.
 
Vakharia, who studies the roles technology can play in building stronger and more sustainable arts organizations, helped Stevens develop a business plan for the audio platform, positioning it specifically as a solution for small and mid-size galleries and museums. Institutions, in other words, that can't necessarily afford expensive audio-tour infrastructure.   
 
"I immediately gravitated towards [his] idea," says Vakharia, who first learned about CultureSpots during a chance encounter with Stevens at a Drexel T3 tech event. "I realized that Drexel could bring the resources and expertise to really make this successful, and to really make a change in the museum field."   
 
After piloting a beta version of CultureSpots at 15 local museums and galleries, "we were really pleased to see that people wanted it, and people used it," explains Vakharia. "Overwhelmingly, the feedback was very positive."
 
CultureSpots will be officially launched at Drexel's Leonard Pearlstein Gallery on October 22 from 9 to 11 a.m., during which visitors will have an opportunity to test the platform.   
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Sources: Neville Vakharia, Drexel University and Cliff Stevens, CultureSpots
 

In yet another powerful indication of the City of Philadelphia's extraordinary commitment to public art, Mural Arts recently unveiled a new piece by a world famous artist.

On Friday, August 8, Mural Arts Executive Director Jane Golden appeared in a vacant lot near the corner of Frankford and East Girard Avenues in Fishtown with the iconic street artist Shepard Fairey, who earned widespread recognition after creating the Barack Obama "Hope" poster during the 2008 presidential campaign. The occasion was the dedication of an enormous Fairey mural, titled Lotus Diamond, commissioned by Mural Arts and brought to life over the course of just three days.
 
By far the largest Fairey piece in the city, the 29-foot-square Lotus Diamond can now be seen on the side of 1228 Frankford Avenue, a currently unused structure that may eventually become a 125-room boutique hotel, according to its owner, Roland Kassis of Domani Developers.  
 
Kassis, who's been responsible for a number of recent developments in Fishtown and Northern Liberties, suggested that more wall-sized works of public art may make appearances in the neighborhood sometime soon.

"We're gonna keep on going from here," he says, referring to the momentum generated by Fairey's mural. "We have a lot of walls. We want artists to come."   
 
According to Golden, more large-scale work from Fairey himself will be appearing locally at some point in the near future. Mural Arts has already commissioned the artist "to do two other projects in the City of Philadelphia that are hugely exciting."
 
"We're called the Mural Arts Program," sais Golden during her dedication speech, "but [we're] really [about] community-based public art. [Mural Arts] is about tapping into that creative spirit and putting it to work on behalf of citizens everywhere. And that's really what makes our hearts sing."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jane Golden, Mural Arts Program
 

It's hard to believe, but Philadelphia's First Person Arts Festival -- a twelve-day-long theater gala known as "the only festival in the world dedicated to memoir and documentary art" -- is about to enter its thirteenth year.
 
The festival will run November 4 through 15 at four separate venues throughout the city; a portion of the schedule was released last week. The true-life stories shared onstage will come not just from prominent local performers, but also from a number of bold-name celebrities.
 
Actor Kathryn Erbe of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, for instance, will take part in an onstage reading of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day’s Journey into Night," culminating in a frank audience discussion of themes germane to the play's content. Yowei Shaw, who produces the year-old FPA podcast, will present a live performance. The Obie Award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith will stage a reading of her recent memoir, and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson will host a dinner featuring recipes from his latest cookbook.

In short, as FPA executive director Jamie Brunson puts it, "There’s no other festival out there quite like it."
 
When Vicki Solot founded FPA in 2000, "she saw the rising interest in memoir and documentary art as a way to foster appreciation among diverse communities for our shared experiences," explains Brunson. Throughout FPA's history, "the festival has always had [a sense of] consciousness about it," she adds.
 
Visit the FPA website for scheduling updates -- Brunson promises a few surprises as the festival date draws nearer -- and to purchase tickets once they become available.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jamie J. Brunson, First Person Arts

Philadelphia has been one of the country's top travel and tourism destinations for decades. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau (PHLCVB), which has been marketing the city's bona fides for more than a decade, we've got the credentialed travel statistics to back up our bragging rights.
 
Philadelphia was recently named the 13th most visited U.S. city by international visitors by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Travel & Tourism Industries (OTTI), which ranks oversees travel statistics annually. According to Danielle Cohn of the PHLCVB, that ranking represents a 13 percent increase over the previous year (when Philadelphia came in 14th).
 
Those rankings have been tracked locally by the Convention & Visitors Bureau ever since 2002, says Cohn, when Philadelphia was only the country's 21st most visited city among international visitors. It was roughly eight years later, in 2008, when those numbers first began showing a significant increase.
 
"The momentum we continue to see is really based on new and innovative sales and marketing initiatives that our team has in place," explains Cohn.
 
