One year ago, we announced Ph.ly, a locally-minded URL shortener that was also home to an experiment: a weekly email service that promised to share the three biggest, most meaningful journalism stories in Philadelphia.

We called it the Ph.ly/NewsWeekly and after getting a rush of some 1,500 subscribers to start, the service has slowly grown to more than 1,700 weekly subscribers.

Big mistake from my part? The first few weeks I A/B tested by way of keeping the A subject line the same for several weeks. The result was that for a portion of the list early on, Ph.ly ended up in the spam folder. That happens often to new regular lists and we’ve since largely grown out of it, but our strong open rates could likely be even higher.

You can see an archive of the recent newsletters and sign up at Ph.ly/NewsWeekly.

Media attention help:

• Technically Philly
• Hidden City
• Curbed
• NBC Philadelphia
• My personal blog

Now that we’ve closed the third annual Philly Tech Week Presented by AT&T, we immediately get the questions about IMPACT.

Who came? What happened? What’s next? The short answer is nearly 20,000 people attended, almost double last year, with nearly 200 partners and 105 events.

We’ll get survey results on this post as we get those answers in, but we’ll start bringing things together here.

BIG HAPPENINGS?

• Venture for America announces Philly as its 8th market
• Warby Parker cofounder Neil Blumenthal returns to talk about growth
• Startup Pitch night offered advice to new entrepreneurs
• Balloon Mapmaking taught aerial cartography
• Philadelphia was the host of the NASA Space Apps challenge
• New coworking space 3rd Ward hosted first open house
• Questlove gave a one-hour on-stage interview as part of a Future of Music event
• The social entrepreneurship conversation and stakeholder group grow
• Bootstrappers Breakfast hosted Councilman David Oh
• The first ever Philly Student Startup Summit was held
• With URBN, we hosted a major Mobile, Marketing and eCommerce event
• First ever Philly Student Startup Summit introduces more than 150 undergraduates to the local technology community.
• With Ben Franklin Technology Partners/SEP, we hosted a major State of Entrepreneurship and Investment event.
• EveryoneOn digital literacy campaign launches
• Developing Philly the web series on the technology scene was unveiled
• The world’s largest video game! ph.ly/pong

HOW MANY PEOPLE?

We easily met our goal of more than 15,000 attendees, even by this conservative estimate. In the spirit of transparency, we’ve included the attendance estimates for all the events below.

Pre-Tech Week

1. Preview Event [4/3] — 150
2. Meta Meetup of Meetups [4/16] — 100
3. 13th annual Fox School IT Awards [4/16] — 200
4. Philly PUG [4/16] — 100
5. Select Greater Philadelphia International Reporters [4/16] — 30

Friday April 19

1. Inaugural Philly Geek Brunch — 20
2. Space Apps Reception — 60
3. The Grandest Game of PONG — 2,500 (Terrace, Art Museum Steps, Parkway)

Saturday, April 20

1. Philadelphia Area Computer Society Meeting – 30
2. International Space Apps Challenge- 50
3. Women in Tech Summit — 200
4. Student Startup Summit — 150
5. Hardware Freedom Day- 30
6. TEDx TempleU — 100
7. Pyramid STEM Cyber Play Day — 10
8. Drink Philly Digital Arts Gallery — 75
9. Philadelphia AppArcade at Science Carnival — 2,000 (Conservative portion of claimed 25,000 attendees at Science Carnival)

Sunday, April 21

1. International Space Apps Challenge — 50
2. Internet Fast Picnic & 2nd Annual Philly Foursquare Games at The Porch — 30
3. Zapping Aliens and Saving the Universe While Drinking a Beer — 100

Monday, April 22

1. Philly Tech Week Kick-Off Breakfast presented by AT&T– 80
2. What You Need to Take Your Business Mobile — 40
3. Philly Robotics Expo 2013 sponsored by Drexel University — 750
4. Indy Hall & Nat Mechnics Blood Drive — 20
5. Powering Creativity, Technology and Community — 150
6. Innovations in Green Technology – Lunchtime Series — 50
7. Everyone On Launch — 100
8. Temple University Urban Apps + Maps Studio Open House — 30
9. The Transformation of a Digital Incubator — 70
10. 3D Printer / OpenSCAD modeling class — 50
11. The Entrepreneurs Prenup — 50
12. Blackout: Reinventing Black Media in the Digital Age — 200
13. The Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia Networking & Tour of NextFab — 30
14. Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic 6th Annual Demo Night — 300
15. Scaling on AWS for the first 10 Million Users — 120

