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Five recipients representing diverse programming were among the new grantees in the latest round of funding from the PNC Foundation through PNC Arts Alive, which announced 25 grants totaling $1 million last week.

Asian Arts Initiative, First Person Arts, Mendelssohn Club, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre and Theatre Horizon were the new grantees. Grant size for all recipients ranged between $25,000 and $80,000. The Philadelphia Orchestra earned the largest grant to support eZseatU and Sound All Around, programs that engage young and diverse audiences.

Through four years of PNC Arts Alive, more than 100 organizations have received a combined $4 million to support innovative ways to engage audiences through the visual and performing arts.

PNC Arts Alive 2012 Funding
(new grantees)

PNC Arts Alive presents Neighborhood Spotlight: a series of public art workshops and visual art presentations by resident artists, engaging two vibrant multi-cultural neighborhoods: Chinatown and South Philadelphia. The series will begin with a cross-cultural exploration of Latino and Asian communities culminating with an exhibition of handmade lanterns and an oral history soundscape. $40,000

The PNC Arts Alive Philadelphia Story Project uses personal stories from three immigrant communities for a public storytelling celebration. Participants mentored by a professional storyteller will present their tales of coming to Philadelphia at a free, family-friendly Story Day celebration which includes other elements reflecting their ethnic origins, such as food and live music.  $30,000
 

The PNC Arts Alive grant supports the Mendelssohn Club’s Big Sing Community Series.  Here, the chorus and the audience sit together while the chorus performs.  Ethnically-diverse guest choruses will teach the Mendelssohn chorus and their audiences some of their repertoire during these performances. $25,000

Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre

The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre will offer free admission and transportation during PNC Arts Alive Free Will Wednesdays to Othello featuring Tony Award-nominated African American actor Forrest McClendon. They will also host pop up theater performances, share flip-camera audience reviews on their Website and host backstage tours and artist receptions. $35,000
 

PNC Arts Alive presents Theatre Horizon’s Grand Opening Season, offering the city’s residents, many of whom are low-income and underserved, free tickets to attend critically-acclaimed live theater in their own neighborhood. $25,000

(returning grantees)

Presented by PNC Arts Alive, Come See About Me celebrates the Supremes’ imprint on fashion, music, civil rights and female empowerment. A dazzling exhibition with over 70 gowns, album covers, photographs, video footage, and extensive programming will dramatize how the Supremes broke racial and gender barriers.  $75,000

Bay-Atlantic Symphony

The PNC Arts Alive grant supports ticket subsidies for three programs:  the Borgata Pops concert of country western, pop and classical music and featuring “America’s Got Talent” stars; a classical series featuring “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” with area choral groups; and the second annual Atlantic City Music Festival.  $45,000

Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra

PNC’s Open Rehearsal Series will once again open the doors of Black Pearl’s rehearsals to African-and Latin-American high schoolers from underserved Philadelphia neighborhoods.  Students will be invited on stage for a "mini-lesson" in conducting live musicians.$30,000

 

Meet Your Seat will introduce individuals and families from diverse backgrounds to the magical world of live theatre through cultural performances, house/theatre tours and hands-on activities.  $30,000

Fleisher Art Memorial

ColorWheels is a professionally-staffed mobile arts studio that will bring art-making to low-income and immigrant communities in South Philadelphia.  The curriculum includes on-the-spot art-making and a year-long project where participants contribute to a collaborative piece.   $35,000

Kimmel Center

Marrying artistic presentations to mobile technology, Check In to the Arts presented by PNC Arts Alive will increase access to the arts for young, diverse audiences.  By simply “checking in” using a smart phone, audiences will be able to receive any number of ticketed events for a free or subsidized rate.  $50,000

Koresh Dance Company

A five-day summer dance festival will feature the work of diverse choreographers from the Philadelphia area. Artistic director Roni Koresh will select 15 local, independent dancers to perform his new work and each show will include a performance by Koresh. $35,000