One of those initiatives is a new international marketing campaign, "PHL: Here For The Making," which emphasizes the city's business and educational opportunities. And along with reps located in target markets throughout Western Europe, the CVB has lately been paying especially close attention to the emerging BRIC markets.
 
"I think a lot of times people forget that we're traveling around the world promoting Philadelphia because they don't see it here in their backyard," says Cohn. "But it's a very important part of the city's future."    
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Danielle Cohn, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau 

Cooper's Ferry Partnership, an organization that has been working for years to revitalize the city of Camden, was recently awarded a $475,000 grant from ArtPlace America, a group that supports creative placemaking efforts across the country.
 
According to Cooper's Ferry COO Joe Myers, it was largely the success of last April's Camden Night Gardens initiative -- a multi-disciplinary art festival held at the defunct Riverfront State Prison in North Camden -- that led to the grant.   
 
"We applied to ArtPlace with the idea of creating [a number of] smaller Camden Night Gardens events," explains Myers. The original event, which attracted roughly 3,000 attendees to the 15-acre former prison site and featured BMX riders and a Camden drill team along with art and music performances, created significant buzz throughout the community. "We wanted to use that as a kind of model to do [similar events] in smaller locations."
 
Those smaller events will take place somewhere within the North Camden and Cooper-Grant neighborhoods, which were most recently considered for redevelopment in 2008, when Cooper's Ferry released its North Camden Neighborhood and Waterfront Park Plan.
 
And while Myers says the future events might be similar in style to the original Camden Night Gardens, Cooper's Ferry plans to first spend the next four months consulting with the North Camden community.They hope to learn what local residents liked about the Night Garden, for instance, and get suggestions about underutilized sites that could be repurposed for events.  
 
Assuming that phase wraps up this fall, "I would hope we would begin the process of laying out new dates for these events," says Myers, "and having a conceptual idea of what they would specifically be."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Joe Myers, Cooper's Ferry Partnership

The art-centric Destination Frankford initiative has been active since early spring with a mission of reclaiming, rediscovering and reanimating the formerly industrial Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood of Frankford, primarily through a process known as creative placemaking.
 
Thanks to a grant from ArtPlace America -- a national association that supports placemaking projects -- Destination Frankford was able to transform a vacant and dilapidated neighborhood storefront into the Destination Frankford Gallery.      
 
Two of the three exhibitions scheduled to take place in the pop-up gallery have already happened. The first, Reclaim, featured art constructed from items reclaimed by the Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia. The second, Rediscover, was a photography show featuring work exploring the city's often overlooked urban terrain.  
 
According to Ian Litwin of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, the Frankford CDC "wanted to keep the energy we built around the gallery going," so the opening reception of the gallery's third and final show might prove to be the project's most important event yet.
 
That reception will kick off at noon on June 28 and feature the unveiling ceremony for a pop-up park in the vacant city-owned lot adjacent to the gallery. The temporary space will host film screenings, art shows and live music events.  
 
The show itself, appropriately dubbed Reanimate, will run every Saturday through July 26, and feature work from the Philadelphia Sculptors organization.
 
Unfortunately, Destination Frankford's previously announced plan to install a trio of sculptures by artist Christine Rojek in Womrath Park won't be happening, but Litwin promises "we are exploring ways to keep the gallery or some sort of community in the building going."
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Ian Litwin, Philadelphia City Planning Commission

Speaking at IgniteGood's Ignition Philly event last week, Dhairya Pujara demonstrated his mastery of the organization's narrative workshop, which helps participants develop storytelling skills and become better advocates. Pujara's story was clear and concise, and his connection with the audience was authentic.

It is that ability to reach people, and the value Pujara places on his experiences doing so, that prompted him to found Ycenter, a startup non-formal learning center offering international experiences.

Born and raised in India, Pujara came to the United States in 2010 to pursue a M.S. in biomedical engineering at Drexel University. After graduating, he traveled to Mozambique to work in a rural healthcare system for five months. There, Pujara realized how ill-prepared he was to use his engineering skills to solve real world problems. 

"My communication skills were challenged in this Portuguese-speaking war-torn country," says Pujara. "My first few weeks were very shocking and challenging. To collaborate with members in the rural community, I realized the need to understand and be a part of this culture. It didn't matter where I came from, my educational background or my intentions, until I set aside my ego and immersed myself in this new community." 

Pujara's experience taught him the importance of "rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty." After returning to Philadelphia from his time in Mozambique, Pujara developed the concept for Ycenter. 

"Traditional study abroad programs offered by universities are very academic in nature and very formal," he explains. "And then there are volunteer programs, which are not structured for attaining concrete learning objectives. Ycenter's non-formal learning program helps students supplement their formal field of studies and work on community impact projects internationally." 