Tuesday, April 23

1. Bootstrappers Breakfast — 40
2. Node Philly 2013 — 130
3. Getting Underserved and Minority Youth Access to STEM – Lunchtime Series — 75
4. Villanova Pitch Day — 100
5. Useful, Usable & Desirable: Designing for Users — 50
6. PhillyForce Mini-Conference — 100
7. Data Processing with Mechanical Turk — 50
8. Living Responsively: Creating Websites that Work Across Devices — 30
9. Combat Robotics Demo — 50
10. CMS – Content Management Showdown — 50
11. Apps: From Concept to App Store — 30
12. Biomimicry & The Future of Sustainable Tech — 50
13. Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP Diversity Cocktail Reception — 100
14. Switch Philly: Edtech — 100
15. Crowdfunding Happy Hour — 50
16. To DB or not to DB? That is the Question — 50
17. Digital News Media and Culture — 20
18. “Geek Out” First Person Arts Story Slam — 120
19. An Evening with MongoDB Philly — 100

Wednesday, April 24

1. Live Event: Managing Mobility in the BYOD Era  Little Moves Make a Big Difference — 30
2.  Little Moves Make a Big Difference — 30
3. The Innovation Quotient (IQ): 7 Sparks To Your Company’s Innovation Success — 60
4. Getting Technical with Online Media — 75
5. Balloon Mapping Workshop — 30
6. Build your first Mobile App with HTML5, jQuery, PhoneGap and a BaaS Apigee — 40
7. All Hands On Technology: A Senior Learning Event — 75
8. Product Prototyping in 60 Minutes — 75
9. Philly as the Social Entrepreneurship Hub – Lunchtime Series — 120
10.  2013 Wharton Business Plan Competition (WBPC) Venture Finals — 150
11. Open Hack Night at Hive76 — 50
12. Philly.com Presents A/S/L: Love and Tech — 50
13. Digital Civic Engagement Tools: Are Planning Officials Talking to Anyone New? — 50
14. Philly Startup Leaders & Philly Founded Entrepreneur Expo — 600
15.  Technically Challenged — 50
16.  Build Guild Happy Hour — 30
17. “Developing Philly” World Premiere — 50
18. The Grandest Game of Pong on the Planet (Day 2) — 2,000
19. CaveCast 006: Turntablism — 75

Thursday, April 25

1. Philly TechBreakfast: Inaugural — 150
2. Entrepreneurs Opti-Match — 50
3. Breakfast with Software Industry Veteran, Tim Buckley — 50
4. Making Broadband Broader: Connecting tech communities to bridge the gap — 75
5. Build your first Mobile App with HTML5, jQuery, PhoneGap and a BaaS Apigee — 40
6.  The Future of Tech Transfer – Lunchtime Series — 40
7.  Ready, Set, UPstart: Fostering the Entrepreneurial Spirit at Penn — 250
8.  2nd Annual Startup 101 — 50
9. Music Hack Night at Hive76 — 30
10. A Very Spatial Happy Hour — 60
11. How Data Can Help Your Social Good Success Story — 75
12. Building iOS Mobile Apps 101 — 50
13.  I-SITE & PhillyCHI Present: Tech + Design Quizzo — 150
14. “Left To Your One Device” Contest Reception — 150
15.  Increase your “Brandwidth”: Self-marketing in the Digital Age — 50
16.  Can Health Tech Help Us? “Escape Fire” Screening — 50
17.  Philly Give & Get Charity Auction — 100
18. Startup Pitch Night — 75
19. Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Workshop — 50
20. Ignite Philly Youth Media — 50