The Opera Company of Philadelphia

The Opera will expand PNC Arts Alive Family Days with opera-themed activities on three Saturdays at the Academy of Music. Families will be invited for workshops in group singing, conducting and stage combat plus tours of the sets, orchestra pit, dressing rooms and wardrobe areas. $40,000

People’s Light and Theatre Company

The PNC Arts Alive Discovery Series includes half-price ticketing nights, free dress rehearsals and student rush prices for works that will add to the cannon of family productions. $40,000

Perkins Center for the Arts

In its second year, Social Artworking will deepen audience relationships and expand its reach with “pop up” public performances at community festivals and public gatherings to announce upcoming free exhibitions and arts activities.  $40,000

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe 

PNC Arts Alive will again be presenting sponsor of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe.  It will also sponsor Le Grand Continental, a dance event from Montreal making its American debut and featuring more than 200 Philadelphians of all ages, dance abilities, and backgrounds on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. $50,000

Philadelphia Mural Arts

Mural Arts will stage The Meal, a series of visual and performance art pieces that gather people around a communal table to engage in dialogue about a chosen theme. Two French artists will lead community workshops to develop a theme for the design of ceramic plates and a table runner for a meal of 1,600 Philadelphians in a public space.  $40,000

 

Through PNC Arts Alive support, the museum ‘s Family Access to the Arts initiative will continue the Every Family Party, a vibrant family festival, and Pay-What-You-Wish first Sundays. $55,000

Philadelphia Orchestra

PNC Arts Alive will once again support eZseatU and Sound All Around – education programs for young, diverse audiences. Sound All Around will expand its concerts into underserved neighborhoods to introduce preschoolers to classical music.  eZseatU offers college students a $25 season membership to attend any number of subscription concerts for $1 each. $80,000

Scribe Video Center

Street Movies! presented by PNC Arts Alive is a series of free outdoor films and discussions in 14 different locations throughout Philadelphia.  In 2012 and 2013, Scribe will take a mobile digital media studio into neighborhoods so community residents can create short ‘digital postcards’ that will be screened along with the films.  $35,000

Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center

PNC Arts Alive! Family Fun Days continue with interactive, family-oriented activities on Sundays from June to December.  Live artist demonstrations and multi-cultural workshops and performances educate and engage children, many from low to moderate-income households.  Admission will be free for children 17 and under.  $35,000

SERVICE PARTNERS

Andrea Michalek is looking to take Publish or Perish down a notch. Dresher, Montgomery County-based Michalek and co-founder Mike Buschman have just launched Plum Analytics, and they've got traditional academia in the crosshairs.

"If you look at how prestige is measured now," says Michalek, "there is a time lag from when your academic article is published to reaching a critical mass. From the eureka moment to getting credit now takes about seven years." It takes about two years for an article to be published, then there's a review period, followed by researchers citing the work in their articles. Tenure and prestige are based on citation counts and links back to an article.

 

But, says Michalek, with all the data available online, a much earlier indicator of academic excellence is possible. Advancing from brilliant idea to academic prestige can become a near real time process. If a researcher gives a talk at a conference, he or she can post the deck to SlideShare, as well as tweet and blog about it. All of these sites have built in metrics that indicate traction and interest.

"We gather from fourteen different sources, including Facebook, CiteULike, LinkedIn and Wikipedia."

 

Michalek partnered with Buschman to form the bootstrapped startup while both were working in a distributed team for the academic research tool Summon, which has been purchased by over 400 libraries in over 40 countries worldwide in just three-and-a-half years. Buschman will remain in Seattle, while Michalek resides here in Philadelphia. Plum Analytics presents its startup tomorrow at a special education edition of Philly Tech Meetup at the Quorum of the University City Science Center.