Drexel Product Design Professor Mike Glaser and Dean of the School of Biomedical Engineering Banu Onaral helped give Pujara direction; Philly VIP connected him with pro-bono legal services from Dechert LLP. Students from Drexel, Temple and LaSalle have expressed interest in applying for the program.

Ycenter's biggest challenge has been raising capital, but Pujara is confident -- he plans to launch the startup's first immersive learning experience in March 2014.

Writer: Nicole Woods
Source: Dhairya Pujara, Ycenter

Chances are the Flyers will sell out their upcoming 82-game season by simply offering up seats through Comcast Tix. Meanwhile, smaller homegrown events and festivals such as the Philly Beer Week, The Fringe Festival or the Morris Arboretum's Salsa Dance Night might have a harder time. For those niche event planners, there's Center City-based TicketLeap.

Instead of choosing between specific event marketplaces (theatre, sports, concerts), TicketLeap serves businesses and organizations that use events to drive business or raise awareness. That focus has helped grow the 10-year-old company's gross ticket sales from $34 million in 2011 to $52 million in 2012.

"It's not the traditional way of dividing the events market," says Tim Raybould, President and COO. "But it's a pretty large portion of the existing events market base."

TicketLeap's platform is decidedly DIY. Users build their own events page, which can be shared across the web and on mobile devices. They can also use the tool to build their social media presence, create email blasts and track customer analytics.

In August 2013, the company released the Mobile Box Office for iOS. The app is designed for flexible ticket-taking -- it allows the taker to scan-in attendees using mobile barcodes, look up specific attendees, or adjust the attendee list.  

"You don't have to have a full box office with ticket takers at the window," says Raybould. "You can just take your phone out of your pocket."

TicketLeap's existing customers --- which hail from across the country, Canada and part of Europe -- have been quick to add the new app. In the past year, the company has grown from 21 to 27 employees and expects to add software developers in the near future.
 
Source: Tim Raybould, TicketLeap
Writer: Dana Henry

Philadelphia might still be "the workshop of the world" -- only instead of manufacturing wool suits and steam engine parts, the city is producing up-cycled handbags, artisanal cheeses and smartphone apps.

PHLMade, an effort spearheaded by Discover PHL, wants to celebrate those products. They are currently offering a newsletter and plan to launch an online magazine and branding campaign around all the stuff made in Philly.
 
PHLMade has three main goals: To market Philadelphia as a "city of makers"; to appeal to outside and emerging companies who might want to make products here; and to help locavores and tourists buy products that are locally-made. Over the next year, PHLMade will create an original logo for products made in Philly and expects to hold conventions and pop-up shops for local wares.  
 
“It’s really to connect the marketing piece with the business piece and help to support the products that are coming out of Philadelphia," says Daniel Cohn, Founder of PHLMade and VP of marketing and communications at Discover PHL. “We’re really discovering stories in the city."
 
The online magazine -- featuring original content in addition to aggregated stories from local media outlets -- will focus exclusively on makers. It’s being developed by Brandon Davis, a native of Olney who publishes the national entrepreneurship magazine American Dreaming.
 
"Everyone in America is talking about American-made products and the importance of buying local," says Cohn. "PHLMade gives us additional opportunities to showcase Philadelphia as a city of innovation and of people who are still making things after all these years."
 
PHL-Made is looking to hear from makers, maker-enthusiasts and interested sponsors. They are launching a Kickstarter campaign this month to support the upcoming magazine launch.
 
Source: Daniel Cohn, Discover PHL
Writer: Dana Henry

In July 2010, Rassa Vella, founder of DeTours, returned from a trip to Paris with a new idea for exploring Philadelphia. Vella decided that a Segway -- a two-wheeled standing vehicle common in Europe -- could give tourists a more intimate view of the city compared to a traditional bus or carriage outing. DeTours open its fourth season this month and runs tours through October.

Since launching with just one guide, the company has grown to 13 employees and a full-time operations manager. DeTours has doubled their fleet to 15 vehicles and offer up to five tours per day. Trips cover Philly's murals, South Philly cheesesteak tasting and Center City sights. Stops include the Betsy Ross House, the Liberty Bell, Elfreth's Alley, Franklin Court and the Avenue of the Arts.They also cover contemporary Philly, including the Comcast Center, the Cira Center and urban parks. Longer trips go off-road on the Schuylkill River Trail.

"It's not just Betsy Ross," says Vella. "We integrate the present and the future along with the past. It's who Philadelphia is -- it's immersion."

Vella says the tours have grown increasingly popular for family gatherings and corporate outings. DeTours also serves larger private events and offers on-campus Segway demos at Temple student events. In the coming years, she hopes to open two other offices in the Greater Philadelphia region. 

"You can cover as much ground as you would on a bus, but you're experiencing it from the view of a pedestrian," says Vella. "You’re in the neighborhoods -- you're hearing, seeing and smelling them."

Source: Rassa Vella, DeTours
Writer: Dana Henry