Brian James Kirk

It’s been 21 months — a truly enlightening and amazing journey — since Christopher Wink, Sean Blanda and I launched Technically Philly, a news site covering technology in the region.

Though the editorial product itself is not yet profitable, we’re weeks away from two major announcements that have elevated our ambitions and which will drastically change the course of our company, Technically Media, Inc.

Our original mission, one that that has been respectfully accused of being too academic, has certainly changed. But it’s not far gone.

We set out to create a sustainable news product in Philadelphia. Now, we have a significant stake in supporting an increase in public awareness using online publishing platforms. We’ve been able to adhere to this philosophy through a handful of projects that continue to occupy our time, as a company and as individuals supporting ourselves whilst building a growing, small business:

• Technically Philly — With over 1,000 posts authored about Philadelphia’s technology community, we’ve proudly been witness to an increasingly connected ecosystem of startups, institutions and public policy-makers. We launched our own event series, a first step to sustainability, and are exploring a membership model that will provide real business benefits to our membership base. Additionally, we’re thrilled about a major announcement to come in December.
• News Inkubator — We were not alone in our original mission. As we quickly learned while drafting a Knight News Challenge grant submission last year to support back-end resources for independent, local news producers, Inkubator with a K has helped us push the agenda for what we think is one of the single most important concern in the online news industry: finding profitability. We’re excited that Knight is now viewing sustainability as a core of its News Challenge and we will be submitting in that category as well as in its Communities category.
• Technically Media — Consulting has been a natural extension of our lesson learning, and we’ve been fortunate to work with news and nonprofit clients that are interested in publishing information not as promotional diatribe, but as valuable content that is just as much a part of the public dialogue as a major metropolitan newspaper’s op-ed page. Look for a major announcement regarding TM in December.
• PlanPhilly — Since May, I’ve been contracting at PlanPhilly, a news site that covers planning, design and development in Philadelphia. My work there, testing new reporting models and exploring partnerships between academia and media, has been a crucial staging ground for a changing news ecosystem. As we prepare to enter a new grant cycle in February, I’m excited to see how my involvement has helped push the organization forward.

It’s been a strong year (a much needed reprieve from a rocky intial 10 months) for me and my partners, and as I’m able to step back from the whirlwind, I hope to be providing more content on this site. If not—if things get a little crazier, once again—than at least I got an update out.

Thanks for following along.