Source: Andrea Michalek, Plum Analytics
Writer: Sue Spolan

North Philadelphia is getting a digital makeover, thanks to a new initiative between Wilco Electronic Systems, Inc. and Temple University. "What we're trying to do is create a new urban ecosystem for digital entrepreneurship in North Philadelphia," says Brigitte Daniel, Executive VP of Wilco. 

 

Daniel, who just returned from an Eisenhower Fellowship-funded tour of some very impoverished areas of the world, sees mobile apps as the most effective way to bridge the digital divide.

"In Southeast Asia, people went right from landline phones to mobile phones, leapfrogging over fiber optics and wired technology and going right to wireless networks," she explains. "In the US, the majority of our apps are for gaming and entertainment. In the last two years, we've developed more social service and government apps. Very shortly, we're going to see in low income populations that the mobile phone and tablet will be the pre-eminent way for everyone to access broadband information and content."

 

Daniel says the new partnership with Temple, launched in the beginning of 2012 with the Urban Apps & Maps Studio and funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, will target Philadelphia Housing Authority residents.

"We are calling this a public-private-people partnership because it is a collaborative effort between an educational institution and a private company that puts North Philadelphia communities, including residents, right at the center of the development process," says Daniel. "This is an area that has not experienced the same renaissance as West Philadelphia. It's an interesting opportunity to have more impact on the surrounding community than any other school in Philadelphia."

 

Daniel cites not only the digital divide, but the cultural divide between Temple students and low income residents, who live side by side. "There's been some tension between the community and the school." The initiative both encourages students to solve nearby urban problems and offers training to PHA residents. The project could have implications on a national scale.

 

Daniel credits Temple Vice Provost for Research and Business Development Tony Lowman with helping to get the new initiative off the ground, and offering an opportunity not only to develop apps for PHA residents, but with their help as well. Lowman, previously at Drexel, was the leading academic partner in the Freedom Rings Sustainable Broadband Adoption Partnership. Drexel provided 5,000 laptops to PHA residents as part of the Freedom Rings Partnership.

 

Daniel says, "If we implement this well and get the community engaged, it will be inviting, not intimidating." Some of the ideas for apps to build include streamlining the way PHA residents can find social services, and get easier access to health care and educational materials. Daniel expects measurable results in two to three years.

Source: Brigitte Daniel, Wilco Electronic Systems, Inc.
Writer: Sue Spolan
 

Drexel University looks at the entire region as an extension of its campus. Ideas flow like steam beneath Philadelphia's streets. Two professors in different departments are heading multidisciplinary teams that merge new technology with Philadelphia traditions. 

 

In collaboration with the Academy of Natural Sciences, the plan to print 3D dinosaurs has already gained national attention. In the area of music technology, Professor Youngmoo Kim is developing the first app to do real time annotation of Philadelphia Orchestra performances. The Drexel-generated iOS orchestra app will be the first of its kind in the world.

 

Paleontologist Ken Lacovara is in the process of reanimating dinosaurs. Before you jump to the obvious Jurassic Park conclusion, there are a lot of steps in between. Lacovara, a paleontologist, has teamed up with Dr. James Tangorra in Drexel's College of Engineering to scan and print out 3D dinosaur bones. 

 

Also on board is Drexel Mechanical Engineering prof Sorin Siegler, whose focus is biomechanics. "We don’t really know exactly how dinosaurs moved," says Lacovara, who wonders how a creature weighing 60 to 80 tons could move and trot. Not to mention lay an egg. 

 

With a birth canal opening at two and a half stories in the air, and an egg the size of a volleyball, Lacovara wonders how the massive dino would withstand the stress of squatting and getting up. With the help of his colleagues, creating 3D models and working out the biomechanics will answer literally tons of questions.

 

Over in Drexel's METLab, whch stands for Music, Entertainment and Technology, Youngmoo Kim takes a break from a robotics demonstration to talk about his collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra. It started a few years ago, when Kim made his students sit through a classical concert. "Those without classical training said, yeah, that was nice, but I didn't get it," recalls Kim. It was around the same time the iPhone came out, so he and students undertook a project to create an app that would tell listeners about the performance in real time. 
 