Friday, April 26

1. Digital Inclusion Beyond the Internet — 50
2.  Customers in Focus: Warby Parker Keynote with Chamber of Commerce — 150
3.  Games and Gamification in Marketing and Management – Lunchtime Series — 50
4.  Entrepreneurship & Investment in Philadelphia with Ben Franklin Technology Partners/SEP — 200
5.  Educator Forum @ School of the Future — 75
6. Mobile, Marketing and Ecommerce Trends Hosted By URBN — 300
7.  Philly Tech Week Signature Event presented by AT&T and hosted by URBN — 1,000
8.  PTW 2013 Signature Event Afterparty — 100
9. The Art of Fashion and Technology — 75
10. Startup Weekend: Day 1 — 150

Saturday, April 27

• Startup Weekend: Day 2 — 150
•  BarCamp NewsInnovation and News Hackathon — 150
• Content Camp — 30
•  Comcast Cares Day Digital Resource Fair — 300
• TechServ Community Genius Bar — 100
•  The Ruby Workshop — 50
•  Hive76 Ultimate Open House and Expo — 30
•  HACK Philly 2.0 — 75
• N3rd Street Gamer Party — 150
• Make & Toss: Light graffiti and cocktails at 3rd Ward — 200

Sunday, April 28

•  Future of Music with ?uestlove — 200

Four years after first launching a simple WordPress theme (thanks Woothemes for Typebased from 2008!) to serve as the home of TechnicallyPhilly.com, we are launching a rebrand as Technical.ly, which will be the replacement for the Philly theme and our Baltimore site, a custom theme called StartupBmore from our partner there Mike Brenner.

Consider it a proof of concept that went a little further than a proof of concepts usually go.

Ahead of launching our new site, and a year after we purchased the Technical.ly domain, we wanted to share some lessons from using the same theme for that time.

Monthly page views for Technically Philly, peaking in January 2013 with 93k and staying strong in February with 85k. Click to enlarge

Traffic growth has been steady but should jump

I wrote a bit about how we moved from about 50,000 page views a month this summer to 95,000 in January and more than 80,000 in February here, but broadly I’d note that we had never focused on audience growth because our revenue has come from events (and consulting before it).

We have a lot of traffic growth to come and the redesign should push us ahead of 100,000 pageviews and more, with 50,000 or more uniques for Philly alone, let along Baltimore and Technical.ly site-wide traffic.

Click to enlarge.

Mobile traffic growth has been explosive and will likely continue

Considering one in five visits to our site in 2013 was on a mobile device, up from as little as six percent in 2011, we were eager to roll with a responsive design in our soon-to-be-launched new site and further increase load time. We have made steady growth on improving the speed with which our site loads, as depicted below, always a sign of better user experience.

Monthly average load time in seconds for TechnicallyPhilly.com. Click to enlarge.

Referral traffic to TechnicallyPhilly.com, in which BLUE represents Google search results, GREEN represents direct visits, yellow and light blue represent Twitter, orange represents Twitter and GRAY represents OTHER.

Referral traffic hasn’t changed much, which presents an opportunity

What hasn’t changed much over our four years is referral traffic, which might be a sign for movement in traffic.

As depicted to the right, search traffic from Google alone accounts for more than a third of our traffic (blue), a fifth is direct (green) and 12 percent social (yellow and light blue for Twitter and orange from Facebok) and four percent from our RSS feed.

We are drastically underperforming in the email space, in addition to RSS and, relative to our staff time, social media.

Google Chrome is the dominant browser used to visit

Over the life of TechnicallyPhilly.com, Chrome holds a sliver of a lead over Firefox and Internet Explorer represents more than a fifth, but when looking over just the last year, as shown in the graph to the below, Chrome is the big user at nearly 40 percent. Firefox is just below a fifth with 17 percent for Safari, 15 percent for IE and others below it.

Depicting the browsers used to visit TechnicallyPhilly.com from January 2012 through February 2013. Click to enlarge.

In the inaugural Baltimore Innovation Week, our community pulled together more than 30 events, 25 partners and 1,500 attendees over 10 days.

Read the full status report on Technically Baltimore here.

