Springtime for Philly startups: UPDATES 4/17

It's April, when Philadelphia's tech start-up founders and promoters come blinking into the light, renting halls, and putting on shows in search of investors, clients, new hires, and public attention for it all.

(RAIN DELAY: TO SAT. APRIL 18) THROUGH APRIL 26: Philly Tech Week, sponsored this year by Comcast, and organized as in the past by the multi-metro tech explain-and-promote group now known as Technical.ly, opens Saturday at Dilworth Plaza, with DJs (Pixel8ter, Dj Cutman), and an App Arcade and Makers' Corner demo stations showcasing made-in-Philly tech. There's a Monday mayoral forum, Tuesday case studies, Wednesday "Business Bootcamp," Thursday software developers' conjunto, Friday party. These events and more at http://2015.phillytechweek.com

MONDAY APRIL 20: DreamIt, the University City start-up program that's gone national, holds a Philly Demo Day at 9 a.m. April 20 hosted by Josh Kopelman's and Chris Fralic's First Round Capital. DreamIt offers favored start-ups funding, management, and legal advice in exchange for a piece of the action.  World Cafe Live - 3025 Walnut Street April 15, 2015, 9:00 am - noon

new: FRIDAY, APRIL 24: At Temple U's Serc Building, 1925 N. 12th St., "Temple Powered by Ben Franklin," a joint new-technologies showcase program by Temple and Temple Med scholars plus firms backed by state/private-funded Ben Franklin Technology Partners, starting at 10 a.m.  Hear Dr. William Wuest on "Next Generation Antimicrobial Agents," Dr. Benjamin Blass on ALS, Prof. Chang-Hee Won on Tactile Imaging for Tumors, Profs. Joseph Picone and Iyad Obeid on EEG reports and many more. Register here.

TUESDAY, APRIL 28: 17th annual Angel Venture Fair (tickets start at $249), where investors who have built and sold their own companies check out hopeful biotech, IT, education, energy, food, medical-device, and other new-firm founders. The fair sets up April 28 at the Union League. Speakers will include David Rose, a founder of start-up financiers Gust, Rose Tech Ventures, and the New York Angels.

THURSDAY, APRIL 30: At Penn's Wharton School, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.: Wharton Business Plan Competition Venture Finals offers a "Shark Tank Ivy League style," with 8 finalists "vying for $115,000 in prizes," including FeverSmart (remote fever monitoring), Silver Lining (fancy "custom-lined" clothes); Third Eye (smart glasses for the vision-impaired.) This is Wharton, so they're not playing: "Past participants include Warby Parker, Petplan USA and Stylitics." Open to the public: register at http://whr.tn/1DnoDtM

EARLIER:

TUESDAY APRIL 14: The fifth annual PHORUM, the daylong Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies gathering, today at the Penn Museum. After Randi Zuckerberg (ex-Facebook-marketing-chief-turned-media-producer) spoke at 9, Comcast Cable product development boss Piers Lingle, Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com, and Christopher Clark of IBM's Fiberlink talk about mobile strateg, LiquidHub founder Jonathan Brassington leads CTOs talking about managing chaos. There's an Expo Room, a Demo Pit for start-ups, and security and big-data panels, capped by Michael Golz from SAP.

(See APRIL 28 and APRIL 30 UPDATES at bottom)
WEDNESDAY APRIL 15: The University of Pennsylvania's Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) and PCI Ventures hostsAppItUP Demo Day to choose 5 finalists from 427 submissions. A winner will get a 50k offer of investment from Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners. Finalists: Benjamin Ranard's Live Directory (updates hospital contacts based on who's in the building, with Wodify), Profs. Jason Brant's and Natasha Mizra's MobileOptx (links endoscopes to smartphones, with Sempercon), Kathleen Lee's PennNut (evaluates clinical pathways, with Tangled Web Communications), Prof. Claude Nguyen's Motivion (Google Glass neuro rehab, with SkyLess Game Solutions), Profs. Monte Mills' and Shivani Sethi's Vifant (measures infant vision, with Kanda Software).

(Updated and expanded from my column in the Inquirer here).