It was such a hit that Kim and students applied for and won the Knight Arts Challenge. While Kim cannot be specific about the date of the public rollout, he says it will be within the year. Perhaps the launch will coincide with the orchestra's 2012-2013 season opener this fall, but Kim remains mum.
 

Kim also says that not every concert will have an accompanying app, so concertgoers who find smartphone use distasteful can choose performances without the tech overlay.

 

"There used to be a brouhaha over supertitles at the opera," says Kim, who has dual training in music and engineering. "Ten to twenty years later no one cares. If you go to an opera now and there are no subtitles, something seems wrong. Likewise, 10 to 20 years from now, no one will care if someone uses a phone at the symphony."

Source: Ken Lacovara, Youngmoo Kim, Drexel University
Writer: Sue Spolan

Like some kind of sustainable Vaudeville act, a giant check made out to The Philadelphia Orchard Project danced past Paul Kimport, co-owner of Johnny Brenda's, where Ignite Philly 9 was underway last Thursday. The Ignite 6 winner received $1,000 for its urban fruit tree initiative.

 

There are a few truly key vantage points with good sight lines to the stage at JB's, and Kimport stood at one of the best, with a view of the entire area. To the right, bathed in the blue light of a photo booth, speaker Yasmine Mustafa practiced her talk about bringing GirlDevelopIt to Philadelphia. Straight ahead, past the attentive bartenders, Jessica Moore was onstage talking about her startup, Philadelphia Cow Share.
 

This was one of the best Ignite Phillys we've done," says co-organizer Dana Vachon. "The speakers were diverse. The crowd was diverse. It was awesome! It's always exciting to see a couple hundred people get so excited about the good things in our city."

Co-organizer Geoff DiMasi adds, "I am really proud of the diversity of speakers. Some cities make Ignite into a tech and start-up event while ours is a celebration of the city."
 

Perhaps the most mind blowing moment came at the top of the program. Keya Dannenbaum, founder of ElectNext, opened IgnitePhilly not with a talk about politics or civics, as expected. In five minutes, with very simply illustrated slides, Dannenbaum brought the house to tears with a story about a bridge, a note, and a great love.

 

"I was pretty nervous since it was so personal, and I knew the expectation would be something different because, one, I'm always talking about ElectNext and two, because I felt that it would be more typical of an Ignite event to speak to a specific accomplishment directly relatable to Philadelphia," says Dannenbaum, who had absolutely no idea what the response would be. She'd only ever told the story once before, at her wedding. "I ultimately decided to tell it because I just really, really love that story." She intentionally left out all mention of ElectNext, which continues to grow from its headquarters at PMN's Project Liberty.

 

It was a night that went to the women. Pam Selle's speech, entitled Go the Fuck Home, was about finding a balance between work and life, and received dozens of twitter and real life accolades. Mustafa, who turns 30 this week, won for Best Overall presentation. Sisters Emaleigh and Aine Doley talked about their grassroots neighborhood renewal work in Germantown. Diana Lind of The Next American City asked us to consider blowing up Interstate 95, for real. 

 

Some pretty sharp guys also took the stage, like the Bicycle Coalition's Alex Doty, up and coming stand up comic Doogie Horner, the brilliant Dave Martorana, Tim Bennett of Bennett Compost, as well as Jeff Friedman and the Code for America fellows, who are in residence here this month. 

 

While  DiMasi could not get over the fact that he's already organized nine Ignites (when he can still recall creating the first) the packed room begged for Ignite 10. Says Vachon, "So far, we do not have a date for Ignite 10, probably sometime in the late spring."

As far as rumors of moving to a larger venue? Not true. "We love the venue and while we would love to accommodate more people, we think the impact of an intimate sold out event is perfect for now," replies DiMasi.