Some takeaways:

• Together, we started an annual way to highlight and connect our entrepreneurship, technology and innovation conversations.
• More than 30 events from 25 partners with more than 1,500 attendees over 10 days that ranged in focus from entrepreneurship to economic development to arts to hacking, design and development came together and brought out new faces.
• Startups and products launched, including NewsUp, social discovery mobile app Crowdstich and Easy WebContent’s Presenter.
• GBTC held Maryland’s first hackathon that featured representatives from city, state and federal government agencies.
• 15 projects launched as part of the latest Startup Weekend Baltimore, including winner TeamPassword.
• Venture for America unveiled plans to launch its fellowship program in Baltimore.
• TechBreakfast continued its growth as the region’s premiere startup demo event.
• Pitch Across Maryland brought Gov. O’Malley to Baltimore to show off his entrepreneurship-fueling work.
• The University of Maryland Biopark launched a new entrepreneurship demo series, starting with its incubated healthcare applications platform startup Analytics Informatics.
• Education Ignite welcomed more than 200 people to hear about the changing education climate in Baltimore.
• Leaders Kickoff breakfast featured event organizers and community leaders celebrating Baltimore’s wide technology community, including entrepreneurship, digital access and smarter government efforts. That event featured Western High School RoboDoves robotics team captain Keimmie Booth.

For a room of Leadership Inc. class members, our Christopher Wink discussed why budding corporate and nonprofit leaders should take personal use of social media a bit more seriously than some may think.

See the presentation slides above or see them here.

Campus Philly is a small, regional nonprofit dedicated to a mission of attracting, engaging and retaining college graduates to the Philadelphia area.

Their mission rocks; they host popular events and lead interesting research.

Yet, in summer 2011, even they said their website sucked, and they had no clear strategy about what to do with it anyway.

Their platform was a dated, proprietary Lotus framework, their editorial interns had little focus for their content and the organization’s social strategy wasn’t much more than an afterthought from a busy staff.

Our job was to get their web strategy a little bit closer to the expectations set for an otherwise interesting and meaningful group that is the envy of graduate-retention program throughout the country. In six months time, from June to December, Technically Media did just that, by focusing on three clear efforts:

1. Create information architecture, develop user experience and lift a new homepage — The focus here was to look clean, simple and be incredibly easy and accessible for a staff with no full-time tech or web staff.
2. Create clear editorial strategy for the web and social space – The focus here was to use the existing workflow of a small staff to have the biggest impact and to begin follow the norms of the online world to welcome more traffic, links and attention.
3. Offer basic workforce development for the basic staff skills necessary to support the first two goals — Though entire degrees are based on the concepts, we offered a slew of bootcamps for Campus Philly staff around its platform management, web basics and many content creation topics. Much more is needed here, but the level of staff savvy went through an impressive upgrade in a half year’s time.

Lessons:

• Whizbang web solutions are not good recommendations for small staffs — Campus Philly needed a simple solution that its staff could largely run autonomously, so, after some deeper analysis, we recommended a WordPress solution and custom theme, designed by staff.
• Highlight staff assets and use them — Campus Philly had a great on-site designer who was fun to work with, passionate about the project and already had designed the look of the site. Rather than start from scratch, we welcomed her direction, worked with her to think more functionally about user experience and its relationship to existing WordPress structure. We offered further development assistant and partnered with a third-party firm to turn the design into a WordPress theme, continuing to focus it to Campus Philly workflow.
• Look for cost-cutting measures — Most often, organizations are underinvesting in IT and web architecture, but still, there are sometimes ways that organizations could cut costs, in ways like hosting, processes, third-party work and more. We found some in this project and were able to make our costs seem increasingly sensible.
• Focus and look to the future — Campus Philly also had a career site and other projects it had interest in moving forward. Rather than taking on too much or losing focus, we called to stay on point for our three clear objectives, noting that we can move on to other projects if there’s interest there.
• Facebook Comments ease nerves — There remains a lot of concern about authentication of comments. Though not perfect, implementing Facebook-based comments is of great interest to many partners.
• Happy staff make work easier – When we look for projects to accept, a priority of ours is a work environment that seems welcoming. Campus Philly was a small staff, but they were excited by their mission and genuinely interested in the project and the organization’s future. That made the project a much more meaningful and enjoyable one.