Source: Keya Dannenbaum, ElectNext, Dana Vachon, Ignite Philly
Writer: Sue Spolan

Source: Gretjen Clausing, Deborah Rudman, PhillyCAM
Writer: Sue Spolan

How does a 50 plus year old organization stay current with the latest trends? That's the challenge for Leadership Philadelphia, which has been around since the late 1950s.

Liz Dow, President and CEO, says the key is connecting the old guard with up and coming business leaders in Philadelphia. In 2012, Dow is bringing people like Geoff DiMasi of Indy Hall and P'unk Avenue and Michelle Freeman of YIP (and Flying Kite) into the fold, with plans for both to come speak at Leadership Philadelphia's Sunday Breakfast Club.
 

"It's our mission to mobilize and connect professionals," says Dow, with offerings like the Core Program and the Executive Program, which aim to train and provide networking for Philly's business community. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Leadership Philadelphia launched the Connector Project, with the stated mission to  identify under-the-radar leaders, study them in order to teach others to connect, and celebrate their success.

At the end of 2011, Leadership Philadelphia announced the nomination of 76 creative connectors, which Dow terms "a funky wonderful group of entrepreneurial arts people who are trusted members of the community." 

 

There's also the Pay It Forward program, in which participants are given money to hand to someone else and then report back. The stories are now pouring in.

Fairmount Park Art Association's Executive Director Penny Balkin Bach writes that she "matched the $50 and sent it to Creative Connector Stanford Thompson at Play On, Philly to buy 100 reeds for the kids playing wind instruments." Irene Hannan, a Senior Vice President at Citizens Bank, donated the money to a single mom she found through Project HOME to use for her children’s Christmas gifts.

Leadership Philadelphia also launched This I Believe, which formed the basis for a national radio series produced out of WHYY and airing on NPR's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition Sunday.

 

Recruiting for Leadership Philadelphia's Core Program begins in March 2012, The Executive Program, now underway, concludes in June.

Source: Liz Dow, Leadership Philadelphia
Writer: Sue Spolan

Zaahah is a new collaborative search and online desktop that combines beauty and brains. James Sisneros, who created the recently launched site under the aegis of his company startUP Productions LLC, has just raised seed funding from a group of independent angel investors from South Jersey. The undisclosed sum will carry the startup for the next six months, according to Sisneros, who begins seeking a Series A round this week. 

 

Sisneros came up with the idea for Zaahah while taking an executive course at Wharton. The platform takes social search one step further. First, Zaahah allows users to separate work, personal and academic profiles, rather than lump them all into one massive favorites bin.

 

But the real genius of Zaahah is in the networking. When search results are returned, Zaahah lets users know who else is searching on the same topic. Users can communicate in a completely firewalled manner. Each user has an anonymous Zaahah email address. This functionality will be particularly helpful for researchers at different academic institutions or companies. 

 

"It will eliminate redundant effort," explains Sisneros. "If we are in different offices searching on the same problem, we will see that." Students across the country will be able to connect on shared topics. Zaahah also allows users to chat in real time as well as store search criteria, annotated results and related documents in the cloud.

 

Sisneros has teamed up with Edventure Partners to launch Zaahah through colleges and universities nationwide. "There are classes at 12 universities who will market Zaahah for the semester. They're responsible for market research and public campaigns. A team of 300 people is doing the marketing for me." Sisneros has a four year exclusive agreement with Edventures, which will be marketing his search engine at 66 universities over the next two years. Zaahah now employs three developers and two marketing specialists, all on a full time contract basis.

 

Zaahah, which can also be accessed via browser plug-in, does not look like any other search engine out there. As opposed to a blank slate, the landing page is filled with attractive images that correspond to popular search terms. Ads run down the right side of the page. Sisneros also plans to create a hybrid advertising and discount program for Zaahah users, who will receive eight email offers a month for deals on products and services based on search topics.

Source: James Sisneros, Zaahah
Writer: Sue Spolan

If you see your name on a game leaderboard, it's natural to want to make it to the No. 1 spot. Hoopla Software, based in West Chester, provides game dynamics to sales teams. Hoopla recently raised $2.3 million in Series A round financing, of which Safeguard Scientifics deployed $1.3 million.

 

When Mike Smalls, Hoopla founder and CEO, launched the company at the end of 2009, he says, "I didn't even know what gamification was." His desire to combine gaming and sales came, rather, from solving his own challenges running the sales aspect of organizations, including TurnTide, which was sold to Symantec, and Destiny Software. "It's always a challenge trying to get optimal behaviors and actions from your team." 

 

Smalls, looking into psychological and motivational elements, discovered game mechanics. "I didn't know it at the time, but I was stumbling across the same market as gamification of the enterprise. I was focused on the sales call center world."

 

The feed on Hoopla's wall mount monitor has a sports-like feel, and its graphics have been compared to ESPN. "The audience we are targeting, sales and call center folks, tend to be heavy sports fans. It works for them to have the analysis played out." He adds that sales people tend to be more competitive. "It's a little more in your face culture of competition. You wouldn't apply the same model to the Human Resources department," says Smalls.

 

Hoopla's initial product was a free countdown clock app for Salesforce, which generated a database of 400 customers. Smalls considers the scoreboard which followed to be Hoopla's flagship product, with "dozens and dozens" of customers already, without a lot of marketing. "Every one of our paid customers has come to us. We've built relationships with Salesforce sales reps or on the App Exchange." 

 

Hoopla's scoreboard technology is available on an annual subscription basis. Price points are based on the number of users, says Smalls, who estimates the cost at about a hundred dollars per user per year.

Source: Mike Smalls, Hoopla
Writer: Sue Spolan

Got a tough decision? Plug it into The Reckoner and see your peers' opinions. "One of the great things the internet has told us over the last four years is that you can ask it for advice and get actual good information back," says Dan Koch, founder of ReckonLabs, which created The Reckoner. "Giving practical answers to individuals has worked well for Q&A sites, but has not yet worked well for polls. Internet polling is still back in 1998."
 

The Reckoner seeks to bring the internet poll into the present, with a new kind of content curation and a heaping helping of humor. Launched at the end of November, the site took off immediately. In its first month, reports Koch, The Reckoner welcomed 11,000 unique users and 81,000 page views. One of the more popular questions currently in rotation asks:

TICKLING: ADORABLE DISPLAY OF AFFECTION OR A LEGAL FORM OF TORTURE?

 

The Reckoner, says Koch, will make money via two primary revenue streams: "The first is advertising. The second part is feedback. Knowing what customers are thinking is valuable." 

 

Koch envisions a company posting two possible ads on The Reckoner to elicit feedback, for example. He trusts that an occasional sponsored question will not ruffle feathers. "In America, so much of our culture is based on shopping and our relationship with our brands." For its part, The Reckoner offers advertisers unique access to an affluent, educated young adult demographic. "The Reckoner has to achieve a certain scale to make it worthwhile," says Koch.

 

Coming from Accenture, where he was a consultant on the road most of the time, Koch returned to his hometown of Philadelphia to create a business where he grew up. "One thing I've learned is that Philly has a great tech scene, much better than I ever thought," says Koch, who is a member of Indy Hall and participant in Philly Tech Meetup.

 

The future of The Reckoner rests on solid visitor numbers, with 10,000  and 50,000 unique visitors the two benchmarks. "The timeline is the key thing," says Koch, who has set July 2012 as the deadline to decide if the website is self sustaining, with an interim analysis scheduled for this March, at which point Koch will make a decision about pursuing outside investment.

Source: Dan Koch, The Reckoner
Writer: Sue Spolan

Innovation in Philadelphia: it's not just all about tech. Government, retail, media and the way we work and live made major strides forward in 2011.