Some Results:

• Old: temperamental, dated, cluttered and ugly site
• New: dependable, secure, clean and fresh-looking site
• Old: Required third-party development for any additional features
• New: Supported by rich open-source WordPress community
• Old: No staff with wide-ranging ability to impact website structure
• New: Deeper, more flexible staff understanding of WordPress structure to website
• Old: No search, available archives or welcoming SEO taxonomy
• New: Standard search, a decade of archives and WordPress SEO-friendly URL structure
• Old: No clear editorial strategy.
• New: Developed staff and intern goals, editorial calendar and content basics.
• Old: No social workflow.
• New: Clear strategy for sharing and developing greater social audience.
• Old: No basic staff understanding of content basics.
• New: Documentation and bootcamps offering foundation for content creation.
• Old: No clear place for support, direction and education
• New: Ample documentation offered, in addition to clear open-source community for development and content lessons.

Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported that Technically Philly had at least an 'important' impact on the local technology community.

Nearly 70 percent of surveyed Technically Philly readers say the news site has had at least an ‘important’ impact on the local technology community.

This from a survey of 150 Technically Philly readers in December 2011, aimed at getting a sense of interest for membership opportunities and perceptions of the local technology news site. In Technically Media’s commitment to transparency, we’ve shared all the responses here.

Below find a slew of charts and graphs detailing the responses and some takeaways about what that might mean for other niche news sites.

MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

A focus of this survey was to get a broader sense of customer interest in membership offerings and payment.

Roughly 7 in 10 respondents asked for discounts to new and existing networking events and existing local tech events. Nearly that many sought a directory, particularly focused on investing.

Responses showed most interest for in-person interactions, from discounted events and access to a database of investors to meet.

There could be an opportunity to push toward the $30 total, at least to begin.

More than 3 in 5 respondents requested a curated directory, and 2 out of five sought a careers site, an RFP board and self-publishing opportunities.. The bottom two options that receieved the lowest interest were for sponsoring content and for access to an investment fund.

Most interest is in possibly automated services.

Fifty four percent of respondents reported their businesses would pay between $75 and $250 for a membership.

The focus seems to be in and around the $100-$250 range for business services.

READER INFORMATION

One-third of Technically Philly readers reported the site had at least an 'important' impact on their business. More than 60 percent said there was at least a moderate benefit.

Local niche media can have impact on real businesses.

There is a diverse readership among type of work in and around technology. In the original survey, the distinction was made between for-profit, nonprofit and institutional work, though for simplicity's sake, these categories have been combined here.

The cycle of research, entrepreneurship, development and marketing is fully represented among Technically Philly readers.

One-third of Technically Philly readers reported making at least $70,000 in 2011.

Affluent readers do consume online-only news

Nearly 3 of 4 Technically Philly readers are in their 20s or 30s.

There is a focus among younger readers.

Almost half of respondents visited Technically Philly daily.

There is reader growth opportunities by increasing daily consumers.

Using the survey sample size, this gives a sense of reader locations. Thanks to Sarah Cordivano for making it.

Using this sample size of survey respondents, GIS analyst Sarah Cordivano kindly made a map showing the zip code locations of Technically Philly readers.

BEST OPEN ENDED RESPONSES

We also had a final question, letting people write whatever comment they wanted. Here are some highlights, both good and bad:

• “Not everyone reading your website works in the tech sector. I come to your website because I enjoy the content. The creativity and intelligence of a lot of young people in the Philly tech scene is interesting and inspiring. I like hearing about different projects going on in small coworking spaces and apartments around the city. I like hearing about the larger, more formal tech industry in Philadelphia too. Keep doing what you’re doing. The exit interviews are great, btw. More interviews with Philly tech people!”
• “Improve the website for TP. Not visually appealing.”
• “Need to expand your coverage beyond the folks you favor. More objectivity to established tech companies, you bash them too much, esp. CMCSK – whether you realize it or not, your tone in covering them is very negatively biased…..very unprofressional.”
• “I would like to see more non-internet and non-digital issues and news covered. My interests are primarily in physical but highly technical areas including physical prototyping, Aircraft parts manufacturing, high tolerance casting, etc. I haven’t seen anything along these lines communicated to the Phila public.”
• “TP has exposed me to a number of organizations and influencers that [my company's] local leadership should be tracking and /or conversations that we should work to be involved in.”
• “Please continue to use and update the Google calendar events!”
• “I strongly believe that TPL needs to deep into online video. #2: I’d love to see TPL create some kind of unique content that inspires the nation and maybe that implicitly communicates why Philly is such a wonderful place to live and work.”
• “Love Technically Philly to become the one stop aggregator of all tech events, meetups, etc. Big void, and opportunity, to really bring together everyone, and fix what is a fragmented and disparate situation.”
• “Continuing to ask the hard questions. Shining a light on teh issues facing the entrepreneurial community. Creating awareness of needs for the business and government organizations that can help entrepreneurship.”
• “be more aggressive in setting course for the tech scene in philly. There is no rudder, in my opinion, over it today, groups that do exist are incredibly self serving and narcissistic. TPHL has opportunity to provider a tremendous amount of leadership – consider broader expansion in the DelVal – too frequently TPHL seems bound to the Philly zip codes. Inject more of a voice to your coverage – appreciate the journalistic integrity, but the site lacks personality. expand contributors would also be a welcome change.”

We call it our big board.

Every business creates goals, in sales, revenue, mission and output. We do, too, but in addition to those internal goals, we like to create a broader vision that we write up by monthly steps on index cards and stick them on a big foam board in our office to keep it in our faces. It keeps us honest.

So, why not look back at how 2011 went? And, heck, why not share that with the world?

First, and perhaps most importantly, in 2011, we had two major tracks of our business: Technically Philly and our consulting. So, our big board was broken up in that very way, with a third green column for the major Transparencity grant project we led.

In the interest of transparency and of holding ourselves accountable, here’s our review of how we did on our goals in 2011:

TECHNICALLY PHILLY

1. January (PTW sponsorship launch) We created sponsorship one pager and event structure.
2. February (Sponsorship push) We hit our sponsorship goals.
3. March (Big details) We launched a print supplement, confirmed event space and more.
4. April (Philly Tech Week) 65 events, more than 4,000 attendees.
5. May (TP direction) We agreed that consulting was a backend to our focus on growing technology news.
6. June (Membership plans) We decided to look into taking a membership platform seriously.
7. July (Redesign plans) We decided a redesign process would bring into the membership.
8. August (Advertising strategy) We’ve focused on PTW sponsorship, but a longer-term underwriting plan.
9. September (Growth plans) We want to roll out another technology news market, not in Philly.
10. October (Journalism efforts) To follow on our first-half grant work, we launched other projects, like this.
11. November (Launch directory) We launched an early version.
12. December (Gross receipts) We exceeded our goals.

TECHNICALLY MEDIA

1. January — Release (TM.com and seminars) We launched launched a consulting website.
2. February — New Editorial Direction (TP plan, another editorial in Philly?) We pushed the core decision back.
3. March — Foundation work (Journalism consulting or tech grant)
4. April — Outreach (speaking, new client meetings)
5. May — Small client
6. June — Medium client
7. July — Speaking Deks (3-5 pitches)
8. August — Infrastructure (templates, processes) The structure of our consulting practice was formalized
9. September — Roles — We pushed back on dictating roles to the organization
10. October — Expansion (other market pitches)
11. November — Large client
12. December — Gross receipts

Technically Media Inc., the online content strategy firm and publisher of Technically Philly, today announced it had joined the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

TM co-founders Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and Christopher Wink highlighted five reasons they were interested in chamber membership:

• Supporting the local business community of Philadelphia and helping to make it among the most respected in the world.
• Gaining access to networking and connecting relationships, events and opportunities for partnerships and collaboration.
• Access to unique services, like event hosting, business resources, discounts, legislative lobbying and more.
• Introducing the established business community to the vibrant, growing and independent technology-focused, small business and entrepreneurial communities.
• To be seen as a valued and involved member of the Philadelphia business community.

We needed headshots and team photographs of our three co-founders, so we worked with Philadelphia Photographer Colin M. Lenton.

Lenton, whom we know from our college newspaper days, welcomed us into his rental photo studio in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia. We’re really pleased with the results.

See low res versions of the rest on Facebook here.