The University of the Arts' Corzo Center for the Creative Economy funded arts entrepreneurs this year, and businesses like Little Baby's Ice Cream, Kembrel, Gritty City Beauty, LevelUp and ReAnimator Coffee are just a few examples of the retail revolution underway in Philadelphia. Storably and Inhabi launched to re-imagine rentals. Milkboy Coffee expanded from Ardmore to Center City, and made plans to move its recording studio downtown as well.

Crowdsourced civic change is a major trend in Philadelphia's innovation efforts. We were named a Code for America city the second year in a row; programs like Open Access Philly and Change By Us live at the intersection of technology and civic engagement, with government stewardship by Jeff Friedman. Adel Ebeid arrived to lead the city's newly formed Office of Innovation and Technology in increasing broadband penetration.

TEDxPhilly, Young Involved Philadelphia, Philly Tech Week, PhillyStake, the Philadelphia Geek Awards and IgnitePhilly mixed business with pleasure, merging crowds and companies in festive settings.

Gaming and gamification continues to trend; local efforts include Cipher Prime, Port 127, Play Eternal and networking group PANMA.

Incubators and coworking spaces surged, with Indy Hall making expansion plans for K'House, Philadev's Musemaka, OpenDesks, Startup Therapy, and Novotorium in Langhorne.

In media, Wharton Publishing went all digital; Ryan Seacrest opened The Voice studio at CHOP; G Philly, Hidden City's Daily and Generocity launched; WHYY's Newsworks grew; and if it was relevant to technology, Technically Philly covered it all this year, never missing a beat.

Writer: Sue Spolan

Joanne Lang has star power. It wouldn't be surprising if the founder and CEO of AboutOne left a trail of glitter dust in her wake. In the past several months, the Malvern based startup has received a huge amount of attention and money, including nearly $2 million in funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA, which pledged $100,000 in May, and a $1.6 million Series A round led by Golden Seeds, a majority women owned national investment network. Lang's company also just announced partnerships with Microsoft and Suze Orman's IDSafe.

AboutOne addresses the needs of an increasingly powerful online contingent: moms. While dads can also use AboutOne's family management tools, Lang's idea was borne of her own pain point as a parent. Lacking proper medical information in an emergency involving one of her four children, Lang realized that data stored in the cloud could literally be a lifesaver.

She left her job at SAP to start AboutOne, which aims to organize all household management tasks. In addition to medical data, subscribers can store images and videos, keep track of bills and receipts, maintain contacts and calendars with important family dates and deadlines, and even automatically send out cards. "I have Facebook for friends and LinkedIn for business, but nothing in the middle for the people I love the most: my family and children," says Lang. "There was nothing to manage my home life more smoothly."

The service has been in beta since April, and in January launches the full gamified version, using feedback from beta tester moms. Several key improvements include automation of information gathering via social media sites and points for using AboutOne that translate to gift cards and credits.

Lang is featured in the soon to be released documentary about entrepreneurs called Control+Alt+Compete, produced by Microsoft. "There were 63 companies presenting, and they picked three to follow," says Lang, whose gentle charm and enthusiasm outshines the other two companies profiled.

AboutOne is on a mission to give back, with a lifestyle blog, special help for military families, a Comeback Mom program for women re-entering the workforce, and promotions designed to give back to the community. The company, which was founded with five employees, has just doubled staff and is continuing to hire.

Lang will also be featured in an upcoming series The Alchemist Entrepreneur. "It's how about when you want something mentally, the forces come together and help you achieve that goal. Really weird things happen to me all the time. I feel like I have a business angel. When we got our office space, we couldn't afford to buy furniture. Twenty minutes later, someone's mom called asking if anyone wanted office cubicles. She dropped off top of the range furniture."

Look for the full scale release of AboutOne in mid-January. Those who sign up friends will be entered into a contest to win an Amazon Kindle.

Source: Joanne Lang, AboutOne
Writer: Sue Spolan